Atheism & Intelligence

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by garbonzo, May 21, 2013.

  1. Username Registered Senior Member

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    The world may not be flat, but the very ground or 'earth' that everyone stands on is.
    The Romans may have thought that, even if a diet of grain was satisfactory, but many others thought that too. It was a way for them to preserve their harvest, make beer, and meals.
    I can't speak for Europeans, but the sun is indeed the center of our solar system. Maybe they didn't know the difference between the two? Being our solar systems, the galaxy, and the universe.
    Americans have been debating the rights of African ancestry or slaves since America was created. So they were in the equation since or long before the American constitution was created. Every man is created equal, etc. etc.

    On earth as it is in heaven. Which is how its stated in the bible. Although many people who claim to be religious don't follow that.

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  3. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Religious people pretend to know the unknowable, arguing from a matrix of fallacy. Agnostics know that to claim to know what is unknowable renders further inquiry moot, and will candidly admit they do not know what is unknowable, but do not engage the religious person's matrix of fallacy or religious pretense, since they also know it is logically sufficient to merely argue that the premise is moot. Atheists know what the agnostics know and do not know, and what the religious people do not know but pretend to know, and praise agnostics for their candidness while disparaging religion for pretending to know the unknowable. Atheists therefore know and agree that further agnostic argument against religion is moot, and that agnosticism is valid this regard, but atheists take the liberty to forego this and advance arguments one step further. Atheists know that the religious person's claim that God exists is invalid, and will candidly say so, since atheists know that, aside from being moot, the arguments used by religion to support its claims are based on a matrix of fallacy which religious people rely on to perpetuate the pretense that they know the unknowable.
     
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  5. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    Why impossible?
     
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  7. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Atheists get all the chicks.
     
  8. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Even atheist hetero femmes would tend to agree, just for the status appeal that goes with that.
     
  9. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I was almost starting to take this thread seriously.
    But you go and ruin that.
    Thanks.

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  10. IncogNegro Banned Banned

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    Because its impossible to finish this sentence without the thought.

    There is no .... Blank.

    God hates the word no.

    You can have thoughts that don't directly include god and we call that objectivity.
     
  11. AlexG Like nailing Jello to a tree Valued Senior Member

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    There is no Big Magician in The Sky.
     
  12. arauca Banned Banned

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    I can also say not all believers in God have to be religious , A believer believe in a superior entity which he or she can not see. A believer can have an experience were you cannot measure with an instrument , and because the non believer can not have such experience he can exclude or undermine the experience of the believer. Science have spent billions of dollars chasing the Higgs particle and in reality many scientist are not very sure if the last round at CERN certifies that such particle exist . At the same time science is dealing with the dark matter , which does not know what it is or in reality if there is such thing.In other words if an individual have not experience what the other individual had experienced , he can not say what the other fellow experienced is not true.
     
  13. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    That's just changing the definition. It's not the common definition normally used to mean belief in God.

    Presumably that means God, a god or gods, spirit, being, divinity, deity or pantheon, which all fit into the ordinary meaning of the word 'religion'.

    By "experience" I assume you mean something like seeing the Virgin Mary, which, except for the obvious scams, is best explained as hallucination. If a person is having a hallucination, the intervention by another person may save the ill person from danger or death. It's not bad that people want to help others who are hallucinating, is it?

    Similarly, when people roam the world spreading fantastic stories that might induce hallucinations in vulnerable victims, then there's a moral responsibility to intervene and rescue the victim. We see this in the eruption of cults, and cases where the authorities have sometimes resorted to use of deadly force in an effort to save the victims.

    To be sure, it's either a hallucination or it's not. It's either an optical illusion or not. It's either real or not. It's not clear how measurement might come into this, since before you even go there you have to decide whether the laws of nature are subject to repeal or not. I would add to the list of religions commonly agreed upon "anything which requires repeal of the laws of nature". It would fail on its face to generate a sincere test of authenticity, just as if I told you I could teleport to Mars and bring you a souvenir rock, or that I have a talking fish, or that I read minds. However, if I actually believe such things, I am suffering from a serious health problem, so please call an ambulance. Believing the tenets of religion are equivalent to mental illness in this regard, with the exception that the believer thinks such things happened to someone else. When he begins to believe that he is experiencing them himself, that's where we draw the line between religion and mental illness. But it's that proximity to and nurturing of mental illness that can make religion so offensive to atheists and agnostics.

    Science is always dealing with unknowns. We expect new unknowns to surface even as things previously unknown begin to crystallize. Without this, it wouldn't be science. It would be something like making duplicates on a copy machine. I wouldn't place too much stock in research on Higgs or dark matter, as a barometer about the health of science, anymore than I would assume that ongoing road construction will fail to produce a road. I don't worry about the cost of CERN, either. The scope of such a project is so enormous that we expect the costs to be huge. Plus, it created wealth and opportunity for scientists and all kinds of businesses to utilize their capabilities for peaceful purposes. I'm glad for them.

    It depends on what the other person is claiming. If I told you I can stop the Sun from rising in the morning, are you going to concede that what I'm saying might be true simply because you don't know the details of my personal experiences? The issues in science vs religions are all as simple as that.

    By the way, here are some more thoughts extending my earlier post. They're my own words, but I'm putting them in italics to separate them from the immediate dialog.

    Religious people, upon learning that their pretense has been discovered, and either possessing the logical faculties to know that the arguments of agnosticism and atheism are valid, but pretending not to possess such faculties, or else actually not in possession of their faculties, pretend to know that agnosticism and atheism are invalid, arguing from the same matrix of fallacy from which they allege that all other religions but their own are invalid. Religious people do not attempt to learn what agnostics and atheists know, that is, they do not examine the religious matrix of fallacy from the axioms of logic, arguing instead out of ignorance about what atheists know, and what agnostics may know but do not engage. Religious people avoid learning atheism and agnosticism since to do so would undermine their reliance on the matrix of fallacy that props up the religious pretense. They may even claim that atheism and agnosticism are akin to religion, or simply ignore their lack of knowledge about the foundations of atheism and agnosticism, using the same pretense of knowing what they do not know. For example, they may pretend to know that learning the foundations of atheism and agnosticism is irrelevant to validating their religion, which is a fallacious claim since they are unfamiliar with the actual logic involved and what it may be capable of validating or invalidating.
     
  14. IncogNegro Banned Banned

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    There isn't, but we could consider the sky a huge piece of God.
     
  15. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    so, atheists know what the agnostics don't know and what the religious don't know, and disparage the religious for their belief.
    is that right?
    well homie your brain just fell out because the placebo effect is a pretty strong indicator that god can actually exist for those that truly believe.
     
  16. AlexG Like nailing Jello to a tree Valued Senior Member

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    The definitions of god seem to be very flexible, assuming whatever meaning those arguing for religion wish to use at the moment.
     
  17. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Atheists know that agnostics don't know if God exists.

    . . . but pretend to know.

    No, for pretending to know the unknowable.

    I'll take that as a plus for the moment.

    A state of mind is different than a state of God.

    Additionally:

    When religious people engage atheists and agnostics over the claim that God exists, they rely on the faulty logic that God exists until atheism and agnosticism can prove that God does not exist, or, more commonly, they forego this, assuming the question to be moot since they assume their world view governs the universe and no other facts or evidence can alter this, in which case they tend to disparage agnosticism and atheism for failing to adhere to their world view without validating atheism and agnosticism first, which the religious people argue requires atheists and agnostics to disprove God's existence. Agnostics do not engage this, from their original stance that the premise of religion is moot, but religious people do not know the logic that shows their premise to be moot, and claim that agnosticism is invalidated by its candid admission of not knowing the unknowable. When religious people attack agnosticism, agnostics may tend to cite the logical validity of ending further inquiry into a moot claim, but religious people, either possessing the logical faculties to know that such a conclusion is valid, but pretending not to possess such faculties, or else actually not in possession of their faculties, pretend to know that such a conclusion is invalid, falling back to a position that defends the matrix of fallacy that props up religious pretense.
     
  18. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    God is blue?
     
  19. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    That's why you should always wear a hat.

    That's pretty much it: If you believe it works, it works - even if it didn't actually do anything. God would have the same effect whether He existed or not.
     
  20. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    but yet you are pretending to know that god doesn't exist.
    you can't rely on reason and logic, although both make sense neither of them is evidence.
    atheists are no different than creationists, both assert that which is unknown.
     
  21. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Only strong atheists assert the nonexistence of God. Most atheists are Agnostic atheists - they are agnostic in the knowledge of God's existence and atheistic in the belief or faith in him. This is usually expressed as "I dont know if or not God exists but as far as belief/faith goes, I dont have any." And atheism is the null hypothesis to religious theism and as such is not assertive [unless its strong atheism, where its an independent assertive claim] and therefore is accepted by default until the theists can present conclusive evidence for God's existence. I dont get why you would have a problem with this methology of belief acquisition, since any sensible person does the same for unicorn and fairies - and God is similar in principle in that its a concept of an unproven being that is supernatural and poorly substantiated.
     
  22. Username Registered Senior Member

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    Oh really now?!@#

    What makes you think that?
     
  23. Username Registered Senior Member

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    Uh, no its not. I am non-religious and I can tell you right now atheism isn't a null position. It is anti-theism or against anything theism.
    No God really isn't the same in principle, that is just your belief of god even if you claim to be atheist, because that is how you view it. You would be better off telling a doctor they can't cure aids or cancer because it hasn't been proven that it can be.
     

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