Evidence for soul and spirit (myth, atheist, quote, Christianity)
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Do you identify as "New Atheist"? Maybe you're not on the mailing list?
But apparently you are since you know all about it.
Here's what Wikipedia says in its intro to the page on New Atheism:
"New Atheism ... describe[s] the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century. This modern-day atheism is advanced by a group of thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever their influence arises in government, education, and politics. New Atheism lends itself to, and often overlaps with, secular humanism and antitheism—most particularly, in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies founded on belief in the supernatural. Some critics of the movement characterize it as "militant atheism" or "fundamentalist atheism"".
If that's what New Atheism is...count me in. I see not a single problem with it...except one. I don't deny that there are probably things that exist that would fall under the category of "supernatural" (meaning unexplained, at this point in time)...but to me that's where one needs to remain open-minded, but still asking for concrete evidence.
It must be a real blast to be behind someone at a busy 4-way intersection served by stop signs, if they have that rationale.
I mean...they have no objective evidence the others won't wait and smash into them...just belief, faith, and the power of probability.
This illustrates how bogus your rationality is.
The fact is, even without evidence...you never "withhold belief", you always proceed...even with your safety/life in the balance.
Curse you! I just ended up down a math rabbit hole and I don't like that kind of thing. Here you go... a Nash Equilibrium is a law no one would want to break even in the absence of an effective police force. Maybe we could apply that to morals since there are no objective ones as you so state.
But apparently you are since you know all about it.
Here's what Wikipedia says in its intro to the page on New Atheism:
"New Atheism ... describe[s] the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century. This modern-day atheism is advanced by a group of thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever their influence arises in government, education, and politics. New Atheism lends itself to, and often overlaps with, secular humanism and antitheism—most particularly, in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies founded on belief in the supernatural. Some critics of the movement characterize it as "militant atheism" or "fundamentalist atheism"".
If that's what New Atheism is...count me in. I see not a single problem with it...except one. I don't deny that there are probably things that exist that would fall under the category of "supernatural" (meaning unexplained, at this point in time)...but to me that's where one needs to remain open-minded, but still asking for concrete evidence.
1. On the day my wife Beverly died, I visited her in the hospice in the early afternoon. She was heavily medicated but there was no reason to think death was imminent. I made the 90-minute ride back home on my motorcycle and entered our bedroom. In the corner was a large portrait photo of Bev on one wall and a portrait photo of her late parents on the other. Beneath them was a 5-foot-high bookshelf with Bev's books. On the top shelf was her jewelry box and a little teddy bear she had received at a cancer survivor's retreat, wearing a sweater that read "I Love Hugs." When I stepped into the bedroom, the teddy bear was sitting bolt upright on the carpet several feet from the bookshelf, facing the door. I was stunned but made no connection to Bev's death since, as far as I knew, she was still alive. I tried gently toppling the teddy off the shelf at least 50 times, just to see if I could make it land upright. I couldn't, nor did it ever land near where it had been sitting. I had difficulty getting it to sit upright even when I carefully placed it on the carpet. OK, weird but no big deal.
I went into the kitchen to make a large salad as I did almost every night. I put a muffin in the toaster oven as I did almost every morning and night. As I prepared the salad, there was a loud POP! but the source wasn't clear. The smoke alarm then began screaming. I turned to my left and saw the toaster oven was literally, visibly red hot. I yanked the cord out of the socket. The muffin was a piece of charcoal, burnt beyond what it would've been if I'd left it in the oven for 20 minutes. I could only conclude that some massive surge of electricity had passed into the toaster oven. Within minutes - no more than five - I received a phone call saying Bev had died shortly after I'd left. The next morning, I plugged the toaster oven back in and held my breath. It was fine, as it had always been before Bev's death and would continue to be until I replaced it two years later.
2. About a month after Bev's death, I was folding clothes in the bedroom. Inexplicably, the bedside stereo simply started playing the CD that was in it. For some reason, probably my prior ADC studies and my many discussions with Bev about these topics, I was prompted to say quietly into the air "Bev, was that you? Do it again and I'll be impressed." I put another load of clothes in the washer, puttered around a bit, and reentered the bedroom about 20 minutes later. Immediately, the stereo began playing again. This time I said "OK, I'm impressed. Do it again and I'll be convinced."
I went grocery shopping at Safeway, put the groceries away and reentered the bedroom close to two hours after I'd last been there. Immediately, the stereo began playing again. "OK, I'm convinced," I said. The stereo had never done anything like that before and never did so again.
3. In an interesting parallel to the teddy bear experience, the elderly woman named Victoria who baby-sat our cat when we were on vacation died earlier this year. Victoria had last worked for us in December, and I was astounded to learn from her sister in January that she had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She died a week later. Her sister said she was talking about our cat and hoping we could find someone to care for it shortly before she died. She was very poor and had been thrilled to find the job with us, and I had compensated her at a charitable level my wife thought was insane - $20 an hour.
I hadn't known Victoria too well, so I was saddened but not grieving. The last two times she had sat for us, we had discussed an open display of my collection of cat knick-knacks that is hanging on the wall in our living room. She asked me if I'd acquired any new ones on our trip in November, and I showed her what I'd bought. She said "I always check the collection to see if there are any new ones." So I also showed her my new ones when we returned after our December trip.
About a week after she died, my wife and I were in our respective bathrooms, preparing to go somewhere. Our house is tiny, and I had just passed through the living room on my way to the bathroom. When I emerged perhaps 30 minutes later, my wife was still in her bathroom. I was astounded to find one of the cat knick-knacks sitting upright in the middle of the rug at least five feet from the hanging display.
But this was not just any cat knick-knack. It was a 5" round cat-shaped china bowl that had been propped up on the middle shelf behind an entire row of other knick-knacks. Unless it had been removed very carefully and gingerly, I could see absolutely no way it could have fallen without knocking over the ones in front of it as well as another display on a bookshelf immediately below. I could see no way it could have found its way five feet to the rug, which was at a diagonal to the hanging display - let alone have been sitting upright.
As ADCs go, these are entirely routine, garden-variety examples - nothing special.
Consider:
A. I could be lying or embellishing, but to what purpose? If so, are the hundreds of thousands or millions of other people who report similar phenomena all lying or embellishing?
B. I could be delusional - I imagined all this or perhaps did it all myself in some weird trance. There is no history of anything like this, no particular reason I would've been in an altered state at the time of any of the incidents, and we'd still be left with the problem of the hundreds of thousands or millions of other people who report similar phenomena.
C. Perhaps all these things really happened, but they were just fantastically weird coincidences, all explainable in mundane terms - surely the debunker's preferred explanation. The fly in the ointment here is the consistency with which these events occur in close proximity to death and the communicating "intention" that typically seems to be associated with them.
D. Perhaps I somehow caused all these as some sort of poltergeist effect - but in #1 I didn't even know Bev was dead and in #3 Victoria wasn't even on my mind. Moreover, this explanation would be problematical for the naturalistic paradigm in its own right.
E. Or perhaps the surviving consciousnesses of Bev and Victoria were playfully communicating their survival.
Yes, booby, rocks do move and lights do go on. They do so almost routinely in connection with death. And far more astonishing things than that happen all the time to sane, credible people in full control of their faculties. In my experience, people do not "go crazy" when their loved ones die, and the literature on death and dying substantiates this. Many of your assertions seem remarkably out of touch with real life.
When my little experiences (I've described three of 20 or more) are multiplied by, oh, ten million or more over centuries of human experience, I believe this is a body of evidence that must be taken into account and that it, together with related bodies of evidence, makes a pretty compelling case for the survival of consciousness. Because you are locked in the rigid and depressing straitjacket in which you have chosen to confine yourself, you will have to chose from alternatives A-D - as I feel sure you will, and it will make absolutely no difference to me because I think I've pegged you for what you are.
We're done. Adios.
These stories are mostly about you. Just count the "I"s.
So, whatever is responsible for your very existence and the existence of everything else is nonexistent??? That certainly would meet the minimal criteria for God relative to us. Why do you categorically reject its existence?
We have no evidence that anything is responsible for existence, or even that existence began at all. It could be infinite and have always existed and will always exist. We don't have the answer. We probably never will. So the correct response to the question "how did existence begin" is we don't know how it began, and we don't know if it began at all. Then full stop. No need to spackle and paint the hole in our knowledge in order to make ourselves feel better. Sometimes, "I don't know" is the best answer, and/or the only answer. And we have to be good with "I don't know" until and unless evidence becomes available to provide an answer.
Nobody knows how or if existence began. We have theories, but belief should be measured to the evidence. At this point, even our best guess, the Big Bang, is nothing more than a model that best fits the present data. However, we are infants at this, and we have 1 billionth of the data that we will have in the future. At that point, a new model might make a better fit. For now, we wait, and investigate, with no guarantees that we will ever have a definitive answer.
Everyone on City-Data will die without an answer to this question, as have untold billions of people before us. That's just reality, and we have to accept it.
You're going to go out of your way to categorize everyone only to figure out those categories don't matter. Why don't you save yourself some shoe leather there detective?
These stories are mostly about you. Just count the "I"s.
Unsurprisingly.
Well, yes, when I relate personal experiences in which I was the only person in the room, I typically figure quite prominently in the narrative. It was scarcely worth reproducing my entire lengthy post for that startling insight, eh?
We have no evidence that anything is responsible for existence, or even that existence began at all. It could be infinite and have always existed and will always exist. We don't have the answer. We probably never will. So the correct response to the question "how did existence begin" is we don't know how it began, and we don't know if it began at all. Then full stop. No need to spackle and paint the hole in our knowledge in order to make ourselves feel better. Sometimes, "I don't know" is the best answer, and/or the only answer. And we have to be good with "I don't know" until and unless evidence becomes available to provide an answer.
Nobody knows how or if existence began. We have theories, but belief should be measured to the evidence. At this point, even our best guess, the Big Bang, is nothing more than a model that best fits the present data. However, we are infants at this, and we have 1 billionth of the data that we will have in the future. At that point, a new model might make a better fit. For now, we wait, and investigate, with no guarantees that we will ever have a definitive answer.
Everyone on City-Data will die without an answer to this question, as have untold billions of people before us. That's just reality, and we have to accept it.
Nice deflection. But I was not concerned with HOW existence itself BEGAN nor how long it has been in existence. I am concerned with why you do not think it qualifies as God relative to us since it is why we and everything else exists! Why is that insufficient evidence of God to you? It seems rather all-encompassing evidence of God to me. I am curious what is lacking as evidence of God???
Curse you! I just ended up down a math rabbit hole and I don't like that kind of thing. Here you go... a Nash Equilibrium is a law no one would want to break even in the absence of an effective police force. Maybe we could apply that to morals since there are no objective ones as you so state.
You're going to go out of your way to categorize everyone only to figure out those categories don't matter. Why don't you save yourself some shoe leather there detective?
It's no bother. The categorizing work has already been done by others, including by atheists.
You identify as "secular humanist" which is seen as being a "widespread way of doing atheism." Here's what philosopher and author, John Gray (not religious), has to say about it...
"The whole idea of progress comes from monotheistic religion, from Christianity in particular, and from the post-millennialism that says Christ will return one day, but only after we improve the world. The secular humanists have replaced the idea of God with the idea of humanity—an agent with a common set of goals that is gradually realized over time. Humanity is part of a story with redemptive meaning. So the secular humanists haven’t shed a way of thinking that comes from monotheism. In the pre-Christian world, they never assumed progress would occur. History has no redemptive significance."
Q: Do you think this description of "secular humanist atheist" applies to you?
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