Poll: What is your religion?
I'm curious, what are Hacker News' religions? If I'm missing something in the list or if something is offensive, please tell me.
(Please vote for one unless more than one fits)
(Please vote for one unless more than one fits)
My own view is exactly the opposite. I see the value in the ritual, community, and psychological "anchor" that organized religion can provide. But spiritual faith seems absurd; why mix your emotional security and your sense of identity up with a bunch of conceptual abstractions, or delude yourself into thinking that the subjective and particular is really objective and universal?
I respect religion, per se, and hold no grudge against religions that use theology and mythology as part of their symbolic repertoire. So when I say "I do not believe in God", I'm not so much rejecting God as rejecting belief.
Whether or not God exists objectively isn't really something I think about or care about answering.
I think that you could fairly be described as an agnostic, then.
Would you still say the question was meaningless? If not, how can a question be meaningless if it depends on the result of an experiment?
I guess the question will remain meaningless until such evidence is uncovered.
Besides, I don't see how being dependent upon the results of an experiment has any bearing on the meaning of the question. The data collected in the experiment may be empirically valid, but the connection between the data and the question is inherently rational, not empirical, and you must already have a set of presumptive axioms in order to connect the concrete data to the abstract question.
I've certainly encountered other people who behave and speak in ways that indicate that they attribute a great deal of meaning to this question (often ironically because they insist on asserting an empirical basis for their faith), so I would not presume to speak for them.
(BTW, note that I'm being pedantic in this thread in order to discuss this topic with a high degree of precision. I'm not trying to create a semantics rathole, honest. But oftentimes clarifying the semantics is necessary to have a productive conversation.)
Why? Is it because we have not been able to answer it yet?
Your line of thinking is begging the question; you pre-suppose that the question is meaningful before you address its meaning.
Most atheists do not go around saying "I know there is no god" but, if asked "do you believe in a god/something supernatural/things you can't see", they would answer "no".
Not many atheists are strong atheists (those who "believe against god", who believe the existence of god is objectively disproven). Rather, they are not convinced by anything they experience that there is a god and so do not believe in one, just as they do not believe in unicorns or pots o' gold at the end of the rainbow. (Surely you wouldn't say they are making a faith claim about unicorns just because they don't happen to acknowledge their existence.)
However, they often actively push back against encroaching beliefs that they have not, themselves, claimed as their own.
This distinction between "nonbelief" versus "disbelief" is subtle but important.
EDIT: The only faith claim I could possibly agree atheists have is a general statement about the nature of faith as it relates to them. Namely, most say "I will not have faith. I will only accept as true that which can be demonstrated."
"I'm asking you to not join the Navy."
"I'm not asking you to join the Navy."
The difference in word order is the same as the different phrasings between different atheists:
"I do not believe god exists." (I call this atheism)
"I believe god does not exist." (I call this strong atheism)
"I do not believe a god exists."
"I believe a god does not exist."
They look the same to me.
To believe something is "to be convinced of the truthfulness of it", to have faith is to have hope in the future based on a belief.
Believe and faith can be misplaced: To be convinced that something is true does not make it true. A conviction which is specific enough maybe testable, a conviction can sometimes be proven or disproven. It is rational to hold convictions which are consistent with available evidence and experiences.
A theology is a (philosophical) theory about gods. A theology may be specific enough to be testable, most however are not. Someone who is convinced that a particular theology is true has a religious conviction or religious believe, which often becomes part of the persons identity or self-identification.
People who share similar theological convictions often join together to form religious groups and religious organizations. One can be convinced either by personally examining the evidence available or by the believing the word of someone who one considers an authority (often as part of the religious organization one is a member of).
The word "god" has also taken on a whole different meaning. The word god used to mean someone with authority and power. For example: In the bible Jezus applies the word "gods" to human judges? By this definition it's obvious that there are gods, many even. [We could then reserve the word "God" (with a capital letter) for the hypothetical entity which has no authority above him. Which leads to the weird conclusion that (this hypothetical) God would be the only true atheist: a-theist, without-god.]
The word "natural" is also confusing. Regardless of what we personally may think: Assume for a moment that the universe was created by someone who was not created. Now we have the situation that the universe is not "natural", but rather "artificial". The only thing natural would be this creator who what no created.
This makes it currently impossible to reason from within science about intelligent design. Intelligent design is not inherently unscientific, but it does challenge some of the most basis assumptions at the basis of modern day science: The unproven (and perhaps unprovable) conviction that Life, the universe and the rest are all purely natural (and not artificial).
The word "supernatural" is also meaningless. Just try to define any observable phenomenon which is neither natural nor artificial? By implicit definition no observable phenomenon could ever be labeled supernatural. Just the fact that we are able to observe it either makes it natural or artificial. Logic leaves no room for anything else.
But thinking this way, "there is no truth" is only a synthetic claim of truth, not an analytic one; that is, it is "true" because the terms are logically consistent with each other given the rules that define their context (i.e. language), not because it expresses an objective representation of reality.
In other words, given the subjective and particular nature of my experience of the world, I have no basis on which to construct a universal understanding of the world, so I am therefore incapable of making any analytical claim of truth in any universal sense.
More practically, I'd say that ideas, including the idea of God, and including the processes of science, are useful tools that enhance our experience of the world, not objective and "true" representations of the world, and are best judged on how useful they are, not whether they are "true".
One thing I dislike about society is you have to have a religion - even if it is no religion. As someone else has pointed out it just doesn't matter to some of us - until asked outright.
That's still assuming anything matters. So maybe there is a god that hurts me if I don't do his bidding. What is hurt (just some electrons choosing other paths than for pleasure)? Why should I care? What does it matter, if all I can do is what a god wants me to do?
The real distinction is between "teapot agnostics", who think gods are incredibly unlikely, and "proper" agnostics, who actually think it's reasonably probable. Many teapot agnostics will call themselves atheists just for the sake of saving time.
Nevertheless, I think it would be stupid to describe myself as a Santa Claus agnostic as opposed to a Santa Claus atheist. We have a very good explanation for the Santa Claus story, so there is zero reason to entertain the notion that it might be true.
Same for gods. We have good explanations for how the god stories arose. We can observe that all human societies have these stories, but that they are inconsistent from society to society. We can observe the the believes are convinced that there is something special about theirs--but we see that for the believers from each.
Given that, agnosticism seems a cop out to me.
To me agnosticism is being open to possibilities and admitting at this current level nobody has all the answers.
Why would they want to Cop out? In most people's mind Atheist and Agnostic are the same thing. [Edit: If you are downvoting it will be helpful if you post a reply]
Then I grew up and it just didn't seem logical any more. Burdened by the truth that may parents, now no longer the guardians of truth in the world, had played a trick on me I went into the world armed with the knowledge that all is not what it seems and that the search for the truth is difficult and long. Over time I realised that this burden was in fact a candle in the darkness of ignorance. A darkness that is in part inherited and in part constructed by the Guardians (whomever they may be) to keep me from the truth.
So you see good old saint Nick has a very specific role in society. He's a lie told by parents to bring darkness into the world of children under the guise of 'magical enchantment'. For some, he is a catalyst to see the lie but for others he is the first snuffing of the harsh light of inquiry and intellectual endeavour that all children are born with.
But then you are talking about power & influence, which I guess is the main reason why something that evolved for biological reasons is still around centuries past its expiration date.
1. Where do toys come from?
2. Why should I be good?
Sure, they are not correct answers, but neither are any that any particular god will answer.
Except you don't.
Why lie so blatantly. If you're trying to establish the truth then you wouldn't do this. This doesn't prove that you always lie to convince other people of your position regardless of it's truth but it does lead us in that direction.
Ask any scientist who is Christian, "does a good scientist believe claims that cannot be independently verified?" Then ask, "do you believe in god?" The questions "are you a good scientist?" and "can the existence of god be independently verified?" follow.
You'll force this poor scientist to admit they're not a good scientist, or perhaps as a compromise you can say that the existence of god is a hypothesis which they have not yet been able to test to their satisfaction (which doesn't sound like belief to me).
Okay, that's actually not the most common result (I might expect a lecture on politesse, or perhaps a simple request to shut my trap). But I find it detestable to go around and tell people that they label themselves wrong, e.g., "You are not a true atheist." It's almost as villainous to say things like "Strong atheists do not exist." when there are plenty of people who claim to be strong atheists. Say instead something like, "strong atheism is not a tenable position." Or, "strong atheism is logically inconsistent." Then, at least, I won't think of you quite so poorly, and we can argue logic instead of identity.
For the record, I'm positive that there are many good scientists who are also Christians. I'm also positive that there are many strong atheists.
P.S. It's bad enough that as a bisexual male I don't exist, but as a strong atheist too I doubly don't exist. Harsh.
What I should have said was that most atheists, such as myself or Richard Dawkins, are really agnostics of the negligibly-small-probability variety.
To which I counter: "Needlepins & how many angels they can hold." It just doesn't matter.
"God lives in a place where reason can't go" is the kind of weak argument I hate most about theism. If you're arguing about the remote possibility of god existing, you're pulling at straws.
Is it so hard to accept that we are just animals with highly evolved, yet ultimately limited brains? Is it so hard to accept that we can't understand everything?
After all, atheism is commonly just a rejection ("a-") of theism. Adeism, if you will, would be the belief there is absolutely no god. Just like deism weakly claims there is a god but we aren't sure what it's like, but theism tells us everything about this god.
1. If you believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are a theist agnostic. (This is not that silly. Many people believe things they do not claim to know. For instance, you can believe that P != NP while acknowledging the question as unproven and unknown.)
2. If you don't believe in a god but don't claim to have knowledge, you are an atheist agnostic.
3. If you claim to know, not just believe, that a god exists, you're a theist (but not an agnostic).
4. If you claim to know there are no gods, you're an atheist (but not an agnostic).
6. If you claim that the question, "does a god exist?" cannot be answered before defining "god", then you are an ignosticist. An ignosticist who claims that "god" cannot be defined is therefore also claiming that "does a god exist?" can never be answered.
7. If you claim that the question, "does a god exist?" is not worth answering, then you are apatheistic.
8. Alternatively, if you choose to assume that the answer to the question, "does a god exist?" is "no", but do not consider it worth the effort to attempt to answer the question conclusively, then you are apatheistic.
9. If you claim that the question, "does a god exist?" cannot be answered because the question cannot be correctly communicated due to differences in the definition of "god" and/or "exist" between the idiolects of the persons attempting to communicate the question to each other, then you are a philosophy major.
9b. If (9) above applies but you manage to work the word "qualia" into the discussion, then you are a philosophy major and I'm changing the subject.
A stance of mine is: try not to talk to people who believe that they have a "rational" or "empirical" proof of God's existence for no bigger fool will you find.
1. Deism
2. Atheism
3. Theism
4. Strong atheism
However, since they only go as far as "God exists" and never get to the more exotic beliefs, namely the beliefs which always were and always will be taken on faith (God had a human son, who was also God, died, and was resurrected; God chose a Middle Eastern ethnic group for a special purpose; God revealed prophecies to certain people; God is from outer space) they weren't religious.
You qualified definition '1' with "this is not silly" - on the contrary, I think it is in many cases the most reasonable option.
My agnosticism is of the - God's existence cannot be proven or disproven (at least in my lifetime, or potentially within the human races existence as homo sapiens) so it's illogical to take the side of religion or anti-religion. The logical conclusion (to me) is that it is an unknowable variable, concerning myself with it is a wasted effort.
Besides Greek Mythology has all the cool stories, Heracles slaying Hyrdas and freeing Prometheus. If religion can't entertain me in the slightest then it truly holds no value to me.
Agnosticism, however, is a knowledge claim: It's the claim that God is is unknowable.
Agnosticism is 'There may be a god, but I don't care enough to claim one way or the other', I think the 'fence sitting' argument is good.
Atheism is: 'There is no god' ie, Richard Dawkins
Atheism is a stronger claim than Agnosticism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probabilit...
He describes himself as a 6 - that's an agnostic atheist. That means lacks belief, but does not entirely rule out the possibility of a deity.
You have just misquoted Richard Dawkins.
Agnostic: Unsure. Apatheist: Doesn't care. Atheist: Rejects theism.
I don't believe there is a god, so I am Atheist. I also don't think the answer to "is there a god?" can be answered definitiely. That makes me Agnostic. I also think that since the answer cannot be determined, the question is a silly one. That makes me an Apathist too.
I'd like to see a split between atheists and agnostics, particularly because the numbers are so high in that category in this community. I would guess that there would be many more agnostics than atheists. I don't think that being an entrepreneur is particularly bayesianly rational :)
I only ever interpreted the dichotomoy as 'there are zero deities' or 'there are one or more deities'.
Perhaps I like Pascal's Wager more than it deserves because it reminds me of: http://xkcd.com/525/
There is more than one definition of Atheism (some classify them in weak and strong atheism, but even these two classes aren't enough for some), and there are different "levels" of Agnosticism depending on your country or culture. Some of these differences are because of communication issues. For example, there is controversy if "lack of belief" and "disbelief" are synonymous (compare with "not liking" and "disliking"). When books on such topics are translated to other languages, such nuances may get lost.
Sure, but making a knowledge claim doesn't make it any less objective or wise than being neutral.
I can say that there is definitely not a red 1982 Chevy Silverado orbiting Jupiter and that's a "knowledge claim", yet someone who says they're not sure or are neutral about my claim don't hold a superior position in any sense and would, in fact, look a little silly given the lack of evidence against it.
The world makes equally amounts of sense for a religious person as it does to an atheist.
It's easy to dismiss religion when you're an atheist, because science makes so much sense that it is a perfectly adequate explanation of the world around us (in the sense that it acknowledges that proving things are difficult). But for a religious person, religion makes just as much sense and adequately explains the world around them.
I think the two should be viewed as poles that have nothing in common and are complete opposites. And both should acknowledge that either may or may not be correct.
Message boards would be a dying business, though.
On a personal level, I am a Christian and I believe in the Big Bang (let there be light). I don't have any problems with evolution (1). I believe in pursuing science and medicine is good and fits in fine with that whole dominion thing (Genesis 1:26). One's faith is awful fragile if using the mind we were given breaks our world. I personally can't prove a lot of things (love for example), but I have faith. I don't follow everything in the bible (for example: Deuteronomy 23:12-14 and Exodus 21:2-6), but it is an inspired work not literal and some practices just aren't acceptable these days. I really think it is also important to understand that there seems to be an unfortunate separation between people's belief and the earthly institutions that are supposed to embody them.
1) if you breed dogs for ability (e.g. hunting) and don't believe in evolution or Darwin's writings on the subject, then I am really confused how you explain the whole adaption thing.
In fact, religion has been fighting a rearguard action against science and the enlightenment for hundreds of years now; there's not a huge amount left to believe in, from what I can see.
Either science is bunk and god answers prayer, or science works and you can use medicine. Of course, the decisions to go to church as use medicine and largely automatic and irrational / social for many.
I think the reason that the world makes sense for most people is because they have their adequacy levels set too high - they're too used to 'hand wavy' explanations and not having to actually think through things for themselves.
And is there any difference really between a "because God said so" explanation and a "because the Doctor said so" explanation? To follow either, you must rely on faith in the goodness and wisdom of the instruction given as you don't fully understand the reasoning behind it. To the religious and science-skeptic alike, the explanations used by the other camp sounds "hand wavy".
But Truth is Truth and both religion and science, if practiced well, will guide the earnest seeker along.
It's not a false dichotomy at all, as far as I can see. If you take religion at face value, then of course modern medicine shouldn't work and faith healing should - one of these is going against the will of God after all. It's an adequate explanation most of the time... until you have to cure a disease.
How do you test/compare different, mutually-excluding hypothesis on the existence and characteristics of god given by the various religions?
You know perfectly well an all-powerful god is a logical impossibility.
I'm nonreligious because I don't believe claims without a good argument behind them. Buddhism is a set of claims without any good arguments just the same as Christianity, whether or not those claims are about gods and resurrected demigods or not.
(I think this is possible)
All religions have something useful to be gleaned, as do nearly all books, even if the useful content of that book amounts to a single sentence.
Buddhist hell is not a place or something to believe in, but it's an explanation of a certain state of mind. The same for god.
So it's not a tradition or something to believe in (btw it's nothing to believe in buddhism as it'd contradict the basis of a buddhism where you just practice with the guidance of your teacher, you don't believe in things but rather check them).
Btw it's a pity and quite a cultural harm that mistranslations or just inability of western discoverers of buddhism to think beyond some closed view caused spreading lots of bullshit about buddhism.
Disclosure: I created this awhile ago and almost forgot about it until I saw this poll
- It would be great if this were true (Yay afterlife/alternate worlds!)
- No one can provide any convincing evidence for existence.
- It is impossible to prove nonexistence.
- The truth of this matter has absolutely no influence on my life. i.e. focus on other things should take priority before focus on this, although it is always fun to read about and debate existence.
Truth of the matter is, when misfortune/tragedy strikes (like the loved ones having health problems) it really helps to believe in God.
My wife just gave birth to a premature child. He's a boy and he's in very good health, but he was born at 30 weeks (now he's at 32). Her water broke at 27 weeks.
We were on the cutting-edge with this pregnancy ever since the start ... she had 2 embryonic bags (most likely twins) and lost one, causing her an ugly hemorrhage and a detachment of the other bag. This detachment was nullified by the child growing, and her water breaking was totally unrelated to that (urinary infection).
After the water broke, the child stayed in her for another 3 weeks, because at 27 weeks children are not viable. This was a dangerous and highly unlikely outcome ... when water breaks most women go into labor immediately. And if not ... it is dangerous because the amniotic fluid was mostly gone and both mother and child could have suffered (even death) from a uterus infection.
And I could say that this was just our luck or that we had some kind of a divine intervention ... I prefer the later, and I would probably go mad if it was the former.
I also noticed another thing ... I have several friends that are now doctors, and I also made lots of friends in the hospital since my wife was hospitalized. People working in health-care have an easier time believing in God than in any other profession I know. Probably because they witness highly unlikely events a lot (miracles do happen).
I know a great many doctors, nurses and other health-care workers and I don't know a single one who believes in any gods. Maybe it's just a UK thing, but watching good people die painfully and slowly is fairly destructive to blind faith in an allegedly benevolent god.
> miracles do happen
[citation needed]
How about the other way around? ... people surviving with all odds against them.
> [citation needed]
I think I just gave you one.
The occasional lucky survivor does not somehow balance out the rest.
> people surviving with all odds against them.
Sometimes people survive when doctors think they won't. The human body is remarkably resilient. That makes it unlikely. Unlikely != miracle.
2. I know of no documented miracles. In fact, such a proposition is unproveable, as is the claim that "miracles do happen".
Thing is, anything can happen ... it's just a matter of probability. Think of any impossible event (like an angel, i.e. a shiny humanoid with wings, integrating in front of your eyes) and that's possible. It's just highly unlikely.
In that light I consider miracles to be very unlikely events. Life on earth is such an event, especially since we haven't found proof that life exists on other planets yet, although we have found the proper conditions (like water).
And if life exists on such a planet, did it manage to evolve like us? This is even more unlikely since we may not have the means to observe bacteria from a distance, but we could observe artificial lights and non-random radio signals coming from other planets.
And then ... if we manage to build interstellar ships and expand to other planets, that will be prof in itself that no other intelligent beings managed to do that ... simply because aliens had a lot of time to expand to earth before we appeared (after all, if you have enough room to expand, the growth rate is exponential).
You can say that life happened by chance, but currently intuition suggests otherwise.
Not only that ... but the miracles you witness everyday stop being miracles. Babies being born are a miracle, simply because this probably doesn't happen in any other of the billions of galaxies. And you being able to transcend your original condition and reason about such things is another.
Why can't you do enough in one life? Craving for an afterlife is the pastime of procrastinators.
Whenever you try to proof anything, you assume the world is causal/deterministic. An omnipotent influence is therefore also deterministic. This makes any god equal to a law of nature. Define your 'law that is a god' and it can be proven to exist/not-exist in theory.
Must there be a God for there to be an afterlife?
Where did stuff come from? There are two possibilities, either 1] it was put there, or 2] it was just there to begin with.
God is an easy solution, but then where did he come from? Same problem.
Maybe there are other possibilities that our brains just aren't able to process at this stage in our evolution.
Anyway, before anyone says "the big bang", isn't that the explanation of how stuff got where it is, rather than how it came to be to begin with? It started with a singularity, where'd that come from?
God isn't made of matter and does not experience linear time.
(We can't comprehend the answer to this question).
Voila. You nailed it.
The fundamental concept of a god can be easily grasped by small children. There is a powerful being. He controls physical laws. How hard is that?
Einstein's theory wasn't believed by the public until it was proven.
So yes ... if God exists, our primary senses cannot perceive Him, and although I have reasons to believe He exists, all of them are subjective, but as our species evolves we may actually be able to.
It's delicious to theorise for fun.
One day we may even figure it out.
Strings shorter than four symbols long are to be registered directly under .ly ONLY through Libya Telecom and Technology in the upcoming period to guarantee that registrants have Local presence.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=what§i...
My opinion is that the argument FOR the existence of God is just as philosophically bankrupt to argue AGAINST the existence of God. Best answer: I don't know.
Secular humanism covers the majority of my values without ascribing to any dogmatism. I have a feeling a lot more people are actually secular humanist, but may not know it.
Also, I bet there's at least 14 people here who would fill out 'Jedi' on their census form.
What are the ontological claims of paganism? Precisely which supernatural beings does paganism assert the existence of?
In recent decades, people (for whatever reason) decided to try and restart paganism--if you meet a "pagan" today, they're actually following one of these reconstituted religions.
I personally have trouble taking neopaganism seriously, largely because I've never known any serious neopagans, only disaffected suburban teenage girls who wanted some excuse, however flimsy, to be nonconformists. I've known people who took religion seriously, and I've known neopagans, but I've never met anyone in the intersection set. So my perception of neopaganism is quite dismissive.
There's a lot of very serious and studious Pagans out there, but they don't tend to be as obviously 'look at me, I'm SPOOKY' as the kids you're talking about. For a trivially easy to find example, consider the Pagan Federation. In Scotland they work with government interfaith groups and are consulted for things like religious diversity training material and non-denominational chapels in hospitals.
Most Pagans I know look a lot more like RMS than someone who shops at Hot Topic.
There's Wicca, who believe in most of the things you see in the 'Idiots Guide' books to Witchcraft, there's various different breeds of reconstructionists who take archeological information about the ancient Pagan religions, fill in the many blanks to make it more appropriate for modern life, and have a go at that. They might believe in anything from the Norse pantheon to the Greek one.
There's Druids, who are proper nature-worshippers and really do perform ceremonies at Stonehenge, when they get a chance in between all the hippies.
There's technopagans, who believe in the spirit in the machine.
LeVay Satanists tend to get included under 'Paganism', although they might object. Same with Discordians.
It's an eclectic group.
thanks now I'm picturing a stealthed YC startup with exactly 14 employees, and their business is making and selling light-sabres
It's interesting to me that several people I greatly admire in comp sci/technology are religious: Fred Brooks, Knuth, Larry Wall and Clayton Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma).
To me, one aspect of the idea of God is as a workable label for all the things I don't know (especially those questions I know not of; the doors I have not suspected exist; the things my philosophy does not dream of; the unknown unknowns). Also helps me to seek questions (define problems) even if I can't imagine knowing the answer (finding solutions). It helps me to just let it be.
Another aspect is political: human beings, like other apes, tend to organize around a dominant male (and even chickens have a pecking order). When groups grew in size due to agriculture and civilization, this scaled to super-dominant males - gods embodied in persons (I'm thinking ancient Egypt). This was dangerous. The next innovation was to transfer that "super-dominance" to a person who doesn't actually exist. This is safer, and of course this imaginary personage can embody all those ideas an actual human can only move towards but never attain. Although wars were still fought in the name of a God, there was a separation. That's a theory of mine anyway. Feel free to poke holes, build it up, tear it down (esp with evidence).
Looking through history and trying to discern intent is a difficult thing to do. I don't think any of the development of God(s) as a concept was done with much long term intent but was likely as most things are done the result of mutually beneficial agreements made on the spot to secure wealth and power between the parties to the agreement.
Basically, stuff happens and then people talk their book, each gains a number of supporters and the interested parties create a consensus or official truth that best meshes with the official truth from the previous event. The magna carta wasn't signed because the King or Parliament had some love of freedom. The opportunity existed for a power grab and they took it. Even the Declaration of Independence was heavily watered down after it reached committee. Sure, Jefferson and Washington might have been true believers but most of the signatories were want to exclude things that would negatively impact their bottom line. (eg. abolishing slavery). Look at the list of grievances it's mostly about money.
This is a very superficial perspective, born of a bad recollection of history.
Christianity gained dominance and power during the fall of Rome, a movement born on the streets of a decaying society, with the Christians prosecution having the negative effect of drawing the attention of the public ... a public which was hungry for a saner sense of moral values.
The power grabbing taking place was only to secure their freedom of religion, at least initially.
Of course, as with all religions ... Christianity was used to control the masses and did ended being used for power grabbing. But that's mostly because uneducated masses are stupid as cows ... and you can credit the translated Bibles for people's willingness to learn how to read.
I would however assert an unnecessary semantic overloading -- why use a word (God) that has so many assumptions built into it? Invent a new word, and confuse fewer people.
You seem to assume that the later is a bad outcome. Also you can't really have a useful "imaginary friend" if don't believe he's real, or do you?
> why use a word (God) that has so many assumptions built into it? Invent a new word, and confuse fewer people.
Because God is word with a clearly defined semantic and definition ...
the supernatural being conceived as the perfect and omnipotent and
omniscient originator and ruler of the universe
considering the law of Action-Reaction, how did it all started?
there can't be two unsurpassable beings each of which is God
Which is why theistic religions don't stop with God. They say things like, "God exists, and he says don't eat pork. Seriously. DON'T EAT PORK." That's actionable.
Just one question now (for Atheists): Why don't you believe in God. Do you have a good reason? Is it because it doesn't interest you? Is it because of a scientific theory that proved to you that God don't exist?
I was taught from a very young age certain things about God and man: that God was all-knowing and all-powerful; that God was the creator of everything; that man was irrevocably prone to sin and therefore needed a savior; that God chose certain people to save; that heaven was the ultimate destination for those who were saved; etc...
As I grew older, I began to realize that other people had substantially different beliefs from the ones with which I had been inculcated. This was a realization only because I had been intentionally isolated from people who thought differently from my parents and educators. I noticed that what these different belief systems had in common was their moral program. All Abrahamic religions, and many others, prescribe how people ought to behave. But this moral program is not much different from common sense under conditions of abundance. The ways in which they differ are more interesting and are mostly tuned to ensure their adherents perpetuate the system.
So, with this in hand, it became readily apparent that the bulk of organized religion was a historical artifact from the time when peoples of old were figuring out how to treat one another (back at the emergence of what we term "civilization"). It is possible (and in my opinion, now necessary) to separate moral education from religious indoctrination since, ironically, much of the unrest in civilization is now caused by the differences in religious prescription rather than differences in morality.
Either that, or religious thought reeks of delusion and lacks any evidence whatsoever for what it claims. Seriously, I don't know any religious person who can demonstrate any reason for their belief other than indoctrination. Prove me wrong.
To use a source I'm sure you know, in I Corinthians 13 there is an apparent contradiction: even if you act piously, you act in vain if if you don't feel love. The religious experience is emotional and visceral, not logical. It comes before codes and rules. From this perspective, Pascal's Wager is irrelevant: if you don't follow a moral code because you believe in it, then you won't fool anyone, much less an omniscient God.
I was using the word "prove" ironically. My actual contention was that believers lack not just proof, but also reason. They act certain, but cannot explain their certainty except with self-referential argument. It was this inability to maintain coherence that finally undid my faith.
[citation needed]
Most of the unrest in civilization has the same source it's always had: fighting over wealth and/or power. Often leaders of these fights will claim some religious reason but what you have to ask yourself is; if you took religion out of the equation would they stop fighting or would they come up with some other reason.
I presume what you had in mind was the US vs. Iraq/Afghanistan but given that we know there were no terrorists (nor WMDs) in Iraq what "religious" component was there exactly? There are some pretty obvious "power" components though.
But my question was mainly to check if you are not believing for a specific reason. A simple reason is "If God exist, why doesn't him make his existence CLEAR, without ambiguity by some kind of magical power or miracle."
I don't think non-believers "not-believe" for a specific reason, just as believers don't believe for a specific reason.
It just seems highly unlikely that there's a "god". Just as it seems highly unlikely that there are aliens from another planet living among us, or that I can levitate by merely willing it to happen. Quite unlikely, but happy to be shown/proven wrong :)
What will it cost you to believe in God while you are alive? Nothing.
What will it cost you if there really is a god and you chose not to believe? Could cost you eternity. So why not believe? The upside is (in the worst case) the same as not believing, but the downside (in the worst case) could be eternal damnation.
This is ofcourse assuming that the person that does exist, believes in the right god.
How is it that easy? We're not picking a team to support in the Finals series. The idea of believing in a "god" to me is as foreign as believing in a tooth fairy. When an employee of mine is openly religious, it is to me akin to him espousing a belief in something purely fantastical - tooth fairy, Santa Claus, etc. His choice and I don't deride it, but to me it is all entirely bizarre.
When I look at mysteries of our existence, of the creation of our universe, at no point does any fibre of my being whatsoever think to consider that a god-like higher power might be behind it all.
And even if you could force yourself to believe, without doubt, which god are you going to believe in to guarantee yourself some sort of 'eternity'?
Time. Money. Freedoms.
That aside, how can you say it'd "cost nothing"? It would cost me my integrity.
Another debunking of this argument: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZpJ7yUPwdU
And there is the problem of 'multitude of religions' which other people (and you) have mentioned.
I find it quite baffling that anyone can believe in a god, actually. I mean, surely the logical inconsistencies in pretty much all religions must bother you? And moving away from organized religion, why would you believe in a "god"?
Quite good. We have a brain, we should analyze things and not only accept them as they are.
I find it quite baffling that anyone can believe in a god, actually. I mean, surely the logical inconsistencies in pretty much all religions must bother you?
A very good reason. The inconsistencies in religions are huge and spawn lot of doubts.
Just so you know, it wasn't always this way. I used to believe in Allah (as a Muslim).
However, more recently I have recognised that underneath that, deep down I just don't believe that there is a God - while simultaneously acknowledging the unprovability of this belief. So I now self-describe as atheist, and the reason why seems to be a deep-seated feeling that the theory of the existence of God just doesn't sit right. A non-God Universe is just somehow more... elegant.
It's also worth pointing out that I don't see a good practical reason to believe in a God, either. Since the God-theory makes no testable predictions, it is of little value in explaining the world around us. Explaining the past in terms of miracles perpetrated by an ineffable being gives us no guide for what to expect in the future, and is thus not worthwhile, even if it is correct.
I also happen to think that these religions' interpretations of the world are wrong.
Most people value religion because of its moral lessons (see PG's essay on relgious 'package deals' - I think it was in Why Nerds Are Unpopular), and perhaps fear the 'moral vacuum' of a godless world. But personally I have no trouble deriving morality from logic/reason and empirical data, so I have no need for religion.
For the record I think most of the Ten Commandments are valuable lessons regardless of their divinity.
But I'm always amused at how religious people always drop back to arguing the existence of God. The existence of God by itself is a useless metaphysical claim. There's the physical universe. I get that. We can use science to figure out the physical universe. I get that. If you attach a caption to the universe saying "by the way, an all-powerful deity made this", how exactly does that matter?
Religion gets the real work done when it says, "the all-powerful deity doesn't want you buggering other men or eating shellfish." OK, you started with an unproven metaphysical claim, and then used it to try and convince me to change my dietary and sexual habits. You've gone from vacuous to inventing unproven reasons not to bugger other men or eat shellfish! That's the thing about religion I question the most! It doesn't matter whether God exists. Once you start making actionable claims that rest on the idea of the Almighty approving or disapproving of my behavior, that's where I actually start to disagree with you.
That said, what I'd like to know is why other people actually believe this? If you were to find your holy text in a cereal box and read it in totality now, would you truly think it a divinely inspired text? Or is it simply an ancient perspective hangover that has not diverted enough attention to it's structure to warrant a full critical analysis?
I expected even more of a skew toward atheism than I saw here, actually.
So, a question to your question, is there a good reason you believe in it (assuming you do)?
Edit: petervandijck said it better above me.
For my part I believe in God because he speaks to me regularly and I'm the last person you'd expect that to happen to. I was minding my own business when I started hearing from God. Everyone I knew at the time was totally shocked and it took me over two years to accept what God was telling me (i.e. that the Bible is for real and I would do well to listen to what he's saying through it to me). I read Nietzsche and Russell in college and enjoyed them. I didn't really like Christianity as a religion much but I was nice to Christians I met and didn't really argue with them much. I didn't believe in anything but was respectful to everyone in other words.
My life now is defined by me trying to connect with God and make the most of my time here. I'm not trying to earn anything but I'm working because my God works all the time on my behalf. If God is my father then doing what he does is only the right thing to do if I'm actually his son. I split my time between serving adults (pastoring type stuff), children (Sunday school stuff), and the poor (I run a temporary food pantry). I also run a business to support my family, help my community, and build wealth. I keep busy and wouldn't change anything.
For me not believing in God is pretty hard even though I've seen some pretty bad things happen to people in my community that we prayed to turn around for over two years in one case. The only thing to do in the face of massive disappointment is to continue on. I've seen amazing responses to prayer and some big unanswered prayers too. Jesus prayer before he was arrested was unanswered as well. I take some comfort in that.
Life is pretty complicated and there are no easy answers especially when it comes to God and a life of faith. For me the stakes of life were raised considerably when I started following Jesus. It's not easy but it's not me to figure it all out either. The only faith I argue for is a living faith with a deep connection to a living God. I'd encourage to learn about that faith--not the faith that people say is found in books. No one in the Bible lived that way why should you or anyone else?
Lets say, for the sake of argument. You don't believe in god. What would stop you from doing the above things you mentioned? Would it be fair for me to make an assumption (and I apologize if I am wrong), that you are not necessarily doing those noble things because you think those things will help people, but possibly you are doing those things to appease your god so that you get a better after life.
Assuming my above assumption is right (again I apologize if its not), do you see the inconsistency in your morality?
What is that like?
Of course, there are plenty of reasonable people who don't find them compelling. There's a lot of room for individual judgment in this area, and the subject is so incredibly complex that I don't find it surprising that thoughtful people come to completely different conclusions.
Why explain that beauty away by adding a god-figure in there? Isn't the universe even more beautiful and majestic without a (fairly silly) "outside creator" explanation?
Your explanation also logically doesn't make sense. You say: I can't believe there is nothing behind it. But then what is behind God? Who created him? You can believe that? It's logically inconsistent, and makes me think that perhaps you haven't thought this through very well.
There's a similar argument around consciousness. The naive interpretation of consciousness is always: "there's a little man inside my head doing the thinking", a little "me", something that represents the self. But then, who is the little man inside the head of the little man? Same flawed logic. The latest thinking/science now says that consciousness just "arises" from processes in our brain. And the "me" is mostly an illusion. Which is, funnily, quite close to the Buddhist interpretation of the self.
Does it mean considering that an idea you hold in your mind is a valid conceptual representation of some aspect of external reality?
Or does it mean to value an idea in itself, irrespective of its relationship with any autonomous external reality?
As I find with many atheists, I believe there may be some higher power, but it does not affect my daily life (outside of the way in which religious beliefs have become societal norms or vice versa).
You should take into account that those religions appeared hundred, yet thousands of year before you. They are custom made for the population of that time and they should have basic ideas that their brains can understand. So those religions may not meet your expectation. But, this in itself, is not a reason to say "God doesn't exist". You should dig somewhere else.
As I find with many atheists, I believe there may be some higher power
Scientifically speaking, there are not sort of "higher power".
I am not looking to criticize Americans here, but I think in everyday life, there isn't all that much of a difference with less religious European countries, in spite of the apparent emphasis on religion here in the US.
You cannot tell religion till it is unpopular, and oftentimes till it is persecuted.
When the concept of God is invoked, it is usually not precisely defined. In various interpretations, it is a life force permeating the universe itself, or a being that is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient, or a being that has a "personal guiding light" relationship to every individual human, or a force that was "the prime mover" that setup the conditions of the universe just right, wound up the spring and then let it go, and has never interfered since, or rarely.
So, we postulate the existence of an ill-defined 'thing' or 'being' that has multiple unrelated purposes: to establish an explanation to questions about physical reality which are unexplained by current scientific knowledge; to establish a moral society; to establish a system of personal ethics for an individual human; to establish a sense of security and purpose in an evil and impersonal universe. Mind you, in the most common statement, all of these postulates are untestable in principle, under the guise of "well, if it was testable, it wouldn't be faith, would it?"
So, Occam's razor, in its Wikipedia form, is that an explanation with the fewest new assumptions is usually the correct one. An explanation that requires assuming an entity with multiple qualities, where each one of those qualities is untestable in principle, fails with aplomb.
But even if I did believe that there would be something up there, I don't believe in a Christian God - in fact I know such a person couldn't exist - because the bible has so many contradictions in it.
Otherwise, it's just a personal feeling about an English word. Which doesn't have much meaning to me. I have some workable idea about what God should be for me, I can even believe in it, but I guess it wouldn't make any sense to you or anybody else -- and I still remain an atheist :-)
In the specific case of the roman catholic church I believe the pope should be arrested & trialed for crimes against humanity, stripped of his powers; vatican city should be dissolved & any claims of diplomatic immunity should be rejected. Never gonna happen though.
People are afraid that they might have it wrong, so they allow themselves to assert that since they cannot disprove the existence of "God" or some other inexplicable thing, then it could exist (or as some will further conclude, does exist). This little bit of fallacious logic can allow one to conclude that anything could be possible. It's rooted in the fear of uncertainty.
Still others will believe in an ephemeral "God" which they attribute to the unquanitifiable or undetermined aspects of the universe. Many scientists who also claim to be religious hold this view of the unverse (as far as I know). They will find "God" in their pursuit of the prime numbers, unexplained quantum phenomena, or some other mysterious corner of existence. However, I also find this view fallacious as the relational model of the universe will keep these "believers" continously finding new "Gods" all the time. We will figure out the prime numbers eventually, and there are more and more quantum phenomena explained by very solid theories.
It's like people with ghost stories. I know lots of people with stories about their encounters with ghosts. I've never seen one. I've looked and never seen one. Every story about ghosts usually involve a single person and rarely have witnesses. Why is that? If ghosts exist and are part of the natural order of the universe, why haven't I seen one? Why aren't they as normal as birds, trees, and air?
Any charlatan will generally be able to fill in the blanks here. Ghosts only make themselves known. I can't see them because I don't believe. Without any evidence for the existence their nature cannot be known so a person could attribute any sort of story about the nature of ghosts. So really the only real attribute about ghosts is that they make for useful literary devices.
Similarily, if "God" is a natural part of the universe (and indeed created the whole thing) why are any of us debating whether "God" exists at all? It's precisely because "God" doesn't exist that we can debate endlessly about the nature of "God" and it's existence. Our fear and uncertainty will permit us to assert the possiblity of "God"'s existence.
I have no such fear.
What I do fear is the culmination of such uncertainty and fear organizing into legally-recognized institutions that brow-beat the public into tolerating their beliefs.
I attended a Catholic school for middle school, and convinced myself that I would become Catholic one day. I expected that upon going off to college and being able to decide my own life that I'd covert quite soon.
Instead, I became a mathematician in more ways than just study, and began trying to generalize and abstract everything in my life. The oft-observed similarities of religions at their roots, but divergence at the "dos and don'ts" level gave rise to this conclusion:
In my being (indeed, in all beings, I should think) there is a place, a little box often marked "faith". There are a very large number of things you can put there, but the _important_ things that come out of it are always the same: be good to others, be good to yourself, be happy. Everything else attached to religions only serves to cloud those ideas. Though I could thus put anything into that box, it will always have the same result, and so for the moment, I leave it empty, and draw on the same lessons.
It's like there is an abstract class definition for faith, and I'm using a _very_ trivial implementation based on constants, because it's quite a bit faster and more efficient than the other options out there.
There is a belief in good and bad fortune which can be altered by prayer to various spirits. The shrine sells lots of trinkets to help improve your luck in various aspects of your life. It reminds me a bit of Catholics who keep a St. Christopher trinket in their car for safe travels. At the shrine where I got married, it was discovered that there was a "power spot" on a path behind the shrine: a little puddle of water from a nearby spring. People would line up to take a turn standing in front of it and say a prayer.
We visit our local shrine on holidays, mostly because it is fun and peaceful. Sometimes there are festivals with good food, drink and music. People here will celebrate and visit a church, a temple (buddhist), or a shrine (shinto) without really seeing that there might be inconsistency. Christian weddings are very popular these days because the girls like to dress up in the princess-like "costume". I was recently told that you often don't know what religion someone is until they die: because then it comes down to what part of the cemetery do they put your ashes in.
Thank you.
Allow me to plug a speech by Douglas Adams before any discussion attempts to ensure: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
also, 3 scientologists? gosh.
What can I say? I thought Atheism was just boring.
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On a serious note, I think many people who believe in science/technology, and/or practice its many disciplines, are more likely to logically consider questions/claims relating to religion in the same way they evaluate other aspects of society. In the absence of observable evidence, many will be undecided about the existence of God, or will conclude that there is no god, and choose "Nonreligious/Atheist/Agnostic" to describe their own beliefs.
And (very important), if you ask "what is your faith/belief?", nobody can escape the question saying "not relevant".
Numerous studies have shown that this is not correct.
You are right in the sense that it is impossible to live life as a pure empiricist - at some point you have to take some things on trust, and probably on faith.
But a deity faith is not required. :)
Perhaps you can be purely empiricist if you have no conscious awareness. But if you are conscious, you can approximate empiricism by maintaining awareness of the distinction between reality and your understanding of it.
Perhaps people who grew up in a household loosely practicing a major religion are less likely to see their religion as part of their cultural heritage and therefor more likely to leave it?
Apatheistic starts with, "I don't care whether god exists." But it often continues from there, and apatheists can also include as their beliefs "Questions of theology should not motivate morality." Some apatheists are strongly atheistic and not agnostic, saying "God doesn't exist, but this fact is irrelevant to human affairs." I find apatheist theists not inconceivable, "God exists but who cares?"
Kind of like when you ask, "How many feet are there in a mile?" and I say, "The answer to your question is irrelevant because you should switch to metric. It is wrong to use imperial units for any purpose. And there are 5,280 feet in a mile." I can honestly say that I don't care how many feet there are in a mile, and yet I know the correct number.
There are atheists and there are militant atheists. I guess what you described sounds to me as a definition of militant agnosticism. Have I missed something important?
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Moreover you'll find that fanatical atheists will count you as an atheist - cf the Wikipedia article on this term.
what is that, Googleism?