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Most of these things are descriptive, without us the descriptions or concepts are irrelevant.

Love is a way to describe an emotion we feel, without our brains (ignoring animals/aliens) then that emotion actually would not exist.

Circle is a description of a shape. There will be things which match the description without us, but if nobody was around to apply the description then no it (the description as applied by someone) would not exist.

Logic is another thing which is often brought up, but that too is a description of the reality we see, the law of identity: A is A and not B is true because that is all we have observed. So the laws of logic are descriptive not proscriptive.

A different reality might have different laws of logic, we might not be able to conceive of how that would work, but we only have 1 universe, that makes comparisons kinda hard.

The laws/theories of physics again are actually descriptive not proscriptive. We see something happening and describe what happens and call the description a law or a theory (simplifying how this works here but hopefully you get the idea).

Heck I know it's kinda hard to wrap my brain around but there is even an experiment (article at medium.com) which seems to indicate that if there was a being 'outside' the universe then from their perspective ... nothing happens, the universe never changes. Time is only happening for beings inside the universe, no time = no change, for the outside observer, nothing happens.

Soooo God created the universe ... and then was disappointed as it did nothing.

This answer shows you really didn't do your homework there. There are much more evidence than what you mentioned and some is really not hard to understand for a layman. Like previous poster said we've literally watched it happen in front of us multiple times. My favorite example would be the silver fox experiment.

The short version is that locusts normally love solitary lives and avoid each other. But it conditions force them into close proximity, it results in changes if behavior, body structure, diet, etc. Different aspects of crowding trigger different individual changes, often independently and with different known chemical changes underlying them. For example hind limbs touching other locusts results in them changing from avoiding each other to approaching each other. Smelling other locusts results in dark spots. These changes are passed onto offspring. Once the close contact ends, the changes reverse.

A full explanation literally requires a whole book. We know so much because locusts are a very popular area of study. They are easy to take care of, easy to breed, they reproduce quickly, inducing the changes in the lab is very easy, the changes are quick, the changes are easy to identify visually, their brains are simple and easy to study, and they are important agricultural pests so understanding them has important practical applications. This has led to people studying every aspect of every level of every stage of the changes in excruciating detail.

This isn't even my area of study, but it is such a famous example that I have learned quite a bit about it.

If the great flood happened, how do you explain that the pyramids that were built before the flood show no signs of ever being underwater?

Also if everyone except Noah and his family died, how is it possible that there is no interruption in Chinese writings that we are able to trace to dates before the flood?

EDIT: Also, 8 people are no way a Minimum Viable Population to re-populate the earth

To quote:

>Why are atheists angry? Is it because they're selfish, joyless, lacking in meaning, and alienated from God? Or is it because they have legitimate reasons to be angry--and are ready to do something about it?

Read a BOOK

Watch a LECTURE

Then try exercising what little intelligence you appear to have and think about it.

> i want to see a fosisil of bird with an arm

Why would you want to see such a thing? Evolution doesn't predict one, so what would finding one show you?

Stop listening to idiots like Ken Hamm or whoever convinced you this was a good line of reasoning. It isn't.

I absolutely encourage you to be skeptical about evolution, but it isn't skeptical to just blindly believe anything that seems to support your assumptions. Evolution is really quite simple to understand, and overwhelmingly well supported by the evidence.

If you are genuinely interesting in understanding it, the book Why Evolution is True goes over all the evidence, as well as addresses most of the arguments against it-- including the one you are making here. It might not convince you, but if you read it you will at least be able to make intelligent arguments on the subject, unlike the one you are making here.

> Violence and Crime today are due to depriving people of our Christian values on respecting life.

Which would be a good argument if violence and crime weren't way down overall globally. We live in the safest era to live in ever.

Steven Pinker provides a huge amount of evidence to support this in his excellent book The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined.

It is also worth noting that the most violent countries in the world (excluding places that are actively at war) are almost universally Christian. If you sort the list of murder rates by country by rate descending, you will see that there is not a single country in the top 20 that is not majority Christian. And in fact, most of the countries at the top of the list have pretty high religiosity.

I think ex-Christians can't believe they believed such stories in the first place. For more, read posts on /r/exchristian. There's also fun ones like /r/exmormon, /r/exmuslim, /r/exjw and the grandest collection of personal deconversion stories at /r/thegreatproject . Clearly, there are plenty of smart people here. I think religion is something that preys on natural human instincts (theory of mind and other cognitive biases - read 'The Belief Instinct'). Smart people can believe very dumb things. But what exactly does dumb mean? That you believe dumb things or your processing power is low? You could also call people dumb if they don't put much effort in thinking (using their System 2 thinking) and instead rely on their faster but more error prone System 1. (read Thinking, Fast and Slow for more).

Doing nothing is as effective, or more effective, than AA.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Sober-Truth-Debunking-Programs/dp/0807033154

>"Contrary to popular belief, most people recover from their addictions without any treatment—professional or self-help—regardless of whether the drug involved is alcohol, crack, methamphetamine, heroin, or cigarettes. One of the largest studies of recovery ever conducted found that, of those who had qualified for a diagnosis of alcoholism in the past year, only 25 percent still met the criteria for the disorder a year later. Despite this 75 percent recovery rate, only a quarter had gotten any type of help, including AA, and as many were now drinking in a low-risk manner as were abstinent."

It's a disease, not a moral failing.

> It doesn't mean alcohol is a chemical component of joy.

No it does not.

Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins however are.

Yep!

But, I should give credit where credit is due. The "pre-defined template" point was not my own. That was first brought to my attention by Tracie Harris from The Atheist Experience. She has a fantastic model, which she has previously used on the show, about "Supernatural Transcendent Dice."

Just go with a nicely framed version of this Farside Cartoon.

On the back of the card (inside the frame so that it won't be seen till one day in the future when taken out of the frame) you can add a note like "when you are older I'll teach you how to swim."

That's the joke. It's taken from a John Kenneth Galbraith quote when he said," Under communism man exploits man. Under capitalism it's the other way around."

Why should I believe a random Quora answer instead of a Yale Professor, or an actual textual critic?

>keep religious symbols and books in the house?

I already had multiple bibles in the house, as I view the KJV as important literature. And some stuff by Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Reinhold Niebuhr, C.S. Lewis, and a few more. So this stuff was already in the house.

>play religious audio (hymns, recitations, sermons etc)

I already listen to some gospel music, and have books of sermons/speeches by a number of people. Also whatever this genre would be.

>bring over their religious friends

They already did. Some of those religious friends later ostracized my kids, because they were really only pretending to be friends in order to try to covert them. But those who stayed friends continue to come over from time to time.

>hold a less than positive opinion on gays, transgenderism, abortion etc.

Compassion and decency are mandatory in our home, even to those with whom you disagree. But this last example seems like you're asking what happens if they become social conservatives, not if they become religious. There are many believers who are pro-choice, and have no problems with gays or transsexuals.

It's an inconsistency only in the sense that, like a million other things, you wonder why people don't think to use it to solve problems more often. The epic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is primarily based on a retellling of the first book with a rationalist/atheist Harry, and no characters holding the Idiot Ball for plot convenience.

Characters that actually have good reasons for not using time-turners to win all conflicts or using bombs, guns or conventional weapons, for being atheists in the face of ghosts, for a secret society of bad guys visibly tattooing themselves as such, and the Order not doing as Harry suggests, "owling hand-grenades to all known Death Eaters".

Each chapter is usually based around illustrating a principle of rationality and Baeysian logic, yet is far funnier and more interesting than the books, particularly once past the slow beginning.

>So there was no society before history?

what definition of society are you using?

pre-history refers to before the invention of writing.

>I see nothing supporting your statement.

ritualized burials don't suggest to you a belief in an afterlife? seriously you are trying to stretch "society" far enough back to before religion, it simply isn't possible. either there is not enough evidence to know anything about their culture and we aren't even talking about homo sapiens anymore, or you have evidence of religion.

since you can't seem to accept that you are wrong

Healthy hearts don’t suddenly go into cardiac arrest.

Per the Mayo Clinic: >The immediate cause of sudden cardiac arrest is usually an abnormality in your heart rhythm (arrhythmia), the result of a problem with your heart's electrical system.

> Most of the time, cardiac-arrest-inducing arrhythmias don't occur on their own. In a person with a normal, healthy heart, a lasting irregular heart rhythm isn't likely to develop without an outside trigger, such as an electrical shock, the use of illegal drugs or trauma to the chest at just the wrong time of the heart's cycle (commotio cordis).

Anyone who says that is equivocating (intentionally or otherwise) between religious faith and faith as a synonym for "confidence". Faith in a religious context is defined as "strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof" (OED) or "belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence" (American Heritage), whereas the "faith" people have in science is (justified) confidence based on its methodology and track record. Not only aren't they the same, they're practically polar opposites.

> So why is he the product of it instead of you? Why is he conscious of what happens with that brain, and you're conscious of what happens with your's?

Because the brain is an organ of the body and it receives sensory input via a central nervous system within that body. The senses stop at the edges of the body and others cannot feel that.

Co-joined twins do often share senses but only while they share a central nervous system. If they're separated they don't have the central nervous system to communicate with any more.

> that's not compatible with materialism - it would require your consciousness to already be part of a "pool" of consciousnesses that could be selected.

Either you don't understand what materialism is, or you haven't explained yourself enough. You haven't shown that consciousness depends on non-material things, or that it's assigned, or anything like what you're saying. It's like you're five steps ahead of everyone in this conversation but you are failing to communicate your logical progression. Either that, or you don't have a logical progression.

Materialists would say that thoughts occur in the organ called a brain, and that we can manipulate consciousness by tampering with the brain (e.g. inserting memories in rats). This research is a relatively young science though, so progress is slow.

Talking about consciousness and brains is, apparently, making the matter too complex. Try just talking about hands instead. Why do I control my hand and why don't I control my friend's hand? Well because hands are controlled via central nervous systems and those systems don't extend to my friend. Simple.

There's this YouTube video of a call-in radio show that was interviewing Kent Hovind. A geneticist called in, wanting to know the applications of Intelligent Design. Kent struggled to answer, and this is when I realized something. Religion wasn't just holding back science by teaching something unscientific, it was teaching something anti-scientific.

So, indeed, what are some modern-day applications of the Bible. It kept people from eating pork before we knew how to cook it properly. What have they got for us today? Or even in the last twenty years?

> I provided strong evidence that this is not how atheist is generally defined (outside of online atheist forums).

You cited the Oxford English Dictionary but when I check it online I get:

> A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods

(emphasis mine)

After-life is one of many religious terms which is a self-contradicting concept. To claim an after-life is essentially to claim there is no death, or at least to redefine it's meaning. If you 'live on', you aren't dead just assuming another form. Your body is 'dead', but that'd be extraneous. You'd never die. A concept I don't think people really think through.

Even though we were non-existent for billions of years before birth, we (all, including atheists) have trouble accepting the reality that the same will happen again. Denying that our minds will return to basic organic components is like denying a log will burn into ashes. The log would have trouble accepting it, but that's clearly what happens. There's no reason to think that there's a supernatural 'log' that remains indefinitely in the form it was destroyed in, as opposed to the form it was originally or before it was created.

To quote from my favorite fanfic:

>Death is bad. Very bad. Extremely bad. Being scared of death is like being scared of a great big monster with poisonous fangs. It actually makes a great deal of sense, and does not, in fact, indicate that you have a psychological problem.

> Gnostic simply means that we know how they came to this belief

I've never heard anyone define "gnostic" this way, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. I try to go by dictionary definitions like this: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gnostic?s=t
but I realize culture can use a word differently and essentially change it's meaning.

Would you say that your definition of "gnostic" is more cultural or technical? If it's technical, please link to source.

I recently read 'The Belief Instinct' and think it gives valuable information on how we've evolved to believe in the supernatural. It's by Jesse Bering. Shermer has a book on belief and of course there is the classic 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' which has lots of research on the brain and thinking.

First, I would ask that you take some time to educate yourself on what the big bang theory actually is about - it is not "exploding stars." Here is a good introduction video: http://www.khanacademy.org/video/big-bang-introduction?playlist=Cosmology+and+Astronomy

Second, here is some empirical evidence that the big bang actually occurred. There is no evidence for an intelligent designer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Observational_evidence

Third, the big bang does not preclude a designer. However, it does not require one either. Applying Occam's razor, we take the simplest explanation as the best one.

I'd suggest mindfulness. I have a similar problem with death itself. I remind myself there's nothing I can do about it and if I keep thinking about it, I'll ruin the precious time I have.

Maybe remind yourself of why you don't believe in Hell, and focus on where you are, what you are doing.

Get busy living!

Also, I like this podcast https://anchor.fm/bowl

No, it's misunderstanding on your part. Sam Harris, one of the most prominent public atheists, has literally written a whole book on Lying and why he thinks it is almost always better to tell the truth. Again, it is incorrect that all, or even most, atheists would see no problem with lying.

By the way, I think Harris' would consider his "wellbeing" model of morality objective, and it doesn't involve God or religion.

>Evolution is a weak theory, scientifically speaking. No serious scientist will ever agree that Evolution is a fact.

You might try Here, or Here

One good way to debunk the Flood myth is to compare the date of Noah's Flood 2348 BCE with the dates of the rulers of Ancient Egypt.

Pharaoh Unas was the last king of the 5th dynasty 2465–2325 BCE of ancient Egypt and the first pharaoh to inscribe the interior of his pyramid at Ṣaqqārah with religious and magical texts known as Pyramid Texts.

Now if this Global Flood really happened why is it Egypt makes no mention of it? If it really happened in 2348 as Answers in Genesis claims then how did they Build Unas' Pyramid?

Again, Gout. Although painful, it's trivial and heals by itself. The power of your thought is not enough to convince anyone, and most importantly your self, that it was you.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gout/symptoms-causes/syc-20372897?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=abstract&utm_content=Gout&utm_campaign=Knowledge-panel

How do you know it was you?

You don't.

The logic you're working with is the same logic people were working in the age of non-evidence medicine. There is no way for you to know that if your booty wasn't there that he wasnt going to get vetter anyway.

You're old world logic is incompatable with todays world and has been shown to not work.

It seems you are half-rght. However, when using English words today, it generally makes the most sense to use them based on what their definitions are today, not their etymological roots.

Almost every dictionary or encyclopedic source on the word "belief" has one or more definitions in which it means something along the lines of a conviction or state of mind defined by holding something to be true or real.

You can define words however you like, but that is usually a great way to derail a conversation. When most people say "I believe there is a God" they do not mean "wish," they mean they have at least some conviction in the truth of that God's existence. If you want belief to mean wish, I suggest you use the word "wish."

Btw, if you want to hear a New Atheist talking about science and morals, you could watch this TED talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html

His point is that science can give you the information that you need to make a moral choice.

So, for example, science might be able to tell if something has consciousness, and thus let you make an informed moral decision about where it's moral to harm them.

http://web.med.harvard.edu/sites/RELEASES/html/3_31STEP.html http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002870305006496

The best part is how 59% of people who knew they were getting prayer got complications, while 51% who didn't know got complications. So if knowing you're being prayed for makes things worse, then I think I'm gonna lock any religious people out of my room if I wind up in the hospital.

>right about the philosophy on how to live peacefully with each other.

There is no silver bullet. But, we do live in the most peaceful times ever and it is improving day by day. Education and communication is making it easier to sympathize with one another and harder and harder to commit atrocities.

Will we ever be completely peaceful, not likely. Every generation has to do their part to keep the peace for themselves and their children.

This question bothered me too. Here is the related discussion.

> If you can please try to disprove the Bible with logical arguments.

Thats called 'contextual empiricism'.

Science figure out a long time ago (Newton & Co) that it wasn't very effective.

Granted sometime after WWII the US snuck it back into the curriculum under the new name of Philosophy of Science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

....

Real science (Empirical science) debunked god

https://hastebin.com/qasatatuce.sql

Using cold hard 3rd party verifiable proof and math/science.

.......

Thats just the tip of the iceberg. The discovery of the Higgs Boson was the last ridiculously plausible place a spook could inconceivably hide (the origin of matter).

That hole is plugged.

If the supernatural could have any effect, then that effect can be measure.

.......

All doors for the supernatural are slammed shut.

The game was over in 1543 but its really over now.

They have their doubts, but they go through the motions anyway. They go to church, bow their head when it's time to pray, but if you ask them, they'll say "I have my doubts." Well doubt != belief, doubt == !belief, belief == no doubt. So if have doubt, you don't believe, therefore you're an atheist.

doubt is an antonym of belief

Pretty close, good enough. Basically, the mesolimbic pathway is involved in love just like it is involved in other addictions, both chemical and behavioral.

Now, will you accept this research as support for my position? Of course not. You'll ask, well what are they measuring, anyway? How do we know those chemicals lead to a feeling, or a decision, or a desire? So make your point, but don't expect a response. I'm tired of banging my head against this particular wall.

You're an agnostic atheist. Like most of us here. In fact, you sound like an ignostic. Check this link out :

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ignosticism

http://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/Ignosticism

> as religious belief declines worldwide, quality of life increases overall.

I suspect it's the other way around. As quality of life increases, religious belief declines.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-factors-influencing-the-steady-decline-in-religious-belief-globally

Which makes me wonder why the US is so very religious. Could it be the huge prison population? The corrupt political system? The unjust justice system? The badly functioning insurance-based health system? The eternal wars the US is involved in overseas? The blatant racism, barely hidden beneath Political Correctness?

Could it be that the US have a low quality of life for the 99%?

It seems you've left, but I will try to answer your post as civilly as possible. Hopefully you read it. :)

Anyway, I'd just like to address two points. The first is that the proposition isn't a comparative statement between atheism and religion. It's about the negative effects of one of them. The discussion seems to be an "us vs them" kind of thing, but this still doesn't get us away from the fact that religion does have negative consequences in certain situations. It's like saying that being punched is good because it's better than being hit with a stick. Religion doesn't just get absolved or any wrong-doing because its opposite is worse. Which leads me to my second point.

When looking at sheer numbers atheists do tend to be in trouble, but that's not exactly fair either. With advances in weaponry and increasing world populations, one must look also at percentages, and general trends of violence as opposed to simple totals. The truth is that the as the world has become more secularized, there is evidence that we have also become more peaceful and less violent as opposed to Biblical times. Steve Pinker makes a strong case in this talk. But also of note is we can also say that religion has indirectly killed many people as well. By the Churches stance on the everything from science to morality (our bodies are dirty and we shouldn't wash them), we can at least say that they are potentially and indirectly responsible for deaths that occurred during the middle ages with plagues. I'm not saying that they are directly responsible, but they were responsible insofar as it could have been preventable if not for the constraints that the Church imposed on society in general.

I'd say it was a Grimmer version of Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Seriously, you should read the original versions. They could have come straight out of the Old Testament. The current, modern versions have been sanitized and Disneyfied beyond recognition.

>How the Children Played at Slaughtering, for example, stays true to its title, seeing a group of children playing at being a butcher and a pig. It ends direly: a boy cuts the throat of his little brother, only to be stabbed in the heart by his enraged mother. Unfortunately, the stabbing meant she left her other child alone in the bath, where he drowned. Unable to be cheered up by the neighbours, she hangs herself; when her husband gets home, “he became so despondent that he died soon thereafter”.

>Rapunzel, meanwhile, gives herself away to her captor when – after having a “merry time” in the tower with her prince - she asks: “Tell me, Mother Gothel, why are my clothes becoming too tight? They don’t fit me any more.” And the stepmothers of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel were, originally, their mothers, Zipes believing that the Grimms made the change in later editions because they “held motherhood sacred”. So it is Snow White’s own mother who orders the huntsman to “stab her to death and bring me back her lungs and liver as proof of your deed. After that I’ll cook them with salt and eat them”, and Hansel and Gretel’s biological mother who abandons them in the forest.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/12/grimm-brothers-fairytales-horror-new-translation

This overview of Biological Altruism cites Elliott Sober.

Here is Sober's article ‘What is Evolutionary Altruism?’ (.pdf)

> What would be a good response to this?

Mohammad wasn't "revealed" that information. The writers of the Quran borrowed heavily from Greek writings that they were preserving during the collapse of the Roman Empire.

>Before you debate me, first read up or have read up on probability theory and its real life applications or prepare to look bad

-OP >This has nothing to do with repeat-ability

-OP >The fundamental ingredient of probability theory is an experiment that can be repeated, at least hypothetically, under essentially identical conditions and that may lead to different outcomes on different trials.

-[http://www.britannica.com/topic/probability-theory]

Even one such response gets posters ignored by me. But I won't pretend that those represent the predominant level of discourse in the sub. I've had a number of prolonged, detailed debates with gnostic atheists on their arguments, why they think the claim is warranted.

If you're just asking "is there a God?" many will probably take it as a merely rhetorical question. Many unfortunately do argue in that somewhat chickenshit way, just falling back on "just asking questions" rather than actually arguing for their beliefs in good faith. But I'd suggest that you just (through RES) just put abusive or juvenile posters on ignore.

Really? A copypasta of the foreword from I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist? Come on. Have you read that book? It’s garbage. Full of strawmen that they easily knock down. Faulty premises, and logic, that are so bad, that most critics think that Geisler and Turek knew they were wrong when writing them. Making them liars for Jesus.

This book, and its claims, have been thoroughly demolished.

What these guys are doing is literal preaching to the choir. Their intention is to convince believers that their belief is reasonable, not to convince non-believers. These two shysters are the at the peak of intellectual dishonesty.

As for Habermas.

> Habermas collected more than 1,400 of the most critical scholarly works on the Resurrection written from 1975 to 2003.

Irrelevant. Yes, many theologians, and Christian scholars, have written many things about the stories in the bible.

> In The Risen Jesus and Future Hope,1 Habermas reports that virtually all scholars from across the ideological spectrum—from ultra-liberals to Bible-thumping conservatives […]

Ultra-Liberal to Bible-thumping conservatives. All Christian or Jewish. I’ve not read too many secular-scholars who would agree with Habermas.

[…] agree that the following points concerning Jesus and Christianity are actual historical facts.

Complete and utter nonsense. I suggest you read both of these books critically for yourself.

>But why is gravity predictable?

Flippant answer: Because it's the law.

Actual answer: I don't really know. Again, I imagine if you asks someone who knows more about physics than I do, they could explain it better, but I imagine that gravity is something that just works, and we know it does because we've observed it working again and again, consistently. Apparently if you get way down to the quantum level it starts behaving in strange an unexpected ways, but on our scale it's predictable.

(When I say "our scale" I mean the "middle world", which has "nothing to do with Middle Earth".)

I know that to you, as a religious person, this probably sounds just like it does to me when people say things like "God works in mysterious ways", but I will explain why it isn't. See, we don't know everything about gravity, but we know a lot, and so far we've been able to explain everything we know without assuming that any of it is being orchestrated by a divine being. Such an assumption wouldn't add anything to our understanding of gravity, which makes it unnecessary – and we don't make unnecessary assumptions.

Now, if we ever discover some weird new thing about the universe, and it turns out that the simplest possible explanation for this weird new thing is that God must exist, then I will start calling myself a theist. Until then, it seems safe to assume that the only things that don't need anything else to make them works are the "laws of nature" like gravity and the laws of thermodynamics and so on. (I was going to include natural selection with these, but if you want to get really technical, evolution "works" because of the various selection pressures in the world, which have all sorts of causes... so I'll just stick with the most basic "laws of nature".)

that's true but you can definitely be a humanist without subscribing to human supremacy, anthropocentrism, etc

i bet you could be a humanist and an antinatalist too, if your humanism is constrained to existent humans only

holy shit, look at this creepy nonsense that i found while making sure i was remembering antinatalism right: https://www.slideshare.net/Bionatalism/description-of-childfree-no-cure-definition-of-voluntary-childlessness-explanation-of-childless-by-choice-teamnokids-principles-what-is-antinatalism-foundation-of-vhemt-basics-of-efilism-who-are-antinatalists

>There is little to no nutritional value in blood and tons of diseases you can catch from it!

• lets have a look at actual measured nutritional value in blood ( in this case lamb)

http://www.fitbit.com/foods/Lamb+Blood/7287

Nutritional Information, Diet Info and Calories in Lamb Blood

Serving Size 100 grams

Amount Per Serving Calories 75

Calories from Fat 3

Total Fat 0.4g

Saturated Fat 0.1g

Trans Fat 0g Cholesterol 0mg

Sodium 188mg

Potassium 0mg

Total Carbohydrate 0.1g

Dietary Fiber 0g

Sugars 0.1g

Protein 17.4g

Vitamin A 0% Vitamin C 0% Calcium 1% Iron 212% Magnesium 1% Phosphorus 2%

HINT, before making outright assertions - GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND!!!!!!

> It sounds as if you're a layman, so why should I consider your definition the correct one?

I speak english.

Oxford English Dictionary definition of atheism: disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Webster's dictionary definition of atheism: *a : a disbelief in the existence of deity or b : the doctrine that there is no deity *

Webster's gives two definitions (so an atheist is a person who fits at least one of those definitions), the primary one being the mere lack of belief one that s essentially the same as the only definition given by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Only this first (primary) definition given Webster's, which agrees with the one given by the OED, describes all atheists. The significant majority of atheists are agnostic atheists, so they have a lack of belief in any god or gods, but they do not assert that they know for sure that there is no god.

People who assert positively that there is no god are gnostic atheists. Such people are described by both the first and the second definition given by Webser's dictionary, by the definition given by the OED, IEP and SEP. The problem is that this group represents only a small percentage of atheists.

Therefor, the second defintion given by Webster's, and that given by IEP and SEP, whilst correctly describing some atheists, manages to be incorrect for the majority of atheists.

Since it describes all atheists the first definition of Webster's, and the definition given by the OED, is a far better defintion than the second definition given by Webster's and that of the IEP and the SEP.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/424706/Ockhams-razor

I think the phrase is attributed to him but originated with some other guy - but, is the rest true? lol...

Edited to add - my catholic family would have been so screwed... lol

>an absolute being (God) is non-contingent and contingency itself is contingent on something else, which would lead to an infinite regress of contingencies

A) Why can't the initial state of the universe be "non-contingent"? Why add a god? Doesn't this violate Occam's razor?

B) Why is the god not contingent? If you answer, "Because he isn't confined by the laws of physics", then my counter will be, "the laws of physics depend on time as a variable, so the universe at t=0 isn't confined by the laws of physics either.." so we're back to A

​

>This is a question that even the most sophisticated atheistic philosophers have yet to sufficiently answer

My philosophy is pretty shoddy. If you are genuinely looking for "the most sophisticated" atheist answers to these types of questions, I think Graham Oppy does a great job in Arguing About Gods, would highly recommend.

Occam’s razor: the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity", or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

It is far more likely that a human made a mistake in the decimal issue of the MetroCard, and the random chance of finding a dropped train ticket, than an omnipotent, omnipresent being did so.

I found several $20s on the floor while working at Blockbuster Video in 1996. It is easier to believe that someone dropped them than to believe that god wanted me to purchase White Zombie’s Astro-Creep: 2000 – Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head.

Yes. Scientism is fundamentally an epistemic, not a metaphysical claim. It states that no knowledge-claim is valid unless acquired by the scientific method.

Metaphysical naturalism, on the other hand, does not make any claims about how one ought to go about discovering facts about the natural world - it simply states that the natural world exists, and is the only thing that exists.

Metaphysical naturalism is a respectable philosophical position. Like all respectable philosophical positions, it has between five and twelve serious problems, and not everyone buys into its axioms.

Scientism, on the other hand, is philosophically unsupportable. Most seriously, it is self-defeating (the axioms of scientism cannot conceivably be the result of scientific inquiry, and therefore, no follower of scientism should accept scientism).

But it is also pragmatically difficult. Scientism cannot say, for example, that The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith contains anything more or less valuable than the same number of pages transcribing the ravings of a madman. The problem is that The Wealth of Nations, like the ravings of a madman, does not use the scientific method in any way. Smith simply contemplated his ideas about the world from an armchair and wrote down his thoughts: He conducted no experiments or empirical inquiry of any kind.

Of course, supporters of scientism can engage in definitional retreat, and say that any rational thought process is somehow proto-science; but any definition sufficiently flexible to admit Adam Smith will also admit Thomas Aquinas. Eventually it boils down to a sort of anti-fideism: Whatever it takes to exclude God, that's what science means.

>What is your opinion on the current progressive movement in thhe USA and it's effect on religion?

Not sure what that means.

>I feel that the more progressive we get, the more we move away from religion in it's entirety.

The more educated and logical we become the more we move away from religion as we know it.

>I think the imploding Republican party is a sign of the future.

The current Republican party is an aberration brought on by the extreme right. No way to know what the future holds but I hope for a strong third party to come out of this.

>I don't think the Republicans can survive from this Trump debacle and regain their family values line of thought.

What do you mean by family values line of thought?

>I feel the more rights LBGTQ people get, the further we get from religion.

Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!

>Do any of you pray to a God? Do any of you have a relationship with a God not of this world?

No and no.

>Someone who throws out the Trinity and any known religion here.

Yes. Trinity wasn't part of Church dogma until around 400 A.D. It was an attempt by the Church to clear up some inconsistent statements in the New Testament. That is, was Jesus God and where does the Holy Spirit fit into all this? The Church's answer was they're all the same thing but not really. And if you don't agree you're a heretic.

>Do you still attempt to have a relationship with the unknown?

How can one know about the unknown?

>Do you consider abortion murder?

Murder is a legal term. Since abortion is legal it is not murder.

> Have you ever tried to kill yourself?

No

>Is a world with no God too much to bear for the human being?

No; Ya wimp. :)

The P-Zombie problem is a big issue for the physicalist

Antonio Damasio and VS Ramachandran are who I mostly reference with this concept of emergence and recursion.

Recursion as Ramachandran here puts is the crux of the entire thing.

I think "Mind" in neuroscience will most likely go the way of Elan Vital did in medicine.

It'll probably become a strictly continental concept.

• Crime rates by county in the US 2010 vs.

• Population density in the US 2010 (Page 8).

The crime rates generally match the population density, though New England seems to have their shit together, and wth New Mexico?

you may also want to give a quick look to this "dossier of reason", which is a document compiling some very interesting points which we accept to be true or at the very least solid reasoning for disbelief. most, if not all atheists agree with most of the points it outlines.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f6ZewV_Ro5HLixACGE_wgJrnlFNVKVxTfuVALqARNEs/preview?hl=en_US&pli=1&sle=true

> My guess is the study wouldn't have found it does more good than harm if the alternative was just as effective.

That's not what it found. It says that the health benefit outweighs the risks but only for newborns, yet the benefits are not great enough to recommend universal circumcision.

> The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) found that the health benefits of <strong>newborn</strong> male circumcision outweigh the risks, but the benefits are not great enough to recommend universal <strong>newborn</strong> circumcision.

So given that the benefits are not great enough to recommend universal circumcision, the procedure is permanent while the health benefit is temporary, and there exists an alternative for female newborns; Given all of that information do you think that newborn male children should be circumcised. I'm asking for your opinion on this information.

> Please define knowledge.

It is a word used in your OED definitions given in the OP.

This sounds about right:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com: > True, justified belief; certain understanding, as opposed to opinion.

Are you going to ask me about what true, justified, belief, certain, and opinion are next?

> No, labels are very useful.

I never said labels are not useful, I just said they are overrated. They have limited usefulness. They don't always give a complete picture of what something is. So, arguing over labels also overrated. I have my definitions and you have yours. Isn't it enough that you understand my definitions are different than yours?

If you want I can adopt the OED definitions, just for your sake and the sake of this discussion. I am an agnostic. I don't think "[anything] is known... of the existence or nature of God." Does this tell you that I have heard many proofs of God and found them all lacking? Does this tell you that I tend to agree with the criticisms of theology and religion that the atheist community presents? Does it tell you that I find it highly unlikely that the claims of "God exist" are true? Or, does it tell you that I'm sitting on the fence; god's existence is equally likely with his non-existence; the claims of theists may be right, but so may be the claims of atheists; that I find both claims equally convincing and are just in an indesisive state of "I don't know". Because that is defiantly not me. So to distinguish myself from the "sitting on the fence" agnostic: I am an agnostic atheist.

> Exactly. The OED is describing how those words are generally used.

And these definitions of agnostic atheist are common, generally used, definitions in the atheist community. They may not be your definitions, or even the ones described in the OED, but they are still used in these ways by a large community of people.

edit: grammar

It means their karma has dropped significantly.

RES is short for Reddit Enhancement Suite and can only be used on desktop browsers capable of running add-ons/extensions. It's a helpful way to tag and track users, both friendly and unfriendly.

First thing that you need to do is define your "God." When you do that, we can properly present you with arguments. In the meantime, enjoy.

> Can atheists can recognise and appreciate the morals the religion has brought us humans. > >For example, the ten commandments, thou shalt not kill

To me that's like asking us to be grateful for stone-age scientists, without who we still wouldn't know that things fall down. Even basic achievements, like agreeing that killing is bad, should perhaps not be taken for granted. But still, one should aim higher than that.

> I like to think that we have advanced so much because we care for each other, something that religion taught us originally.

I think humans care for each other naturally, if they know each other well. Like in small groups humans used to live in, families, small villages, etc. Ideologies can bring people together that would otherwise be seen as strangers or barbarians. Of course they can also divide people. Examples for such ideologies are Religion, but Nationalism, Communism and Democracy too.

Caring for strangers is a cultural achievement. Fiction helps us to empathise with people from other nations/races/religions/etc.

Take a look at this Ted Talk by Steven Pinker especially at 15:30.

> If there was no religion, what would of been there to stop greedy, evil people from killing and taking everything as to make sure we would never advance as a species

Other people.

Seriously? I'd have quoted and cited the dictionary definition. This is the second time you've been dishonest with the definition in three days.

You are dishonest. Look, if you really don't know the difference between the dictionary and the thesaurus, try this out.

Definition of dishonest: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dishonest

Synonyms of dishonest: http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/dishonest?s=t

So which is your original OP? Not worthy of trust, or fraudulent, villainous, unscrupulous, sneaky, deceitful, underhanded, disreputable, or just fucking crooked?

> Cardinal John Henry Newman and others have written about 'the development of doctrine':

The modern term is "retcon".

> ...it's not clearly absurd for the Church to admit being previously wrong or ignorant of details or nuances.

Actually it is absurd for a church that regularly claims infallibility. It's also painfully ironic in light of Pius XII's pronouncement that discussion of evolution is only allowed "provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith" and his warning not to "rashly transgress this liberty of discussion."

We should expect the one true church of an omnipotent god to anticipate scientific discoveries (in specific and unambiguous ways, I hope I don't need to add) rather than having to backpedal to accommodate them, to the point of tossing Biblical scripture out the window. As Emile Zola wrote, "Has Science ever retreated? It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat." It's things like this that reinforce how right it was for me to abandon my (Catholic) religion.

Anyway, good luck with your ten-minutes-per-day project--it does you credit that you've undertaken it.

> The number of electrons in the solar system is an abstract entity;

No it isn't abstract ... it has a physical value. We don't know what it is, we could work out an approximation for it, but it definitely does have a value.

> the properties of electrons (charge, spin, etc) are abstract entities

This is perhaps more debatable, but even these qualities are quantifiable. The word quantify is expressly a "verb (used with object)". The very property "quantifiable" more or less infers "not abstract".

> Other disciplines don't address this issue.

Considering that it apparently hasn't worked it out yet, neither does philosophy.

Christianity in its earliest form was basically a result of the intermingling of Judaism with eastern Mediterranean paganism, principally Greek and Egyptian paganism.

Google Scholar results for &quot;christianity pagan origins&quot;

Remember that Judiasm itself (like all monotheism) also arose out of earlier polytheistic (i.e. pagan) traditions. Google Scholar results for &quot;judiasm polytheism&quot;

Warning: there's a bit of chaff in each of those results, but plenty of wheat.

>Yet you seek to do the same to them a they've done to you and expect better results.

>Didn't Einstein call that insanity?

Apparently not.

>"Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results."

>From Narcotics Anonymous circa 1980; in print in an 1981 "approval version" of the Narcotics Anonymous "Basic Text" – see that page for details. [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Narcotics_Anonymous]

>This and variations on it have also been variously attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Rita Mae Brown, and an old Chinese proverb, but this is the earliest known appearance and probable origin.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Insanity

tl;dr:

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet"

-- Benjamin Franklin

>Ok, I admit to my strawman of you thinking that the laws of logic exist. >>then using it to prove that something immaterial (God or whatever) doesn't exist

How about this gem (not even remotely close to the argument I put forward.

>Also, I'm not asking for your apology for consistent ad hominems

I've consistently attacked your appaling debate behaviour, your strawman arguments and explicit dishonesty, but that isn't ad hominem fallacy. I've never personally attacked you instead of your argument. If you want people to NOT attack your behaviour then you should display better behaviour. Saying 'you're lying' when you've very obviously lied is not an ad hom.

Here's the definition for your information.

>So back to the question/s;

I'm done wasting time answering questions when you do not return the courtesy. I have literally asked some questions three times now and you've ignored them every single time. Debate goes two ways and you don't get to ignore my arguments, strawman them, apologise for the strawman and then still refuse to address my arguments.

>You have to prove that perfectly and maximally functional system could possibly exist.

Christianity's vision of God is a maximally great being - a superlative of superlatives. To think that Christianity is the best system such a being could do - doesn't fit.

What you're arguing for with that perspective is an argument called "best of all possible worlds". It was popular for while back in the 17th-18th centuries - until Voltaire ripped it to pieces with his wonderful and hilarious novel &quot;Candide.&quot; Among other detractors.

I understand your sentiment, and it should be noted that there isn't an accepted standard.

Even Huxley, who is credited with coining the term "agnosticism", labeled himself as only an agnostic.

I posted this elsewhere on the thread, but you might be interested. The whole book is available in the link:

>Agnosticism is properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. It may be about religion, for it may doubt or deny that we can know spiritual truth; it may even be exclusively about religion, for it may doubt or deny the attainability of no other kind of truth than spiritual truth.

>It follows, even from what has just been said, that agnosticism is not atheism. Agnosticism is sometimes spoken as only another name for atheism, or as a kind of atheism. This should never be done. Agnosticism may be combined with atheism as it may with Christianity, but it is no more atheism, or a kind of atheism than it is Christianity, or a kind of Christianity.

>A Theist and a Christian may be agnostic; an atheist may not be agnostic. A man who believes that God can be known, but not that an external world can be known, is as much an agnostic as a man who believes that an external world can be known, but not that God can be known. An atheist may deny that there is a God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic, not agnostic; or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God Simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for His existence, and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid: and in this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic.

• Robert Flint - <em>Agnosticism</em> (1903)

This webpage is a simulation of evolution. It randomly creates cars and runs them on a track. Then it takes the best performing ones, and makes new ones with random modifications, and runs them. Then it does that again, and again.

Show him that, and ask him if the website creates cars "with intelligence".

> word salad

word salad

NOUN

a confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases, specifically (in psychiatry) as a form of speech indicative of advanced schizophrenia.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/word-salad

> all-encompassing, wholly transcendent reality

This is a string of words that you cannot describe except for it being this string of words. "What color is it" is asking for actual evidence that it exists besides naming it. This isn't Fantastica and your name is not Bastian. You can't create things by naming them.

What evidence exists that would describe the other reality? None? Then it becomes word salad: meaningless words.

> Disbelief is considering a statement false, not holding no position on a statement.

actually, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/disbelief

1.-inability or refusal to accept that something is true or real

2.-lack of faith

Oxford disagrees with you.

Also, it's not sure if "sons" is the etymological root of "sin" or they just share the same origin borrowed from the Hittites.

OK, last one and I'm out. I'm not sure whether the problem is that you don't understand that "prove false" and "disprove" are synonyms (see here) or whether you don't understand what was said.

>You aren't supposed to believe every claim, be it religions, UFO encounters, monsters under the bed or Bill Murray sightings, until you can prove it false.

Here are a bunch of silly claims. For any one of them, you need evidence. It is not incumbent on you to disprove the claims. It is not expected that you begin believing the claim and continue to believe until you can disprove the claim. That's what that's saying.

If you still disagree then, um, good on you I guess. You can keep disagreeing, and I'll go off elsewhere. Have fun.

I've been reading the link you posted somewhere else in the thread (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Integrated_information_theory)

And I happen to agree with most of it. Under predictions and explanations:

> The identity proposed by IIT implies that, ultimately, all qualitative features of every experience correspond to geometrical features of conceptual structures specified by a system of elements in a state.

Simply put when we reference humans: qualia are brain states.

And qualia of other conscious things would be states of their system.

I really only have mild criticisms concerning statements like:

> On the other hand, a “gerrymandered” aggregate of atoms (a haphazard collections of non-interacting elements) does not exist either intrinsically or extrinsically, as a system because it has no irreducible cause-effect power.

Bold text added by me. Rigidity like that is needed, as it would be trivial to evince such an aggregate of atoms.

There's a few more minor details like that, but overall I agree, qualia are emergent from system/brain states.

Now what?

Thank you for your concern. Of course, I was generalising. This is a three-sentence Reddit post, not a comprehensive dissertation on exactly how and why everyone who has ever become religious has done so.

> not all religious homes practice indoctrination

Yes they do, some arguably without meaning to. Taking young children to church, sending them to Sunday school, even telling them about God and religion as fact is indoctrination because it happens before the age when they doubt and question what they are told. Yes, some break out of this mould when they grow up, but most others don't, as evidenced by the vast numbers of children who grow up to believe the same religion as their parents.

Indoctrination: Teaching (someone) to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group and to not consider other ideas, opinions, and beliefs.

Indoctrination: Teaching someone to accept a set of beliefs without questioning them.

Edit: Format fail.

There is a pretty big elephant in this room. Which is "What is your definition of the word 'explanation'?".

I have not yet seen a definition of that word that I am happy with. The best one that I have found is here. Using this definition, it may be arguable whether or not Dawkins is correct, but only if you agree with Dawkins' or Craig's definition of "understanding". I am most dissatisfied with definitions like this.

It seems to be one of those words that everyone thinks, "Well, everyone knows what it means." But ISTM that people like Dawkins and Craig (especially Craig who is inordinately fond of the word "best") like to use that assumption to further their own agenda.

> Scientists use the argument too. For example, they know a missing link exists, but can't prove it yet.

Here. Have some futurama

They were direct competitors. The first Christian mission was aimed at Hellenic Jews in the Roman Empire. The Christian mission is what helped push early Judaism to form into rabbinic Judaism

> Attridge, H W 1992. Christianity from the destruction of Jerusalem to Constantine’s adoption of the new religion: 70-312 CE, in Shanks 1992:151-192

https://www.amazon.com/Eusebius-Christianity-Judaism-Gohei-Hata/dp/0814323618/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=9780814323618&amp;qid=1626914934&amp;sr=8-1#

I think 1000 Years... discusses colonisation of the Americas almost like European culture digesting America: introducing and spreading crops and animals, kind of Euroforming America like Elon Musk wants to Terraform Mars. Also... built environments like farms, churches, hospitals being a kind of geological membrane around cultural processes... I love the idea of generalising biological ideas to encompass cultural phenomena, I think that's my personal untestable faith position ;)

>I mean, I guess, if you can count instincts as beliefs, I guess?

Well, when those instincts act as assumptions that start logically entailing other propositions that you start believing, or form the basis upon which you believe other things, they start to look and function a lot like beliefs, so much so I can’t see how they aren’t beliefs.

>But belief in God isn't really an instinct. I was raised without religion, and I didn't start with a god figure.

Ah, well, consider that you are 1 out of billions of people :)

Many would claim they have an innate belief in God.

Indeed, Christianity teaches this, and Alvin Plantinga has written extensively across 3 volumes on this, but there’s a nice summary in his book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Christian-Belief-Alvin-Plantinga/dp/0802872042/ref=nodl_

It’s quite possible that you have this innate sense, but call it something else, a conscience perhaps.

Here is a short read for you:

[The Pope's Army: The Papacy in Diplomacy and War]https://www.amazon.com/Popes-Army-Papacy-Diplomacy-War/dp/1526714892)

>For much of its 2,000-year history, the Roman Catholic Church was a formidable political and military power, in contrast to its pacifist origins and its present concentration on spiritual matters. The period of political and military activism can be dated to roughly between 410, when Pope Innocent I vainly tried to avert the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, and about 1870, when Pope Pius IX was abandoned by his protectors, the French Army, and forced to submit to the new Italian state by surrendering any political power the Vatican had left.

>During those centuries, the popes employed every means at their disposal, including direct military action, to maintain their domains centred on Rome. Some pontiffs, such as Alexander VI, Julius II (15th century), plus the energetic Borgia popes later, built the Papal States into a power in their own right. In the following century and a half, Europe’s destructive religious wars almost always had a papal component, with the Lateran and later Vatican fielding their own armies. Climaxing the story are the little-known yet bitter late-nineteenth century battles between the papal volunteers from all over Europe and America, and the Italian nationalists who ultimately prevailed. John Carr narrates the story of Papal military clout with engaging verve.

Here is another historical tidbit for you...

<strong>Captain General of the Church</strong>

The list of Captains General of the Armies of the Church only covers a period of just a smidgen less than nine whole centuries (From 798 CE -1691 CE)

At what age is what a good idea? It's always a good idea to share creative educational experiences with your kids 😁 My son is 16 now; I tought him to solder PCBs when he was 8 with little kits like this and this.

As for psychadelics, I would say that waiting until he's in his 20's is best 👍

you are in luck - here is the perfect book for you: The Skeptics‘ Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

You can always download an ebook reader and then torrent .mobi files. I've done it, although now I have a kindle and buy books on Amazon.

Imagine deconverting your parents to be atheists. Think that's possible? Now what would it take for me to deconvert you? What evidence could I show you? How could your mind be changed?

Books that were monumental in making me a stronger and more confident atheist.

• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• God is Not Great by Hitchens
• The Belief Instinct
• Why Evolution is True (to have a firm grasp of why we don't need to think of god as a creator)
• Letter to a Christian Nation - and other Sam Harris books
• Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi (woman leaves islam)
• Thinking, Fast and Slow
• tons and tons more.

Honestly, the best thing to do in this case is to nod politely and agree, and subtly scope out the exits. These people are so far gone you're never going to reach them. They may answer your skepticism with an attempted exorcism of their own, and people have fucking died in exactly those circumstances. It's dumb bullshit that's obviously not real, but that doesn't mean they won't try anyway.

If you're confident that this won't happen (and I mean 100% confident), then the best response is to laugh in their faces at believing such nonsense. The True Believers won't be fazed at all, but you were never going to get any other reaction in any case. However, anyone quietly having their own doubts will be reassured that they're not alone.

You'll soon find, if you haven't already, that being right is not even close to being sufficient to win. You still have to pick your battles. Read The Art of War and apply it to your situation.

• Thinking, Fast and Slow - Kahneman

• The Belief Instinct

• The God Delusion - Dawkins

• Why Evolution is True - Coyne

• Caesar's Messiah - Fun Conspiracy theory

• god is not great - Hitchens

• A manual to create atheists - Boghossian

• http://www.richardcarrier.info/BooksbyRichardCarrier.html#OHJ

> Reality is most responsive to your emotionally activated ideas, and not purely intellectual thoughts.

You're mistaking the map for the territory. Emotions can color perception, but can never dictate what's real. I can be feeling depressed and take somebody's innocent comment as a snide one addressed to me, but they didn't intend for that. This has happened quite a lot. Depression can do that, and a year of therapy has helped disavow me of my warped perceptions of reality, because my brain is filtering reality in a way that distorts the facts. Speaking with a psychiatrist for so long is how I know what you're saying is just plain wrong.

> I agree with you... what I am saying is completely crazy, from our commonly accepted understanding of how reality is created. Or at least, from the perspective of one reality. Is there another reality where all of humanity just knows this idea to be a matter-of-fact?

> You tell me.

How about you tell me?

Why don't you prove that these realities exist instead of speculating? As far as I'm aware, there is one reality, and it's not dictated by anyone's feelings or intuitions, because majority of people fall prey to mistaking how reality works. Books like "Predictably Irrational" and "You Are Not So Smart" showcase just how far off the mark we tend to get when it comes to our perception of actual facts.

Before my parents became devout (my mother is now a protestant pastor) they taught me to value my intellect. They taught me to question and to learn, and to always seek truth. They also taught me to always treat others with respect because there are a lot of ideas out there different from our own that are worthy of consideration.

Then my mom became religious and started dragging me to church. All of a sudden, our values seemed to change.

Questioning was still good, but only as long as you stopped whenever religion started looking implausible. Now "faith" the acceptance of unjustifiable beliefs was more virtuous than intellectual curiosity.

I had to believe in this divine being who supposedly loved me but got angry with me when I controlled my actions but not my thoughts and feelings.

Now, my parents are very left-wing Christians, and I've seen a lot of different kinds of Christianity, and I can tell you no matter what Christians say, all Christian institutions preach the following:

Willful ignorance is more virtuous than intellectual curiosity and faith is more virtuous than critical thinking.

The Bible is the highest moral guide. Really, when was the last time you went into a church and they started reading from the Nicomachean Ethics, or the Republic, or On Liberty. Atheism is not inherently the rejection of the Bible, it is the belief that the Bible is not special, it is not above criticism, and has to be judged against other human systems of belief.

Which part? That philosophers rely on intuition? It's not like it's a secret they're trying to hide, they'll openly admit that they are. Have any discussion with a moral realist and the argument for it is ultimately going to rest on some strong intuitions the person has

Look, there's even a book about it! https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746

> We badly want certain ideas to be true so we create stories to confirm those wishes.

This is certainly one hypothesis for the evidence, but how does one discern whether it is a good hypothesis? For example, if a given holy text were to tell us a bunch of things we desperately do not want to believe†, would that falsify your hypothesis?

&nbsp; † My favorite comes from a guy who survived the Nazis while being on an "enemy of the people" list:

> What the world really wants is flattery, and it does not matter how much of it is a lie; but the world at the same time also wants the right to disguise, so that the fact of being lied to can easily be ignored. As I enjoy behind affirmed in my whims and praised for my foibles, I also expect credibility to make it easy for me to believe, in good conscience or at least without a bad conscience, that everything I hear, read, absorb, and watch is indeed true, important, worthwhile, and authentic! (Abuse of Language ~~ Abuse of Power, 26)

In a sense it's commonplace, like the comic Unpleasant Truths vs. Comforting Lies. On the other hand, I don't actually see us taking it seriously, as if we dismiss it via weakly acknowledging it and then moving on.

I'm a former evangelical and Bible college graduate.

I agree with you that human scientific knowledge in the 21st century doesn't have all of the answers. For example, it seems unlikely that we would understand the origin of all matter an energy in the universe anytime soon. However, the religious explanation ("God did it!") is not satisfying at all, because it raises the next logical question of "Who made God?" And if God is allowed a special exception in not needing a creator, then why can't matter and energy have that special exception? "God" becomes an unnecessary middle man.

Second, I would ask, "How do we know anything about this god?" Human scriptures are very flawed; they all make claims that are easily disproven by scientific, historical, or academic means. And once we've disproven a claim of the Bible (for example), to shift to, "Well then, I guess it's just a metaphor!" is disingenuous in the extreme. It's presuming the Bible is the standard for truth, and must be proven right, and can never be wrong.

Really, you need to do a deeper dive on the Bible before placing your faith in it. Bart Ehrman is a popular New Testament scholar who's written many books deconstructing the Bible that present the mainstream view in academic circles; you might pick up one or two of his books. The more you understand the flaws of any holy book, the more you see the man-made nature of it.

One other point... Jesus didn't invent "the Golden Rule". He might be most famous in Western culture for saying it, but versions of it in other cultures pre-dated him by 2000 years. And with good reason; it's a simple, common sense philosophical position, it doesn't take a god to have thought it up.

> Which in turn comes from the greek word "theos" with the greek prefix "a" (meaning "not that") on it.

Which means it means without god, not without theism. Thanks for proving my point.

> It's a+the+ism.

That does absolutely nothing to prove your point, the argument is all about which parts of the word affect the others. As you will see here suffixes are attached to pre-existing words. The pre-existing word is atheos (without god). Thus, by the magic of linguistics, we have without god -ism. Also, there is NO definition of atheism that defines it as being without theism. It has always been either rejection of belief in gods or lack of belief in gods. No mention of theism anywhere. This discussion is a particularly good demonstration of the fact that you are completely unable to admit when you are wrong.

Relevant: I'm Glad My Mom Died.

Haha. Nothing he said actually challenges OP, so his comments don't bother me at all. It is all irrelevant gobbledygook.

However, I'm interested in people who primarily use questions to debate. This tactic of using questions is recommended by religious apologists like Greg Koukl and Frank Turek. Basically the idea is to reverse the burden of proof and put the pressure on your opponent while you just sit down and relax. The opponent has to do all the hard work while you just keep shooting questions.

Apparently that's exactly what this individual is attempting to do here.

High school biology books are boring and suck. Read this sweet comic book:Evolution: a history of life on Earth by Hosler and Cannon

You're welcome, and i thank you for your own politeness.

I disagree with axioms being whatever you want, but i won't continue to try to disillusion you.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/axiom

Best of luck to your debating!