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> But... there were, are, and will yet be many intelligent people of different religions that, for various empirically-unprovable reasons, feel there is a God - even if they know at an intellectual level that their current church or belief system isn't entirely consistent or correct.

No one should be denied the freedom to follow these feelings, within the boundaries of not infringing on other people's rights and liberties.

Having said that, please accept mass delusions do happen, smart and intelligent people do get caught in them, and so this is no proof of a god. You need material proof, and there is none.

I agree with most of your comment. However, when you say

> You need material proof, and there is none.

I would like to add the the old adage holds true - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Also, this is more for the god as an almighty person in the sky type of case. For a person who considers the natural elements as god, it is simply different)

> I would like to add the the old adage holds true - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Oh but it is - it's not proof of absence but it is evidence. Any piece of evidence must have two sides - if observing A would increase your confidence that B, then observing not A must reduce your confidence that B.

That's like monkeys being observed by scientists behind one way mirrors saying they have evidence that there is no one watching them because they've never seen any scientists. But that would be a mistaken assumption because the scientists intentionally made themselves difficult to observe for the purposes of their research (monkeys behave differently if they know they are being watched).

I think most religious people would agree that God intentionally makes it impossible to verify his existence at a social level via empirical means... but that he does provide evidence of his existence at the individual level by speaking directly to you via spiritual experiences.

> I think most religious people would agree that God intentionally makes it impossible to verify his existence at a social level via empirical means

Funny how that went from an obscure, almost certainly heretical idea to mainstream in such a short time.

It kind of had to, otherwise modern religous belief just falls apart. At this point the only plausible explanation for a religious person why there's no hard evidence of God is that he intentionally hides his existence from us.

Technically only true for formal systems where you can axiomatically define A = not A, which is principally arbitrary.

And to that I say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Christianity has had 2000 years to produce extraordinary evidence. What's the hold up?

An empty grave is, in fact, "extraordinary evidence".

You mean, somebody wrote down "eye witness" accounts many decades after the event occurred (that contradict each other in important ways. Like, which day was Jesus crucified? The day after Passover was eaten (Synoptic gospels) or the day before it was eaten? (John)), that have absolutely no way to be verified. I don't see how that is "extraordinary evidence." Some ancients also claimed to see various pagan Gods, but I'm guessing you don't consider that to be "evidence."

The reverse of that adage holds even truer - absence of evidence is not evidence of existence.

> respect their religious liberty even if you disagree

Believe and do whatever you want with respect to religion, so long as it doesn't extend to telling me what I can or cannot do because of your beliefs.

You and others have my full support for religious liberty up until that line (overwhelmingly in the form of "yeah, whatever; I literally could not care less what you believe or do").

> It's important to respect their religious liberty even if you disagree

Respect in what sense? My stepsister is religious so I "respect" her by not talking about this subject.

But if she ever talk with me about religion I would say that I'm an atheist who believe that all religions are a kind of self deception to make believers feel better..

By not writing off everyone who is religious as categorically wrong or incorrect in every other category?

Which no one in this thread has done? The article even has advice on this matter quoted at the root of this thread: "reminding us that falling for such fictions doesn’t make us stupid or bad people".

Confidently labeling religious beliefs as "fictions" seemed a bit disrespectful to me.

Labelling it fiction is more respectful than labelling it baloney. But if the belief is non-falsifiable or outrigth falsified, then it is baloney.

People should be allowed to belive whatever they want, but that does not mean other should have to belive it.

Belief in any one religion usually entails a corresponding belief that all other religions are "fictions".

Atheism is just adding one number to that count.

That's sad. I'd assume your love for you sister would make you find common ground in doubt and humility, virtues of both science and religion. Every single human tells themselves lies to feel better, we just call them Justice or Democracy. We're just self-conscious meatbags thrust into existence against our will, after all.

> It's important to respect their religious liberty even if you disagree.

I respect other people's right to have strongly-held beliefs about roughly anything, even if they're wrong. I'd rather they were wrong, than that they "believed" something that is beyond belief and disbelief.

In the case of "beliefs" that are unverifiable in principle, well I don't count those as beliefs; and equally, I don't think it's possible to disagree with such "beliefs". I'm with Wittgenstein on that; these are things that you can state (or deny) completely grammatically, but whose assertion (or denial) is meaningless.

I also like the idea that if a thing can't, in principle, make a detectable difference to the world, then it doesn't make sense to speak of it as real or unreal.

Exactly this. If a belief can't generate a testable prediction, even one not necessarily testable by us right now, but testable in principle, then that belief is meaningless. There's no basis to claim its true or false, it has no impact on reality whatsoever. It's a waste of effort to even think about it.

This is the textbook definition of the religion of Scientism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Sure, whatever. Call it religion if you like, but try and define something existing or being true in a way that doesn't involve making testable predictions.

Thanks for the wikipedia link.

It says that Dennett and the "New Atheists" assert "that God does not exist". That perfectly exemplifies my point: you can't use non-verifiability to prove that God doesn't exist. What it proves is that neither an unverifiable claim nor it's contradiction is meaningful.

From the wiki article, it looks to me like my position isn't Scientism at all. The article presents Scientism as a kind of fallacy: attempting to apply some version of scientific method to everything. What I'm on about is more like ternary logic: a thing can be True, or it can be False, or it can be neither. It's closer to Not Even Wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

This is why discussions of free will and living in a simulation seem pointless to me. I’ve never heard of a way to test them.

Provide me a test and I’ll happily reconsider!

The simulation hypothesis is in principle testable in that, if we were in a simulation, we may be able to find bugs in it, possibly even escape the sandbox. Right now, we don't have any "angle of attack", and nothing we could suspect of being a bug (which includes e.g. being able to perceive artifacts of some optimization in the simulation) - so there's no point in working oneself up about this, or assuming it's true. However, because this is testable in theory and there's a possibility it'll become testable in practice, it doesn't qualify as fundamentally "meaningless" in my book.

The article did not advocate for disrespecting liberty.

It actually very hilariously directly talked about exactly your post:

“Gut feelings” and “people experiencing things” are not independently verifiable facts. In fact, every time religious experiences are tested, they are not repeatable or verifiable.

Repeatability and verifiability aren’t the be-all/end-all criteria for knowledge/truth.

Thus is over-selling science as the only avenue to truth/knowledge.

Where does it leave formal/mathematical/theoretical knowledge?

Where does this leave historical and political facts?

Moral truths?

Science is at best instrumentalism.

Respecting your religious liberty does not mean suppressing my opinions about religion.

Your religious freedom is not more important than my rights of speech or freedom from religion.

>It's important to respect their religious liberty even if you disagree.

I respect people's religious liberty for the same reason I respect any other kind of freedom of belief.

I do not know what it means to respect a religion. Either a prophet actually witnessed what they claim to have witnessed, or they are lying, or they are delusional. Perhaps Jesus and Moses and Siddhartha Gautama get a pass because we don't know exactly what they said or did, but how can a non-believer explain Joseph Smith or Mohammad as anything except insane or malicious? What does respect for a religion look like when I believe that its most sacred figures are the most contemptible of con men?

I am respectful in that I don't go around insulting people. I am respectful in that I understand life is hard and people find comfort wherever they can. But respect for the victims of a scam does not imply respect for the scam itself. I can understand the fear of poverty, and I can understand the temptation of wealth, but the people who write me saying I will inherit $15 million still belong in prison.

To me, "respect" means only a base level of tolerance that we should give to people believing in things. Respecting someone else's religious belief doesn't mean validating or endorsing it. And it doesn't prevent one from criticizing it. Just because someone's belief is religious doesn't give them a free "get out of criticism" pass.

We should treat religious belief just like we treat belief in other supernatural things or in other types of extraterrestrial life.

God is not falsifiable.

If anything, "god" exposes aspects of human psychology that we understand poorly and often don't have the maturity to discuss rationally.

But I will say this: Anyone who says things like "God wants you to do XXX" is trying to manipulate you.

People are products of their environment.

What are the chances a child born to christian parents will be a christian vs a buddhist?

Why as the access to knowledge has been increasing more and more people are becoming non-believers?

Why have religious beliefs in the sun, lighting, fire, etc. vanished as we developed full understanding of the phenomena?

What makes you think you will be able to justify sticking to your "gut feelings, therefore god" position as we develop a greater understanding of the brain?

I wish parents would respect religious disbelief of their kids as much as scientists respect religious beliefs.

You seem to have restated Sagan's position with more words. What about your comment differs from his assertion? I'm not seeing it?

You’d have to read the book to get more context on his sadness of losing his parents and his reflections on being susceptible during that time. A famous quote is:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark