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Things worth considering and contemplating are never simple. Reasonable people can discuss Complexities and hold complex things in their mind.
I . “Simply lack of belief in gods” does not say anything about evidence. If there is evidence it is no longer belief.
A belief is never based on evidence, that is why it is belief. It is based on other things, such as experience, knowledge, wisdom. All real things.
This is not correct.
Knowledge is a belief.
There are all kinds of beliefs. Some of them are true and justified.
Those beliefs are called knowledge.
Here's my question, to anyone. What's so hard about asking questions of atheists?
I think I have an idea.
It is very hard to ask atheists questions because from the stand point of rationality the atheistic position is iron clad. Any attempt to question its rationality will inevitably backfire and will be exposed as irrational, incoherent, fallacious etc., witch will poorly reflect on the asking person.This creates perfect opportunity for cognitive dissonance to kick in with very predictable consequences - strawmaning, personal attacks, cop-outs, filibustering, you name it.
So many good threads, so little time. I didn't want your post Sonof to be the thread killer so I'll take the blow. I am a thread-killer. Always the last post.....hey at least I get the last word.
I think I have an idea.
It is very hard to ask atheists questions because from the stand point of rationality the atheistic position is iron clad. Any attempt to question its rationality will inevitably backfire and will be exposed as irrational, incoherent, fallacious etc., witch will poorly reflect on the asking person.This creates perfect opportunity for cognitive dissonance to kick in with very predictable consequences - strawmaning, personal attacks, cop-outs, filibustering, you name it.
I guess, this might be it...
I think the intent was not to ask what atheists think of god or religion, since that is the kind of question that would not convey new information. The idea was to UNDERSTAND atheists as HUMANS. What is your personal journey, how to you deal with thing X or Y that my religion gives me and that I consider indispensable, being missing from your life, do atheists really eat babies? Questions like that, lol
But in a sense you are right because I think what really frosts many believers is not so much that we don't believe as that we get on just fine without their deity of choice. I think they want us to remain comfortably filed under "empty, pathetic creatures". We can in NO way remotely represent even the possibility of an enjoyable and robust existence!
I think the intent was not to ask what atheists think of god or religion, since that is the kind of question that would not convey new information. The idea was to UNDERSTAND atheists as HUMANS. What is your personal journey, how to you deal with thing X or Y that my religion gives me and that I consider indispensable, being missing from your life, do atheists really eat babies? Questions like that, lol
But in a sense you are right because I think what really frosts many believers is not so much that we don't believe as that we get on just fine without their deity of choice. I think they want us to remain comfortably filed under "empty, pathetic creatures". We can in NO way remotely represent even the possibility of an enjoyable and robust existence!
LOL we eat babies? This is too funny. I thought we secretly worshiped a bad guy we don't even believe in. Yep, questions like that. Quite the miserable lot we are. I prefer 'lot' rather than "coven" as someone suggested. I don't mind coven but I think of atheists as more of a 'lot'. You know, there's a 'lot' of us now.
I think the intent was not to ask what atheists think of god or religion, since that is the kind of question that would not convey new information. The idea was to UNDERSTAND atheists as HUMANS. What is your personal journey, how to you deal with thing X or Y that my religion gives me and that I consider indispensable, being missing from your life, do atheists really eat babies? Questions like that, lol
I would disagree with the bolded. Here's a rather well-written article about types of evidence and how an investigator needs to look at the different types of evidence. Look, for example, at the difference between anecdotal evidence - versus - documentary evidence. https://www.i-sight.com/resources/15...investigation/
And this is well demonstrated in another thread where one poster has essentially proclaimed there is no evidence for Jesus Christ existing...that it's all lies. Where I have taken a very different position that in my view, there is evidence that Jesus existed, but that when one begins to attach specific incidents to the man, the questions begin to mount.
"If there is evidence it is no longer belief."
I've got a little problem with this sort of statement as well, but no doubt all you explain here is a bit more than most people are willing to consider when it comes to the judgements and beliefs they hold dear despite the lack of sound evidence, of any kind.
Intriguing. Reminds me of this amazing evolutionary story I came across in the news this morning.
"A big challenge for animals living in deep midwater, in Cystisoma’s case between 200 and 900 metres down, is to see while not being seen by predators. “It’s basically like playing hide and seek on a football field,” says Osborn. “There’s nothing to duck behind.”
Eyes are especially hard to hide because retinas always have to contain dark, photon-absorbing pigments, which predators can either make out in the dim twilight zone illumination, or in the beams of their own bioluminescent searchlights. Cystisoma disguises its huge eyes in a unique way. Instead of concentrating the pigments in a small area, Osborn says, they spread their retina into a thin sheet of tiny reddish dots that are too small for most animals to see.
Cystisoma hides most of the rest of its body by being completely transparent. When scientists catch them in trawl nets and empty them into a bucket of seawater, they appear as empty, palm-sized gaps between other animals. “You really cannot see these things until you pick them out of the water,” says Osborn."
So someone did get turned into a pillar of salt lately? Have you personally seen such a thing happen? What does mathematics have to do with any of this?
Good question for an atheist!
There are 10 kinds of people on this planet. Those who understand (the binary system) and those who don't...
I can agree with most of that. I do think he was a real person, and a teacher. But so are (or have been) many others. The magical parts I dispute...which why I keep saying that religionists would be better off discussing principles, but instead insist on 'proving' their 'beliefs', which they can't. There are a lot of good teachings in the NT...and those good teachings are mostly principles.
While I know facts like atheism is not a religion, there are other claims for which the "jury is still out" by many...
"While billions of people believe Jesus of Nazareth was one of the most important figures in world history, many others reject the idea that he even existed at all. A 2015 survey conducted by the Church of England, for instance, found that 22 percent of adults in England did not believe Jesus was a real person.
Among scholars of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, though, there is little disagreement that he actually lived. Lawrence Mykytiuk, an associate professor of library science at Purdue University and author of a 2015 Biblical Archaeology Review article on the extra-biblical evidence of Jesus, notes that there was no debate about the issue in ancient times either. “Jewish rabbis who did not like Jesus or his followers accused him of being a magician and leading people astray,” he says, “but they never said he didn’t exist.”"
It occurs to me this question about Jesus is not one that gets my attention as much as some of the other controversies that revolve around religion. I tend to think Jesus was a real person, but I can also understand the reason for questioning whether the life of Jesus (along with all the miracles) was a myth ginned up by others with "fertile imaginations" a very long time ago when fertile imaginations ruled the day. Either way, the Bible is the Bible and there will always be plenty enough believers not subject or influenced by the contrary facts of these matters.
As for the "magical parts," I'm with you. I consider them no different from the countless other claims made about other religious figures; saints, prophets, angels, Joseph Smith and the rest who were real people, but performers of miracles? I really don't think so based on what evidence we have to work with and what we know better about such things today.
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This is too funny. I thought we secretly worshiped a bad guy we don't even believe in. Yep, questions like that. Quite the miserable lot we are. I prefer 'lot' rather than "coven" as someone suggested. I don't mind coven but I think of atheists as more of a 'lot'. You know, there's a 'lot' of us now.
