Atheism isn't a belief?

You may well have a substantiated point in there somewhere Dominionseraph ...but at the end of the day, I like to enjoy the discussions I have with folk and I'm not really enjoying your style. No offence, just a mismatch, so with all due respect...I'll take my leave of this discussion with youCheersIan

No probs on delay CP...haven't forgotten that you is well busy. I posed a couple of questions for which science is unlikely to provide concrete answers to, to you, in your life time: Who are YOU? why are YOU here? where are YOU going? Evolution says you are an jumped-up ape, have no real meaning, other than that which may confer advantage for your species. And when you die your worm food.Me, I'm inclined to think more highly of youAm just popping in here for a quick look see. Can't stay. Will come back soon on reasons for God. Ciao

I've never understood this kind of thinking.Go outside with a yardstick. Mark off a square on somebody's lawn, or out in some scrubland somewhere - anywhere handy that isn't pavement - one meter by one meter. Imagine the volume formed if you go a meter up into the air and a half-meter down into the soil from that square.Now imagine everything that's in that cube-and-a-half. Probably about 80 lbs of soil, 1 m3 of air, and tens of thousands of individual living things. You could spend a lifetime studying the properties of what you have in that volume. Geology, biology, physics - it's a tiny universe of things to be discovered that you've marked out with your yardstick.

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Now imagine how many such volumes exist on this one planet alone, and that's just the land surface, one third of the surface of the Earth. Try to imagine how many one-meter cubes you could stack to fill up the oceans and the seas, if you can.

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Every cube a universe of discovery. A lifetime of study. And that's not enough for you? You find that so ordinary, so pedestrian, so insignificant that you have to make up more stuff to wonder about? You have to waste your time with stories about a magic skyman that wouldn't convince a child?

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The arrogance of the believer is sometimes truly astounding. Flabbergasting in it's all-too-human contradiction. It'd be funny if people didn't take it all so seriously. It'd be funny if telling you this wasn't something that would get me killed in the sort of society where it's your views that inform the legal system and not mine.

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This message has been edited by crashfrog, 08-20-2005 07:20 PM

Hello, Ian. Sorry if this reply isn't quite what you want.Yes, you posed those questions, but science is not a suitable discipline to answer those questions; nor cannot it possible answer those questions. The answer to those questions have to come from outside of science. On the other hand, if whatever answer I come up with for those questions contradict basic facts uncovered by science, then I had better be prepared for disappointment. Science cannot supply answers to questions such as those, although it can constrain the possible answers.-

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Evolution says you are an jumped-up ape, have no real meaning, other than that which may confer advantage for your species. And when you die your worm food.

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Well, except for the "jumped-up ape" part, this is false. Science cannot have any say in what is "real meaning". That is up to the individual. As far as when you die, all science can do is study the material aspects of death -- "meaning" or even "soul" and "afterlife" cannot be studied by science, so science can have nothing to say about it.As an atheist, I feel that I have plenty of meaning in my life. And although I do believe that in the end all I will be is "worm food", I'm not bothered by it too much.I also think somewhat more highly of my fellow humans (and some non-human creatures) than you seem to give me credit for.

CAUTION: UNAPOLOGETIC OFF TOPIC POST!Chiroptera:

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And although I do believe that in the end all I will be is "worm food", I'm not bothered by it too much.

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Approaching the mid-point of my sixth decade, I find that arranging to be good honest worm food is hard: embalming laws, internment regulations, etc.Having spent a long time in a burn ward long ago, I just don't fancy cremation.All I want is a nice pine box and no embalming--is that so much to ask?"When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cemetery.
Out in the garden would be much better--
I could be pushin' up home grown tomatoes."I would be quite content to return my dust to the ground.

Yeah, but the gains are great. Don't feel like shaving today? Then don't. Let the young wippersnappers stare.And to keep it on topic, why the hell does anyone care about someelse's beliefs as long as they don't have anything to do with others?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That remains a mystery to me, jar. I can understand relgious faith, although I don't share it, because I am regularly awed by the majestic wonder of this world.But why anyone feels that someone else's beliefs threaten their own is an enigma I don't expect to ever understand.

Green or Natural Burials are on the upswing in the past 10 years.Unfortunately you and I are in states that aren't jumping on the bandwagon.Link to States with Green BurialsOf course you could go Jewish. Good Luck

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"The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which lasts forever." --Anatole France

And to keep it on topic, why the hell does anyone care about someelse's beliefs as long as they don't have anything to do with others?People care about someonelse's beliefs when they are contridictery of thier own, because it scares them to think that they might possibly be wrong. Personally I have been an atheist for the better part of my life, not just because I dont believe in God, but more importantly the question that I always come back to is "if there is a God, why do bad things happen to good people?" in otherwords if God is suppose to be so great and loving, then why does he let people suffer? Now you can tell me that God gave us all free will and that we make our own decisions and God can't always step in, becuase if there was no evil you wouldn't know good. But truthfully Ithink that is a bunch of BS.

This is a little of topic Omnivorous but...Sir Issac Newton, in his greatest work 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica', wrote to persuade people "for the belief of a deity": "Without all doubt this world...could arise from nothing but the perfectly free will of God" (page 60-61)Carolus Linnaeus "one is completely stunned by the incredible resourcefulness of the Creator". He stated that he saw everywhere "an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection" (cites by Graves; scientists of faith p153)William Herschel "The undevout astronomer must be mad" (Cited by Morris men of Science - Men of God p.30Samuel Morse the inventor of the electric telegraph testified to his faith by choosing words taken directly from the Bible "What hath God wrought"James Joule "It is evident that an aquaintance with the natural laws means no less that an aquaintenceship with the mind of God expressed therein" (cited by Graves 'Scientists of faith. 153)..none sound like the terrified pleas of men with the flames of the inquisition licking at their feet.In 1916 a survey by the Americam acedemic Jame Leuba revealed that 40% of scientists interviewed said they believed in God (Daily Telegraph 3 April 1997). When Nature ran a similar poll in 1997 the results were almost identical (Nature vol 386 pp 435-6)Break out the bar-b-que. Fillet of believing paeleantologist, not-so-rare.

Presumably you were at the '0' position at some point in your life. Did what happen next sound at all like this? A coach tour bus called 'Science' came along and you, with a interest in such things, hopped on. The bus stops off at many interesting places but there is something unusual about it. It does not have a final destination. It is a bus which runs by a formula which says it will get to a destination - but has no way to show that it can. It's a runner in a race which, though seemingly leading the pack never makes it through the finishing tape. It will never answer "Who am I? why am I here? where am I going? Never according to the objective standards it sets for itself.And the closer it attempts to get to the virtual destination, the less objective and scientific becomes the evidence. Where did the universe come from - speculative theory, no objective evidence, no demonstrable experiements, no concrete observations to offer. Life on earth the same: Speculative theory, no experiment showing life from non-life, no observations to show it can happen.Science is a fantastic enterprise that is for sure. But it is a limited one. It can only talk about what is objectively explainable. When it ventures into destinational issues for example it's basis is philosophy, not objective. Modern science has been around nearly 400 years. Not one scientist who has lived and died has every gotten an objective answer from science to the BIGGEST questions. You say there is no reason to suspect that Science won't arrive at these answers. I've got 400 years of objective failure to do this very thing. On what basis do you hold your view?One day, the seat you are sitting in the bus called Science is going to become an ejector seat. You will die. The bus will continue on. You will land either as worm food - never knowing the destination. Or you will not and will arrive somewhere and realise that there was a non-natural destination and for which you haven't packed any bags.Science limits itself to investigating the natural world. It's basis is a step by step upwards journey to total knowledge about the natural world. But, like I said, destinational issues are seemingly beyond it's remit.When it comes to looking in the other direction, there is a flaw in the thinking which tries to compare the other direction with the science methodology. Objective according to Science is a limit placed there by Science itself. It cannot address any issue which falls outside that limit but cannot say why this limit is an appropriate one to explain everything. There is the assumption too that it's apples vs apples...when it is obvious that if God then it's apples vs. pears. Could it be that with God the destination must be arrived at first and only then can the journey of discovery be truly set off onIn my experience, that's precisely the way it is.This message has been edited by iano, 22-Aug-2005 11:01 AM

Then I'll throw you a bone: Not at all. With the religious, there's nothing wrong with the brain's functioning -- it's just the mind is the host to a symbiotic organism. The person gains certainty/comfort on many levels; and the meme has a place to live and an avenue for reproduction and mutation.
Now, something like EI -- while it's a belief/explanation that's full of damning holes -- would simply be the result of the bias induced by the fixation of the religious meme. Religious memes are resistant to being questioned, so everything else is made to fall in line with them. (We all require that our belief structures be internally consistent, so there's nothing wrong with the mind's functioning here.) However, some memes have mutated so that they say nothing about the physical, or have become so general that they can simply be put into the gaps. For these, no tortured rationalizations are necessary to find explantions consistent with the religious belief, so finding none is unsurprising.

Science cannot answer those question for sure. Yet, two massive questions exist for which science has not come close to answering. Cause of the universe or how to explain it as causeless - in a scientific objective way, and the origin of life - explained in an objective, not philosophical waySay someone was to pose a theory about believers in God who claimed an objective proof of Gods existance. They would look around and using scienctific method would see lots of people without scientifically objective proof for it. The theorist poses 'delusion' as the mechanism whereby belief occurs. This would fit the theory so the theory stands. Then they do some pshycological tests and find the people don't show a general tendency towards delusion but they find that many are uneducated to high levels. So the modify the theory to include gullibility and the theory stands. Then they see that many folk are highly intelligent, educated and critical thinkers but they find that they came from believing homes and so include indoctrination in the theory.The theory is now a strong one. Lots of evidence, nothing objective to counter it. But it's still a only a theory that relies at it's base on one narrow technique: objectivity as arrived at and defined by scientific method.It hasn't constrained the possible answers. It has by it's nature only considered answers within the narrow, self-defined borders it operates in and constrained answers within those borders.Rather than rely on a, (negative) scientific process of elimination to arrive at answers to the questions (a process which shows no ability to arrive at said answers) the rational thing to do is to decide to make steps to get a positive answer to the question using appropriate investigative tools as opposed to inappropriate onesIs it not?

The legal system of your country is informed by the idea that there are objective values for right and wrong. If I was to arrive up in court on burgalary charges and said that as a product of evolution I was responding to uncontrolled mutational changes that made me the way I am and was following survival of the fittest in propagating the species by using my mutational advantage to obtain scarce resources from those unable (evolutionarily) to stop me I don't think I'd get very far.The Judge would probably point to one of your countries foundational mottos: "In God we trust. Thus I'll determine that the defendant is to be subjected to a slightly modification of the "eye for an eye" principal. 5 year hard labour! Take the defendant away"

I'm me. If you're referring to a purpose, that presupposes a goal, so presupposes a goal-maker. Life's a journey, not a destination. We are who we are, regardless of the circumstances surrounding our existence.