What do believers mean when they say, "God gave us a choice to believe or not?" (doctrine, principle)
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Ah your usual cop out dismissals. Pah. The. Tic. It is SO easy to say something like that and simply dismiss an entire post. MUCH harder to actually engage with the post and SHOW what is wrong with it. That you take the easy cop out path says all anyone here needs to know about the ACTUAL quality of my post.... and the paltry counter arguments you must have to it.
An entire post of mine simply dodged and dismissed by a single throw away empty cop out sentence. How is that a rebuttal? How is that HONEST? I can tell you, it is neither. You are simply on the run.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
Have you done all DNA tests to believe the that a certain human is your mother or a father or a daughter or a son or an uncle or an aunt? Why you believe a person to be a family member without evidence?
Actually yes since you ask, but I have no idea what this pathetic cop out dodge change of subject is going to win you other than to show people on the thread you are doing little more than change the subject.
I am sorry for you if evidence of your relationship with other family members is poor. I can tell you however I have no small quantity of it and any idea you have that my beliefs are not evidence based is simply wrong.
I am sorry for you if evidence of your relationship with other family members is poor. I can tell you however I have no small quantity of it and any idea you have that my beliefs are not evidence based is simply wrong.
I mean, you are the one who demands an evidence when a claim is made, no?
This is one of those things I see posted here frequently: Because God loves us, he gave us the free will to accept him or reject him. It's a choice. If we choose to believe in him, we go to heaven. If we choose not to, we go to hell (or at least, we don't go to heaven).
Belief, for me, has never been connected with choice and free will. My beliefs are formed based on what my mind perceives to be the preponderance of evidence. I believe that, if I let go of a pencil, it will fall to the ground, based on my past experience of letting go of pencils and my knowledge of gravity. I believe that, if I confide something sensitive and personal to Joe in the sales department, he'll use it against me, because he has a history of doing so. I don't believe that the earth will stop rotating at midnight GMT, because there's no reason to believe that. I can't choose to believe otherwise--not without knowing I'm lying to myself, anyway. But that's not really belief, is it?
All of my experience and searching have led me to believe that the Judeo-Christian version of God doesn't exist. There's no malice in my conclusion. I wish I could be certain that there's some sort of afterlife, but I can't.
I'm not going to use my lack of belief to commit atrocities, though. That is where choice comes in. I can't choose whether I believe something to be true or not, but I can choose how I'm going to behave based on my beliefs.
Historically, there have been many people who believe in God yet choose to behave in un-Christian ways. To put a metaphoric spin on things, that seems to make more sense when applied to the notion of "rejecting God" than lack of belief does: "I believe in you, but I reject your authority over me."
That's another thing I don't understand: why some people think that belief in God (or lack thereof) trumps one's actions during life. I can be the worst sinner on earth, but if I accept God and repent on my deathbed, I'll be "saved." Conversely, I can live my life according to Christain principles, but if I miss the technical detail of not believing in God, then I won't get into heaven.
Anyway, can someone here who thinks that belief is a choice explain why they think that?
If you didn't choose to drop the pencil you would have never known about gravity.
Nonsense. Nothing that has been said here by anyone gets away from the very simple definition of atheism: lack of belief in any deities. I am consistent with that. Nozz is consistent with that. It is as simple as "one who does not collect stamps" or "one who does not have hair". There is no need to convene a meeting of some council somewhere to clarify a thing that is simply a philosophical concept with a very rock solid and unambiguous definition based on the very etymology of the word itself. a (without) theist (belief in gods).
I am one who does not have a full head of hair and yet never think of myself as "bald". I am partially bald, but it just isn't something that's part of my self-labeling or identity. What I think of myself of, is old, from a family prone to mild baldness, and as a side effect of that fact I happen to be somewhat balding.
That is all that Nozz said about the fact he doesn't believe in god. It's just a knock-on effect of him not believing anything that's not substantiated.
You on the other hand seem to have some need to have Nozz, myself and other unbelievers fit some preconceived definition or identity that you've already tidily assigned us. Sorry to disappoint you on that score, but not believing in any gods means that, only, that, and nothing more than that.
Even your suggestion that "millions of Atheists" would sit down and work out a definition -- something that would NEVER happen -- reveals your stubborn insistence that atheism is just another organized or organizable belief-system rather than a very narrow statement of unbelief. It is not a creed, is not organized beyond a few small civil rights organizations comprising perhaps one percent of atheists and a failing atheist social club movement that appears all but stillborn as I write this.
It is almost as if you have picked up a distorted concept of what atheism is from others rather than from facts on the ground, such that you find it easier to believe in a worldwide conspiracy of atheists to be dishonest about what they are, so as to keep your false image of what we are alive for yourself ... rather than to simply LISTEN to ACTUAL ATHEISTS and take them at their word for what they actually think and believe and, more importantly, WHY they think and believe what they do. And to learn from the vast differences between religious groups based on religious faith and those OUTSIDE religious groups due to a LACK of religious faith.
When would one consider themselves bald? Would it be when the last hair fell to the floor or would it be before that?
What do atheists believe happens after death, considering that we are only here for a short time? It seems that if there is no hope there is nothing to be here for.
If an atheist says they do not believe in God or gods, does that mean that they know there is a God or gods not to believe in?
What do atheists consider to be the origin of life? Which according to you would be the same for all Atheists, right.
When would one consider themselves bald? Would it be when the last hair fell to the floor or would it be before that?
Do you have a point?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
What do atheists believe happens after death, considering that we are only here for a short time?
Atheism does not describe anything other than a lack of belief in any gods. Most atheists believe there is no afterlife or preserved consciousness after death, but a few hold that there could be such a thing, although by definition an atheist would have to believe in an afterlife that is part of the natural order.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
It seems that if there is no hope there is nothing to be here for.
That is a problem only if 100% of your hope and reason for living is invested in an afterlife narrative. Fortunately there are a plenitude of other things to find purpose and meaning and hope in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
If an atheist says they do not believe in God or gods, does that mean that they know there is a God or gods not to believe in?
It means that they don't afford belief to things that aren't substantiated, or, in fact, in the case of your invisible personal interventionist god, substantiatable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
What do atheists consider to be the origin of life? Which according to you would be the same for all Atheists, right.
The only thing I said is the same for all atheists is a lack of belief in any deities. Literally nothing else can be said about all atheists other than that one thing.
Most atheists do not take a knowledge position about the origin of life because it has not yet been determined. There is not yet a scientific theory (proven explanatory framework) for that, only hypotheses, at this point.
What an atheist might think about the origin of life is irrelevant to whether you or anyone else has offered any sort of evidence or logical argument in favor of a deity. And your incredulity that life could have come about in any way than your creation narrative is not any sort of argument in favor of belief in gods. That is just standard "god of the gaps" thinking.
Nice of you to continue the dodge of my entire previous post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
I mean, you are the one who demands an evidence when a claim is made, no?
Absolutely, but my demands for evidence scale with the implications of subscription to a claim.
For example if I meet a friend tomorrow and they tell me they had a great holiday in australia, I do not demand photos and plane tickets to prove they were there. The implications of belief in their claim is small, and so too therefore are my demands for evidence.
When it comes to who is a family memeber and who is not, I actually do have data and evidence in that regard. However even if I did not, the concept of "father" and "Brother" to me is a familial one, not a genetic one. If it turned out magically that my parent or sibling was not actually GENETICALLY my parent or sibling..... they would STILL be my parent or sibling in the sense I actually operate those words. So once again the scale of implication of subscription to the genetic belief is minute.
The implications of belief work in this way in ANY sphere of discourse. For example if you came to me tomorrow and told me Vitamin C made you feel better when you had a cold or flu, then the implications of my believing that are small and I would not seek any evidence. If however someone came to me and said "We are going to invest a significant quantity of money rolling out vitamin C to the public to help prevent and treat colds and flu in society next year" I would strongly demand evidence as the efficacy of Vitamin C in this regard.
When it comes to claims about the very nature of our existence and how we operate within it however, the implications of belief in a god are very wide spread and deep. As the old adage goes "Extraordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence". The concept that our life here is formed with a PLAN in mind, and our role in it will be evaluated at some point, possibly even with implications upon the well being of our ETERNAL soul..... brings with it implications far greater and so my demands for evidence scale in response to that.
So yes, I do demand evidence when a claim is made, but those demands scale with both the depth of the claim, and the implications of believing it.
That is only true for you because you did NOT actually experience it, Arq! The "knowing" is intrinsic, NOT extrinsic. It is not intellectual. All my efforts to explain it to my intellect were.
I get that. The thing is, you may claim (credibly) that you had an experience and you knew it was this or that, without any option of being skeptical about it. And it is easy to say that those who are skeptical about it simply didn't have the experience. I'm not so sure. I have had some pretty elevated moments which, if I had been grooming myself for buy -in, I would have taken as being undeniably true, but only because I didn't want to deny it.
It is easy to say 'that wasn't the real thing, then', because I wasn't convinced. Something akin to the No real Christian' argument. Which is actually relevant when you get those deconverts who had the experience, were totally convinced by it, but reasoned their way out and came to understand that the feeling they had were just self -brainwashing.
They are then told they were never 'Real' believers, but that is just not tenable. The evidence is that Experiences of that type are no proof -guarantee of anything.
However,what does that say in terms of Choice? There is a choosing, and it has to do a lot with others choosing for you, if you let them, or choosing in spite of what others have fed you. It has a lot to do with what looks or sounds convincing, who has the credit as Authorities and what one personally prefers.
If you didn't choose to drop the pencil you would have never known about gravity.
It's remarkable how the last few apologist posts have been pulling rhetorical tricks to try to fox the skeptics.
The one above is appeal to unknowns and is related to the fallacy of he blind cannot see colour and "They" denied powered flight (1)
How many hairs do you need to be bald? (the fallacy of the beard) (2)
Cardinal's 'boy you sure said a lot!' swipe. (3)
and the 'you demand evidence.' (4)
(1) the fallacy being that you cannot use 'what is known now but once wasn't known' to validate claims about what is not known -yet.
(2) this is about trying to impose fixed boundaries which is wrong thinking. terms such as 'bearded, bad or indeed species describe a particular state bit do not impose limits on it. And the fallacy is in appealing to those non - existent fixed boundaries as a way of ...I'm not sure - just trying to wrongfoot the opposition rather than create a coherent case. Theist apologetics is not about a coherent alternative to 'science', but about faith in Biblegod and debunking any way possible any 'science' that undermines it.
(3) it is far from a new ploy to respond to an explanation they can't well refute by a suggestion that the length of the explanation discredits it. Sorta like the more someone looking guilty tries to talk his way out of it, the more suspicious he looks
But the fact is that it takes fewer words to say 'there are fairies at the bottom of my garden' than to explain why there probably aren't.
(4) Right from the day I arrived here, I became aware of this 'believe or not' thinking and the difficulty of getting the idea of weight of evidence across.
(a) extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't require evidence when someone tells me she flew in by airbus. I do if she claims she flew in on a broomstick.
(b) there is a sliding scale of evidence, too. There are dubious claims about J Caesar, Alexander and Arthur (king of the Britons) but none of them are totally disproven by lack of evidence and none validated beyond any question at all by weight of evidence. The 'believe or not' fallacy imposes an invalid and damaging false block on any serious question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
When would one consider themselves bald? Would it be when the last hair fell to the floor or would it be before that?
Do you have a point?
The point I believe, is that if you have one hair on your head, you could claim that it is sorta mostly bald, but not totally bald. Likewise, you could possibly make the assumption the universe is mostly without a god, but still has one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
What do atheists believe happens after death, considering that we are only here for a short time?
Atheism does not describe anything other than a lack of belief in any gods. Most atheists believe there is no afterlife or preserved consciousness after death, but a few hold that there could be such a thing, although by definition an atheist would have to believe in an afterlife that is part of the natural order.
This may be true, however, they appear to be rare.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
It seems that if there is no hope there is nothing to be here for.
That is a problem only if 100% of your hope and reason for living is invested in an afterlife narrative. Fortunately there are a plenitude of other things to find purpose and meaning and hope in.
I think the implication here is that supposing you built a career, or monuments, or whatever. All of it would be essentially the same as building a sandcastle, and watching stuff get washed away. Or this.
Wiped away as if it never existed. This is why people hope for an afterlife.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
If an atheist says they do not believe in God or gods, does that mean that they know there is a God or gods not to believe in?
It means that they don't afford belief to things that aren't substantiated, or, in fact, in the case of your invisible personal interventionist god, substantiatable.
What would it take to make things "substantiatable". Because it seems like if I were to actually prove that a God of any sort were to exist, you would refuse the proof, and narrow that definition to an "invisible personal interventionist god" and if I were to prove that, you would probably move the goalposts once again to say this god also had to have "blue skin and red eyes." And keep going until the mandates become impossible to fulfill. Evidence of a creator has already been put forward. It's called all of creation, including you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marakorpa
What do atheists consider to be the origin of life? Which according to you would be the same for all Atheists, right.
The only thing I said is the same for all atheists is a lack of belief in any deities. Literally nothing else can be said about all atheists other than that one thing.
So, you don't know, and are like "all atheists are different" to deflect this fact?
Most atheists do not take a knowledge position about the origin of life because it has not yet been determined. There is not yet a scientific theory (proven explanatory framework) for that, only hypotheses, at this point.
There will never be a knowledge position. The universe existed long before our relatively young planet, long before much older planets. We cannot assert knowledge on this subject without perpetrating fraud either on ourselves or others. This would be like trying to solve a murder of an exhibit in a history museum. The murder weapon is millions of years gone, the circumstantial evidence is gone, as is the scene (since the museum ppl hauled the body away). This is why religious people say we "believe" and you fault us for this. But all we have is belief, because everything else is a best guess.
What an atheist might think about the origin of life is irrelevant to whether you or anyone else has offered any sort of evidence or logical argument in favor of a deity. And your incredulity that life could have come about in any way than your creation narrative is not any sort of argument in favor of belief in gods. That is just standard "god of the gaps" thinking.
I think you're accusing religious people of the exact same crime you're guilty of. Using science to BS an explanation rather than just seriously say "I dunno. I believe this might be true."
As for me, I don't believe in God as a rational fill-in for stuff I don't understand. I believe in God because nothing can originate from random events. I believe this, as a result of making many many things. When I didn't work on the project, it didn't get done. And things even once made, don't last if left to chance. If I left it outside in the rain, it would fall apart, as it might if exposed to extreme dust or dryness. By extension, I know that likewise a maker must have made things, in much the same way. And that is all I can assert of such a being, not whether he/she/it/they is omnipotent, immortal, invisible, or even good. Not when this happened or why. Anything like that is pretending. But a basic law of nature is that if you find a pocketwatch in the forest (1) someone made it, and (2) someone left it. It did not arise from Fe molecules joining to together by accident, someone made the gears, the gem that protects against wear, the pins that allow the gears to rotate, etc. It had a framework and a designer. This is all we know. Ignoring even this fact is taking leave of logic entirely.
Last edited by bulmabriefs144; 12-17-2016 at 08:37 AM..
When a 'believer' says they choose to believe, I assume they are, at heart, atheist or at least agnostic.
Likewise, when a 'straight' person says being gay or straight is a choice, I assume they are, at heart, super gay or at least really, really gay.
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