What about the atheists?

Who's the author?

As for Sam's book, I personally don't like his purely atheist attitude. I agree with his reasons for not believing in God, but since there is no proof for God or the lack thereof, I'm not going to pretend that I know that answer.

Sitting on the fence when the probabilities are essentially 0 vs. 1 is absurd.

Oh, and regarding the OP:

People who have faith: 97% of all human beings.

People who don't: a tiny fringe minority of wackos.

End of faith?

Let's not pretend you've got it on the ropes just yet, eh?

:lol:

Oh, and regarding the OP:

People who have faith: 97% of all human beings.

People who don't: a tiny fringe minority of wackos.

End of faith?

Let's not pretend you've got it on the ropes just yet, eh?

:lol:

Still flogging that old untruth, huh?

Oh, and by the way, I take it you haven't read the book?

Depends on your definitions. Unless you're totally atheistic and include no supernatural component of any kind in your worldview, you have faith of some sort. The number of people falling into that category is very, very small.

A book by an atheist about why faith is dangerous? Sounds startlingly original and ground-breaking, but no.

I have to read "Niggers Are Taking Over the World" by the Klu Klux Klan and "The Global Jew Conspiracy" by the Neo-Nazi Alliance first. They contain about the same level of bias but at least have the distinction of not hiding the fact that they're on a crusade.

Where's yours?

Typical inflammatory, prejudiced Tradman.

The same page you posted, and I was being generous. The notes further down the page on atheism say this:

"Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: This is a highly disparate group and not a single religion. Although atheists are a small subset of this grouping, this category is not synonymous with atheism. People who specify atheism as their religious preference actually make up less than one-half of one percent of the population in many countries where much large numbers claim no religious preference"

And goes on to state:

"In most countries only a tiny number of people (zero to a fraction of 1 percent) will answer "atheism" or "atheist" when asked an open-ended question about what their religious preference."

I decided to give atheism the benefit of the doubt and put in a large margin of error to avoid exactly this kind of pointless wrangling over figures. But, since you pushed the point, there you are: people without faith are a tiny, tiny fringe minority of wackos whose numbers are so limited as to be almost nonexistent.

Hmmm. You're plugging a book which is a 336 page attack on others' beliefs, and which actually says,"the very ideal of religious tolerance... is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss" - and you claim that I'm the one being inflammatory and prejudiced?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

:lol:

And... "wackos"?

So, in your mind, questioning the rationality of somebody's beliefs is on a par with violent racism and anti-Semitism?

Still flogging that old untruth, huh? Seriously, this is starting to look like carelessness:

Non-religious, non-theistic worldwide: 8%.

Non-religious, Australia, 1996: 16.5%.

Non-religious, Asia, 1996: around 20% (or 700 million) :shock:

Non-religious, Canada, 2001: 28%

Non-religious, Europe, 1998: 14.8%

Non-religious, US, 1998: 9% (up from around 3% in 1950) - ZOMG, they're multiplying!!! :shock:

Non-religious, UK, 2002: 21%

Just because someone is "non-religious" doesn't mean they are an atheist.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

I think it's sad that guys like Dawkins and Harris have made "atheist" synonymous with "anti-religion". Atheism isn't necessarily about hatred, bigotry and intolerance, so it's unfortunate to see what I presume is a small minority even of that small minority drag its values down to that.

That all changed when I read the Bible.


At the time, I'd never heard the above quote, but that's pretty much the effect it had on me. What I found was a hodgepodge collection of stories, a few fairly nice, many utterly barbaric, and some just plain infantile. More to the point, the God described throughout its pages, apart from being jealous, bloodthirsty and tyrannical, was self-contradictory in many, many ways, making him either utterly insane, or (more likely) non-existent. This was the point he went the way of all those other mythical creatures I read about growing up.

it's not going to make them any more true.

He wrote: "Atheist: literally, non-theist: one who does not believe in the existence of a god. Usually separated further into weak atheist: one who simply lacks belief (this often gets lumped together with agnostic: one who does not believe it is possible to know whether there is a god), and strong atheist: one who actively believes there is no god."

Interesting to note that, like many religious folk, an atheist (as defined above) is believe-driven, no knowledge-driven.

Interesting to note that, like many religious folk, an atheist (as defined above) is belief-driven, not knowledge-driven. In fact, atheism (as has been pointed out by many) is just another belief system--i.e, based on his ideas and direct experiences, an atheist simply has not accumulated the data to know (not believe) otherwise.

Probability of the universe forming spontaneously: almost zero.

Next up:


“What you fail to understand is that adding god to the universe does not explain the formation of the universe any better than not adding god to the universe, and since adding god is one of infinitely many possible unhelpful additions you could make to the universe, you cannot justify the addition -- you've just arbitrarily picked one unhelpful addition out of an infinite population of unhelpful additions, a basic Occam's razor violation.”

You’ve backed yourself into a corner here by inferring that “God” is the self-safe as that proposed in Biblical scripture, as a sort of Oz-like creator that creats by fiat.

Also, Alfred North Whitehead, one of the great mathematicians and philosophers of the last century, included God in his cosmology simply because this WAS the easiest explanation (The Razor example), all things considered (including the insurmountable problem of something coming from nothing, and what WAS before the big bang).

[

The Harvard committee rightly noted that students coming to college today struggle with an academy that is "profoundly secular." This was not always the case, at Harvard or at many other universities. For centuries scholars, scientists and artists agreed that convictions of faith were wholly compatible with the highest levels of reasoning, inquiry and creativity. But in recent centuries this assumption had been challenged and assertions of faith marginalized in, and even banished from, academic departments and university curricula. Requiring courses in "Reason and Faith" would be a welcome step toward reintroducing faith to the academy.

Yes, I was responding specifically to Tradrenn, and his Christian God.

This is interesting. Are you going to tell us that you have no problem with religion? Would you like to try to convince us that Dawkins and Harris have no problem with religion?

Similarly, would you like to try to convince us that "The End of Faith" is not anti-religion? How about "The God delusion"?

Don't be coy, Tristan. You yourself have described - in your own last post, no less - religion and its content as "barbaric", "infantile", "bloodthirsty", "tyrannical" and "self-contradictory".

Are you seriously going to try to convince us that atheism as demonstrated by you, Harris and Dawkins, is not anti-religion?

(This should be good)

:D

"I described the contents of the Christian Bible as such, not all of religion."

The "Christian Bible" is, strictly speaking, the Gospels (Mat., Mark, Luke, John), before which Christ wasn't around.

The previous stuff is in keeping with the psychological development of people from the ancient past, though in light of what's going on in Iraq and Africa (and other places), there's little to suggest we've come very far since Exodus. If we were to produce an updated bible, reflecting the morality and actual practices of modern day, would it not reflect the same barbarity found in the ancient text? The illusion I believe is that folks have actually evolved because these days we have more facts and figures. Sadly, this hasn't changed human nature, it's just made some of us more comfortable.

JL

For starters, your supposition, that knowledge and beliefs are basically the same thing, ....

... negates the kind of incontrovertible “knowing” that comes from direct experience and that is not a belief at all, rather a plain and simple fact.

exactly. This is the reason that I've always said in these conversations that "I lack the faith to be an atheist." People usually do not get it.

No.


What are you talking about? I don't see any connection between what I said and this gibberish.

The point is: if you mean to argue that (some set of) religious propositions are "plain and simple fact" from "direct experience", and thus are "knowledge", not "beliefs", you're simply assuming your conclusion.

What I am talking about was spelled out clearly (I think) in my hot-stove example which apparently you didn’t read.

In the last graph you totally lose your way by implying, falsely, that, one, religious and spiritual realities are the same thing (not so--religious stuff is doctrinal driven, spiritual stuff is experiential);

[..] and two, that all spiritual realities are "propositions."

This is not only entirly incorrect, it's like saying that a hot stove is itself a proposition, [..]

[..] and that the plain fact that if you sit on it, it will torch your very ass, is a belief, when in fact experiential direct knowing (of getting burned) will show you without a shadow of a doubt that the stove is more than a proposition, it's a hot fricking stove and remains so no matter what you believe or don't believe.

The bare and simple fact of a hot stove has nothing to do with propositions, conclusions, suppositions, or mentalizing of any kind under the sun.

The real problem with a fundamentalist-materialist perspective is the all to obvious limitions of trying to quantify truth and reality, and the default position of calling anything that you cannot measure "unreal." Direct experiences would show you otherwise in a heartbeat--but doctrine never will, of that we may be sure.

An interesting thing here is that most humans really want to know. Most of us come to know something from direct experience, not from science interpreting and measuring and quantifying the facets of our experience so we can "know for sure."

Using the example of the hot stove, we don't need heat measurements to know for sure that the stove will blaze our gams if we sit on it. Even without those measurements we know we'll get burned, and we know for sure, from direct experience.

The problem with most religious arguments is that folks are trying to "know for sure" by way of measurements or scientific qualification, not from direct experience, which is principally how we come to know what we know. Moreover, many people believe that the only way to brush shoulders with the Divine is through beliefs, not from direct experience, even though the later is totally open to anyone willing to do the work to get there. Like much of life, we expect something for nothing (no effort) when we expect to know transcendence by merely thinking about it, as though it were all just a bundle of thoughts as opposed to being the spiritual equivalant of that hot stove.

JL

Probability of the universe forming spontaneously: almost zero.

Probability of life beginning without outside intervention: almost zero.

Oh, and regarding the OP:

People who have faith: 97% of all human beings.

People who don't: a tiny fringe minority of wackos.

tradman, are you really this stupid? you have the gall to complain about bias, and then you say this?

i'm nothing like a wacko, and i can give you loads of character references from nice christians if that is what you require.

you are a narrow minded bigot who lets dogma blind you to reality by that statement. not sure if you really are, or just posted without thinking. hopefully the latter

no offence, Tradman, but how do you know? I know I don't. I don't think anyone does. Can you ask a scientist why the universe started and get an absolute answer?

The current scientific thinking on how the universe works throws up what's called a "fine-tuning problem". It's simple: there are number of values in the universe - the strength of gravity, the relationship between gravity and mass, for instance - that have to be very specific for the universe to exist. If they were even a tiny fraction of a percent different, there wouldn't be a universe.

The same is true of abiogenesis, the formation of the first life. Many tiny things have to be right for it to happen.

Now, I'm not saying that these problems don't have solutions. But the current thinking is that the probability of either of these things happening by themselves is very, very small.

Perhaps there are or were a trillion other universes in which it didn't happen.

The current scientific thinking on how the universe works throws up what's called a "fine-tuning problem". It's simple: there are number of values in the universe - the strength of gravity, the relationship between gravity and mass, for instance - that have to be very specific for the universe to exist. If they were even a tiny fraction of a percent different, there wouldn't be a universe.

The same is true of abiogenesis, the formation of the first life. Many tiny things have to be right for it to happen.

Now, I'm not saying that these problems don't have solutions. But the current thinking is that the probability of either of these things happening by themselves is very, very small.

Change some constants by 1-2 percent and life as we know it would not be possible - all hydrogen would fuse to heavier elements, or no hydrogen would fuse, etc... see here. Some universe would still exist. It might even support some sort of life.

probability of our universe existing with the properties it does: 1.0.

probability of life appearing on earth: 1.0.

"Look at all this! How can it possibly have come about through chance?

...


therefore, God exists."

The burden of proof is not on those who believe either. It is on those who are trying to sell you on why you should believe. Most people don't care what you believe in, but will tend to feel sorry for you for "condemning" yourself through lack of faith.

Shouldn't we look for the good in people even when they don't look for it in us?

"In the practice of tolerance, the best teacher is your enemy".

Thanks for all the lessons man!

:wink:

What I'm basically saying is that experience itself is different than descriptions, beliefs, concepts about and interpretations of experience, matter, et al.

It might be the experience of being totally present, in, and yet somehow beyond time, or sensing into the infinate and empty nature of Mind, or knowing, for a flash, about the connectedness of things, and so forth.

Change the cosmological constant, the pressure coming from dark energy or the gravitational constant and its asscoiation with dark matter and you get nothing at all. The universe could begin to start, but would never get past planck time.

Surely no one really believes that not believing in God requires no faith.

Well, it'd be nice to see some reference for that, but I learned long ago not to expect anything like that from you.

Amazed yet? By your logic, you should be.

That's funny, but a poor analogy.

If only that one combination of 52 cards and a few select others won me a prize, then yes I'd be amazed if i did win. The flaw in your analogy: not all combinations in the universe produce useful results, in fact only a tiny minority do, which is why it's surprising that the result we do have is one of them.

That "tiny minority" while fractionally small in comparison to the entire universe, it is a HUGE number in total... Meaning there is a HUGE number of "tiny minorities".

Well, not really.

In the case of the cosmological constant, as far as I know only 5 values out of infinity are known to work, and only 3 of those don't have very big problems. And only 1 produces the relatively stable system we have in our universe.

It's not a proportion, it's a simple number: 5 out of infinity. That's not a huge number.

Would this be like the answers to logic problems coming out as zero or infinity?

No, not really.

The cosmological constant gives rise to 2 spatial kinds (open and closed) of universe, and 5 dynamic types (collapsing, expanding, reverting, bouncing and loitering).

These types only arise within a very small set of values.

This isn't my certainty by the way, this is just the current thinking on cosmology.

I notice you haven't got any evidence to the contrary.

If this book is so good are you willing to send me copy?;) I'm willing to read it.

Surely no one really believes that not believing in God requires no faith. That is a foolish and laughable statement or either a very ignorant and proud statement.

You've missed my point, of course. You're claiming that there's only 5 discrete values that work, when the real numbers are, of course, continuous. If you knew as much as you claim to, you'd know that you don't talk about individual values that work, you talk about ranges.

Well, I clearly know a lot more about this than you. 2 spatial kinds, 5 dynamic types, each of which is the result of a the cosmological constant being within a narrow range of values.

Still no evidence to the contrary I see.

Oh, I don't believe there's no god, nor do I believe there is one. I do believe, however, that to believe that the Christian God doesn't exist requires no faith at all, simply a reasonably thorough study of the Bible.

You'll have to wait your turn. My copy's earmarked for a few other people first.


Oh, I don't believe there's no god, nor do I believe there is one. I do believe, however, that to believe that the Christian God doesn't exist requires no faith at all, simply a reasonably thorough study of the Bible.

But this is a totally irrelevant claim. No one is really arguing against it.

What you're trying to do is say there's a set of facts relating to some sort of mystical/experiential/spirtual whatever-you-want-to-call-it that are true, but that they can only be known if you learn them by direct personal experience. It's somewhat like when a conspiracy theorist says that anyone who disagrees with him is just part of the conspiracy. It's not a defensible argument---it's just a bunch of hand waving.


Meaningless nonsense.

Hmm, the "aliens did it" defence, eh?

The idea that what we think we know could be wrong due to special circumstances you can't and won't explain, therefore there's doubt, therefore we can assert nothing.

Nope, sorry.

You'll have to do a bit better than, "because I say so" to dismiss this entire branch of science as inconsequential.

Why do you think it is even a serious enough proposition to require a study of the Bible?

Jay

I live in hope that most Christian believers have
never read the damned thing.

Well, I clearly know a lot more about this than you. 2 spatial kinds, 5 dynamic types, each of which is the result of a the cosmological constant being within a narrow range of values.

Still no evidence to the contrary I see.

The initial "inflationary expansion" of the universe is what makes the universe to appear flat and open, but it is indead closed. I don't remember where I saw the obervational and experimental data to confirm this

unless you buy into string theory, as it contains an infinate number of theories, depending on which space-time background one choses.

Are you talking about the WMAP results? They managed to get a 2% margin of error from microwave background fluctuations. Fantastic stuff.

That's a good question, actually. I was told by various christians that the Bible was the source of serious evidence for their belief. I like to have evidence before forming an opinion, so I decided to read it. Lo and behold, I formed a concrete opinion where before I had none.

I live in hope that most Christian believers have never read the damned thing.

I have read the Bible (more than once and parts of it almost daily) It is the source of the truth. You can decide to believe it or reject it because God created us with a will to choose.

In the second book to the Corinthians it says that the good news of slavation through Christ is like a fragrance. To some it is a smell that makes them think of life to others it reminds them of death and defeat.

to quote sid the sloth from ice age---"I choose life"

I have read the Bible (more than once and parts of it almost daily) It is the source of the truth. You can decide to believe it or reject it because God created us with a will to choose.

In the second book to the Corinthians it says that the good news of slavation through Christ is like a fragrance. To some it is a smell that makes them think of life to others it reminds them of death and defeat.

to quote sid the sloth from ice age---"I choose life"

I have read the Bible (more than once and parts of it almost daily) It is the source of the truth.

Easy there, Tex. You're falling into the trap of believing that just because something tumbles out of your mouth ("meaningless nonsense") it is necessarily true or even credible. What have you just said? You've basically said that the examples I gave are experiences you have not had, hence, to you, they are meaningless.

This knowing is not a matter of offering a "defensible argument," which is a scientific protocol.

No. You didn't give any examples of experiences (as you'd say: don't confuse the map with the territory!). What happened was you spit out some catchy phrases that mean absolutely nothing.

"Being totally present"? "The connectedness of things"? Excuse me while I vomit.


As I mentioned in a thread a little while ago: if you can't be bothered to try to offer a defensible argument, you're not really capable of saying anything that should be taken seriously---you're just playing intellectual tennis without a net.

So far as saying anything that should be taken seriously, I've been describing the process of how a person can come to know the very stuff that you believe (but don't in fact know) does not exist. I've repeatedly said that these things are not ideas, beliefs, concepts, emotions, sensations, or anything of the sort, and that the only way for you to personally know same is through direct experience.

First off, why would I want to "square" what I've said against Darwinism when in fact I am a believer in evolution.

Moreover, where have I said something that was "irrational," unless your believe--but don't, actually know--that rational is confined strictly to that you can measure, adn that something outside of that modality is "irrational."

Moreover, a strictly reductionistic view says that everything in your experience is brain based, meaning it was CREATED by non-magical evolved primate. This, of course, is no more than an inversion of the fundamantalist Christian notion of a creator, whereas Brain becomes God, the creator. In fact there is no creation in that sense--there's just a never-ending process.

For instance, a scientist can tell you a theory about how and why gravity works, but you'll only get the real understanding of gravity as a living reality when you go out and log a leader fall.

Ironically enough you're the one creating 90% of the drama around here. (in a space/time continuum with a margin of error les than 2% when using only wholo numbers...).

Fair enough, although I certainly wouldn't put it at 90%, but to each his own skewed view... In actuallity, I chimed in regarding the technical details of cosmology when it was brought up in earlier replies (check to see), as it was apparent that I could add much to the discussion regarding that particular topic, as it is an interest of mine.

Do you actually dispute/refute anything I have said regarding cosmology, or anything else in this thread for that matter ??? Or is that how you refute/debate, by simply discrediting someone by sniping. :?


And you are attributing a quote to me that is not mine:
"...in a space/time continuum with a margin of error les than 2% when using only wholo numbers..."
Bad form brutha. :roll:

No: square with, not against. That is, explain how your claims about "spiritual realities" make sense as something that could have evolved. (This requires describing your view in some sort of naturalistic terms.)

Fracture, you seem to hold in the existence of "the truth value of some beliefs". Where does this truth value of yours exist? Can you explain this truth value in these terms? When you say: "such and such a belief is true or false" what exactly are you talking about in terms of something that evolved in naturalistic terms?

You're right about this fundamental difference in our perspectives. (As a side note, read the new article on Darwin in the recent New Yorker, by a fine author, A. Gopnick) You see, gravity is not a concept, but a real force in the universe. You are content to know this real thing not first hand, but through an evaluation of the effects and properties of the real deal. This is not so much coming to "know" something as it is leanrning a little bit about how and why something works as it does. No harm in that. But understand some folks want to actually know the thing first hand, some are not content to listen to ther commentary of the game or read the map of the territoty, they want to play the game and visit the actual place as it actually exists, not as a theory or a bundle of derivitive facts and figures for the simple reason that the facts and figures are not the thing itself.

Gotta work.

I don't understand your post. Are you asking me what it means when someone says a proposition is "true"? (That seems like a strange thing to have to explain.)

Actually, I was trying to ask the exact same question you asked vivalargo with "truth value of belief" replacing the phrase "spirtitual realites" so you could illustrate to us what a correct answer to your question would look like.

So far as "squaring" the infinate and the finite, the one and the many, or form and emptiness, or Darwin and "God," or matter and spirit, you're basically asking for a clean and simple answer to a conundrum.

Therefore, you've matmatically shown that the arrow can never actually reach the target since the distance is infinately divisible.

You are the grand cosmetologist

Actually, I was trying to ask the exact same question you asked vivalargo with "truth value of belief" replacing the phrase "spirtitual realites" so you could illustrate to us what a correct answer to your question would look like.

What you're yammering on about "evolving" is not Darwinism in the fundamentalist vein, rather what's called Darwin Absolutism, where (as mentioned before) Darwin and his doctrine is basically asked to replace old testiment God and doctrine, in terms of explaining how "everything" got here. The reason I suggested you read that Gopnick piece in the New Yorker is for you to bring yourself up to speed on these issues.

Your mistake is that you expect Darwinism to explain everything, and then jump to the conclusion that anything that falls outside of a absolutist evolutionary model is "spew."

So I guess the question becomes: Do you have an inner prohibition against exploring something you don't presently know?

No faith, belief, ...

You'll never make "sense" out of the stuff I'm talking about before you have some feel for the terrain, and you'll never get that sense of the terrain from thinking, since thinking is based on you past experiences.

You must not have understood why I was asking, then. John is claiming that humans have some sort of magical, mystical spirtual experiences called "boundary experiences". If that is true, the ability to have those experiences must have evolved.

The abilty to have (true or false) beliefs had to have evolved, too. But in contrast to John's religious spew, there's nothing about that ability that requires some sort of magical step that natural selection is incapable of. Yes the brain is complex (so are a lot of organs, like eyes), and it is difficult to know for sure how it did in fact evolve, but there is nothing in principle preventing it from being a product of evolution.

I don't expect Darwinism to explain everything about life, but I require any defensible explanation of the behavior of living organisms to be compatible in principle with Darwinism. That is, no magical hand-waving is allowed in a candidate explanation.

Wow. What kind of "science" is this exactly?