Do theists not comprehend the concept of disbelief in God? (spiritual, creationism)
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And the thing is not a single atheist or agnostic here would deny you the right to have your beliefs and your opinion on your experiences .
It is some theists here that get butt hurt and angry that their personal experiences aren't automatically and without reservation accepted as solid evidence of God , and try to turn simple disagreement and non acceptance of subjective experience as evidence into persecution , combativeness , and intolerance.
Yes, I think that God should become unimportant enough in people's lives that they no longer feel the need or impulse to spread the word about their beliefs to outsiders or tell others what they need to do to be "saved."
If that happens in America, then it would be a major accomplishment.
Yes, I think that God should become unimportant enough in people's lives that they no longer feel the need or impulse to spread the word about their beliefs to outsiders or tell others what they need to do to be "saved."
If that happens in America, then it would be a major accomplishment.
That's it for me, removing religion or banning it is unrealistic, It actually counters observation, we are social animals. My hope is religion becoming as powerful as the local youth soccer club.
I don't do the old "they say this so I am doing that". Limits are good, and we need the police for a reason. Despite what the friends and family of criminals say.
And the thing is not a single atheist or agnostic here would deny you the right to have your beliefs and your opinion on your experiences .
It is some theists here that get butt hurt and angry that their personal experiences aren't automatically and without reservation accepted as solid evidence of God , and try to turn simple disagreement and non acceptance of subjective experience as evidence into persecution , combativeness , and intolerance .
And yet it is the same people who are in effect saying "you MUST believe my experience " who want to claim those that simply disagree with them are the intolerant ones . The theistic persecution complex isn't found solely within the ranks of the Bible literalists .
Revisit the OP. The subject is the fact that some theists can't stand the fact that there are those who choose not to accept their proclamations on God, inspired by the very words of some theists here . We see this still in these later posts .
True dat, but, these threads always take a nasty turn... blame is probably equal in 'who starts' it but, really... once it does, why not make a light hearted comment to get it back to the original intention vs. the nanny nanny boo boo.
Then again, my skin is thick as rhino's, and just as ugly, lol.
Since you have not been able to show any belief in gods by infants or children without proper indoctrination, what exactly would there be to concede ? You cannot disprove what has been shown , so you launched into your embarrassing little LOL rant as a substitute .
And you have not been able to explain why I should show any such thing.
My claim is that infants have NO position on these issues not an atheist position and not a theist position.
How in world would this require showing what you demand. It doesn't. The idea is irrational and ludicrous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wallflash
I'm , along with trans and others, am dealing in facts here .
You have stated no evidence or facts whatsoever. You have only declared your irrational definition and demanded that it be accepted because you say so.
If you add infants to the number of atheists then the average education of atheists drops below that of any other group. This is a fact which I have stated and you cannot refute.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wallflash
People are atheist, or without-god-belief , from birth, until they are taught about gods and accept this teaching.
People are without any position on whether there is a god or gods until they hear people talk about the idea and the question about whether they exist. Then they consider what their position is.
Sure I can define creationists as those without a belief in evolution and thus swell their numbers to an overwhelming majority.
Sure I can define pro-life as those without a belief that abortion is moral and thus swell their numbers to an overwhelming majority.
These are all identical examples of empty dishonest rhetoric the SAME as you are doing. It is not only dishonest but lame.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wallflash
If and when you feel capable of addressing THAT, please feel free to do so. You have done nothing of substance to this point in the discussion on this subject .
If an when you feel capable of discussing how averages are calculated with me, please feel free to do so.
If an when you feel capable of discussing quantum field theory with me, please feel free to do so.
If an when you feel capable of discussing general relativity with me, please feel free to do so.
But if you want to discuss your grandmother's cat or some nonsense about people having god beliefs at infancy then I suggest you find someone sharing your interest or willing to pander to your desire to parrot this beloved canned rhetoric.
By the way... I was not taught any kind of theism growing up. My father was a blacklisted Maoist communist and an indifferent agnostic while my mother wasn't interested and remains uninterested in religion of any kind. I first encountered the question of God's existence in sixth grade when fellow school children asked me if I believed. My response was I thought that the real question was what is God not whether he existed. In college I compared different religion trying to determine what this word "God" could possibly be referring to. Do people come to believe in God or gods when they were not raised to? Anybody with an honest rational mind would know the answer is obviously yes. Only someone forcing reality into some inflexible ideology would think otherwise.
Last edited by mitchellmckain; 07-19-2016 at 01:13 PM..
children are naturally in contact with the Divine from the time they are born, because that is their natural state: open and loving and freely interacting with the Divine.
No, that is not correct.
People project their beliefs on the world as part of the perceptive process. This is a scientific fact established in psychology studies. However, with education people can learn to see beyond these limitations and even put themselves in the perspectives of other belief frameworks in order to see things differently.
So yes, those trapped within a worldview, whether theistic or atheistic, will tend to project their beliefs on infants as part of the general confirmation bias to which they are prone unable to see the world an an objective manner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
you are thinking of religion as "indoctrination from family or institutions."
There is no doubt that there is a great deal of "indoctrination from family or institutions" going on and as has been observed the majority of people are not really equipped to question what they are told. It serves some peoples interest to ignore a great deal of reality and only pay attention to the simplest generalizations. They tend to only acknowledge what bolsters their ego and sense of self worth. This results in a parochial ignorance and an intolerance of observations about the real complexity of the world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
for children it is a "direct experience of the Divine" which is as natural to them as breathing and laughing and seeing and hearing.
The problem is that the experience of the infant is without any linguistic association and thus when you put words to these things you are projecting your own worldview onto those experiences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
atheists are so shut down and shut off from direct experience of the Divine, that they refuse to accept or acknowledge that others including children and infants quite naturally interact with the Divine.
Now see this is the behavior of religious people which I object to most -- the presumption that they can dictate what the "Divine" consists of. That is when the "Divine" becomes something other than divine -- just a tool of rhetoric and manipulation.
Last edited by mitchellmckain; 07-19-2016 at 02:20 PM..
And you have not been able to explain why I should show any such thing.
My claim is that infants have NO position on these issues not an atheist position and not a theist position.
How in world would this require showing what you demand. It doesn't. The idea is irrational and ludicrous.
You have stated no evidence or facts whatsoever. You have only declared your irrational definition and demanded that it be accepted because you say so.
If you add infants to the number of atheists then the average education of atheists drops below that of any other group. This is a fact which I have stated and you cannot refute.
People are without any position on whether there is a god or gods until they hear people talk about the idea and the question about whether they exist. Then they consider what their position is.
Sure I can define creationists as those without a belief in evolution and thus swell their numbers to an overwhelming majority.
Sure I can define pro-life as those without a belief that abortion is moral and thus swell their numbers to an overwhelming majority.
These are all identical examples of empty dishonest rhetoric the SAME as you are doing. It is not only dishonest but lame.
If an when you feel capable of discussing how averages are calculated with me, please feel free to do so.
If an when you feel capable of discussing quantum field theory with me, please feel free to do so.
If an when you feel capable of discussing general relativity with me, please feel free to do so.
But if you want to discuss your grandmother's cat or some nonsense about people having god beliefs at infancy then I suggest you find someone sharing your interest or willing to pander to your desire to parrot this beloved canned rhetoric.
By the way... I was not taught any kind of theism growing up. My father was a blacklisted Maoist communist and an indifferent agnostic while my mother wasn't interested and remains uninterested in religion of any kind. I first encountered the question of God's existence in sixth grade when fellow school children asked me if I believed. My response was I thought that the real question was what is God not whether he existed. In college I compared different religion trying to determine what this word "God" could possibly be referring to. Do people come to believe in God or gods when they were not raised to? Anybody with an honest rational mind would know the answer is obviously yes. Only someone forcing reality into some inflexible ideology would think otherwise.
Do you think that these examples are true dichotomies like the theist/atheist argument?
Revisit the OP. The subject is the fact that some theists can't stand the fact that there are those who choose not to accept their proclamations on God, inspired by the very words of some theists here . We see this still in these later posts .
Ok, lets revisit the OP...
Quote:
Originally Posted by wallflash
This is not another thread about the evidence or lack thereof for a god, so let's please not waste time going there . This is about some statements I routinely see here suggesting that the reason atheists and agnostics don't want to believe in God is because they want to sin. Which makes no sense in and of itself . But I want to directly address this oft repeated statement .
Do theists really believe that the only reason atheists and agnostics don't believe is because they want to sin?
I addressed this in a previous post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitchellmckain
Some theists have been taught an authoritarian basis for morality all their life. They often become an atheist for some short period in their lives and it is typically a rebelling against both morality and God since they have no rational basis for morality. When their life predictably goes to crap, they conclude that there parents were right after all and they snap back to the religion of their childhood. These sort typically do believe atheists as you describe because it is what motivated them in their superficial dip into atheism, which barely made a scratch in all the irrational thinking habits and absurd presumptions of the ideology in which they were raised.
Do theists in general believe this? No, no more than atheists in general believe in the claims of Das Kapital.
It is quite humorous, by the way, to see ideological atheists continue to fiddle with the definition of atheism not only to include infants but to exclude the Marxists, Leninists and Maoists.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wallflash
Can theists truly not grasp that some people simply see no evidence of a God , and certainly none that might want a person to follow a particular faith, and see no point in believing in something like this without solid evidence ?
Some people, probably most people, (theist and atheist) are unable to see reality uncolored by their worldview. Liberal education often helps with this a lot but not always.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitchellmckain
Such is the blindness of ideology (theist or otherwise) for it only lets you see what it decides is real.
Yep I am talking about BOTH those hard headed ideological xtians saying people are only atheists so they can sin AND the hard headed ideological atheists saying people are only theists because they have been indoctrinated to do so.
No see this is the behavior of religious people which I object to most -- the presumption that they can dictate what the "Divine" consists of. That is when the "Divine" becomes something other than divine -- just a tool of rhetoric and manipulation.
Another aspect of this is the "You wouldn't understand because you don't believe (or 'haven't been touched by God', etc., etc.)" line. Believers, see, are enlightened, and have a deep understanding and secret knowledge revealed to them by God, unlike us heathens who, unless we convert and "come to understanding" are destined to wander the desert, with no hope of grasping the "Truth" (as defined by whichever believer is espousing this nonsense at the time.
It's the whole velvet rope society thing. "You aren't qualified to join, and you'll never understand what our secret handshakes mean. Neener, neener."
Do you think that these examples are true dichotomies like the theist/atheist argument?
I am not sure what you mean by true dichotomies...
My approaches on these issues are certainly very different.
I defend both theism and atheism as quite capable of being rational in the general sense (which includes logical coherence, consistency with the objective scientific evidence, and compatibility with the ideals of a free society), even though particular theists and atheists can be very far from rational in any sense.
However I am quite opposed to the "pro-life" agenda as incompatible with the ideals of a free society. At the very least, as long as rape exists, women MUST have the freedom to take back their body and life without the second rape of either pregnancy or having to prove they were raped.
I view creationism (and intelligent design) as no less that an assault on science by those who do not wish a scientific inquiry or scientific answers regarding the origin of the species but would rather these be answered by authoritarian dictation of their religion.
What I gave are simply examples of how the same tactic can be used in order to illustrate how dishonest it is.
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