Sorry JamesR. I do not have you on ignore.
I think I have explained all the points you rasised, and will just end up repeating myself if I explain them again.
jan.
Any atheists here who were once believers?
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Sorry JamesR. I do not have you on ignore.
I think I have explained all the points you rasised, and will just end up repeating myself if I explain them again.
jan.
Yes, you are making a positive claim for the existence of God based on nature, yet nature does not show God, nature shows only nature. It is not a philosophical puzzle, it is a fact.
Sorry Jan, but that is not using logic, that is indeed lying. You can believe in God, but it is a lie to say God exists based on logic or nature. And, your belief in God can be equated to belief in anything, such as leprechauns riding unicorns in the Kentucky Derby. Belief is one thing, lying is another.
Sorry Jan, that is not using logic, that is a another lie. Our understanding of our existence is based on evolution, not God.
You are the result of millions of years of evolution, Jan. You came from your parents.
The purpose of life is what we make it as individuals. We each decide our purpose. Often though, fulfilling our purpose may not be that easy depending on our circumstances.
Jan's religion has taught her to lie about almost everything, but as we all know, once you start a lie, you must continue building on that lie with more lies and eventually you run out of lies.
You are free to point out any lies you wish. I have no problem with that. I await your critique.
That escalated quickly.
That escalated quickly.
Not really a problem. Atheism would be the default position whether we knew how the universe started or not. You still haven't shown that there is a god, or the origin of god for that matter.
I would amend that to say: everything is what it is regardless of what we think it is. If we're lucky enough to measure and learn what it is, then we can say we know what it is. If we're not that fortunate, we can make assumptions about what it is, and if we're even less fortunate, we can slide into the realm of superstition, in which case we lose the distinction between what we know and what we imagine.
That's touching more on science than atheism. The atheists would hold agnostics to be honest, in that they admit that they do not know the unknowable. The atheists would tend to view religious people as dishonest, to the extent religious people claim to know the unknowable. The more overt cases of religious dishonesty that atheists would attack are the religious claims that other facts about nature that fall within the purview of scientific knowledge are, by some religious opinion, false or incorrect. The ultimate question is: what do we know, and what do we only imagine? At present, we know that all of religious ideation lives in the domain of imagination. And since we know, among other things, that it's rooted in mythology, superstition, legend and fable, atheism rejects its tenets and accepts nature on its own terms, without the imaginary person or "being" at its helm.
No, it simply means billions of people choose imagination over knowledge in their attempts to convince themselves that they know the unknowable.
The question of whether or not a person possesses actual knowledge can be objectively measured. A person either knows a truth, or else is ignorant of it. To my knowledge there is little or no imaginary basis for atheism. I suspect the most common cause of atheism requires only a small amount of knowledge as a basis for leading the non-believer to recognize that God does not (and/or cannot) exist. It may take only one paradox to drive a person to this conclusion. Most folks know that paradoxes are usually a sign of false premises.
It's not a matter of perspective, but a matter of knowledge. We identify all ideation that lies beyond the scope of knowledge as speculation. Speculated existence of things that are not real is a process entirely relegated to the imagination. The imagination is a valuable faculty, but not one that is superior to knowledge in understanding reality. It plays a vital role in simulating cause and effect so that we can narrow our choices when testing ideas and arrive more quickly at our knowledge of some vital fact regarding the state of nature. Remember, this is an evolved trait, so its mechanism is rooted on the ability to adapt to information in the struggle to survive. What happens in religious ideation is that the imagination is allowed to roam free, unchecked by knowledge. In the more severe cases, such as fundamentalism, the imagination is allowed to trump knowledge, and since knowledge is rooted in nature, then imagination attacks the knowledge of nature (science) and claims that it's false.
The mind is a product of nature. It gives us our knowledge, and our imagination. As a matter of survival, we learn to choose knowledge when deciding the truth of a matter, and we use our imagination to simulate cause and effect so that we can more quickly arrive at the best way to acquire the requisite knowledge that informs our decisions.
Ultimately? To survive. You see the survival instinct projected into the imagination in the way religious ideation promotes the concept of life after death.
But it is. The mind is entirely a product of nature. And most of its decisions (e.g., whether to open or close the iris) are completely resident in the subconscious. They have to be, or creatures would go into mental overload contemplating all of these low-level interactions. Consciousness concerns the contemplation of the highest level ideas so that we can best respond to threats to our survival and plan strategies for reacting to them. Imagination helps simulate the consequences of one course of action over another. But it's also the seat of superstition. For the atheist it's just a matter of regulating the imagination and not allowing it to convince us that the simulated threat is real.
That wasn't formulated quite right. Nature is what it is. The mind is capable of acquiring knowledge of nature and does so to improve survival. The rest is imagination, which can be helpful in deciding which course of action is optimal. But when the imagination is left unregulated, it begins synthesizing beliefs, and this what atheism rejects. Atheism is a lot more elementary than this, though, since it invalidates religion as a violation of this process of self-regulation. I don't think atheists spend too much time analyzing the existence of God. It's largely considered moot since the theory of God arises from superstition, which is recognized as a false ideation.
That's the work of the imagination. In a simulation, real elements are represented by virtual models. In religious ideation, the virtual model comes alive (like Pinocchio). But it's never actually real. It has always been, and always will be, imaginary.
That's one of many unusual twists on self-awareness that the imagination inflicts on the minds of the religious.
I am stardust, subjected to 3.5 BY of biological evolution. I am endowed with a brain, the brain is the seat of the mind, and the mind is sometimes plagued by an overactive imagination. I am the one who knows myself by my ability to suppress all the imaginary incarnations of myself and the world around me.
Stardust.
My mind ceases to exist.
All questions ultimately serve to extend our survival.
I am the self that is not defined by its own imagination.
The concepts can't be erased since they are part of the historical record. The key is to associate the knowledge of ancient imagination with the causes of ideas that percolate through the modern imagination, and to conclude that God does not exist. God never existed, but has always been, and always will be, a product of the unregulated imagination.
First, not all atheists philosophies are of that ilk. Some people believe in a non-material realm but just do not believe in God.
But that aside, I found your previous use of "fact" odd (in that you were suggesting that facts are borne from mere claims), but yes, for those with such a worldview, if it occurs it is natural.
None that I am aware of other than perhaps those caught up in some existentialist web of chaos.
I do not hold the belief that God does not exist. Not sure why you keep thinking that after the various discussions we have had on such matters.
As said, I am not aware of any.
It's not a puzzle, it's a question that I have answered.
Are you suggesting that if we can think of something then it must exist? Or if we believe in something that it must exist?
Under the atheist worldview you describe, not everything we can think of exists, other than as a thought in our heads.
So I struggle to see what point you are trying to make, or even head to, with this.
And yet you infer you have no concept of this god, not even as first cause, creator, sum of all etc?
Your words do not offer any consistency of thought in this matter, Jan.
Sure, but it's your concept of God that you believe in, the one you've formed through what you understand.
And thus your concept of God is borne. Great.
But heck, why not skip over all the criticism you've thrown around of people only believing in their concept of god rather than god, when you are not even aware that that is what you are also guilty of.
Jan Ardena,
I can't see where you've explained the things I asked about. Ah well, never mind.
I can't see where you've explained the things I asked about. Ah well, never mind.
Well, we've been friends for a while as compared to how long we've been "a couple." He's moving in this weekend, so we shall see.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Congratulations! I hope you both find the happiness you're looking for.
long ago 95+% believed the Earth was flat, later ~90% believed it was round. Ergo, by your "thought" process it changed from flat to round. Why are there no surface cracks in the rocks we can look down into and see the molten core?
Given your framework, you cannot possibly know that. You've shot yourself in your metaphysical foot if you insist that there is a reality and that all we have to work with are perceptions of reality.
If all we have to work with are perceptions, then we cannot possibly know whether a perception of ours equals reality or not.
I think that much modern psychology that works with this same dichotomy (ie. "seeing people as they really are" vs. "having imaginary notions about who another person") is also word games.
I'm mentioning this to point out that this dichotomy is very common, and impossible to resolve, even though it appears to point at a very useful distinction. Namely, it acknowledges that people and things aren't always what they seem, and that we prefer to know the truth about them.
In comparison, from a traditional Buddhist perspective, this whole problem about figuring out "who someone really is" would be put aside altogether, and instead one would focus on one's own actions.
I see two possibilities here:
1. Personal realization in which one's perceptions actually do match reality, and one knows this (realization is typically one of the goals in Eastern religions).
2. A power trip, an ego game: one concludes that one's perception IS reality, and this conclusion is motivated by one's desire to bolster one's ego, or by trying to win a debate with someone at great or all costs, including willingness to lie.
For a third-party observer, it seems impossible to tell whether the first or the second possibility is the case for a particular person, that's what makes the whole thing so vexing.
I think that what Sarkus has been pointing out is that this is backwards.
You've read some scriptures, considered as true what they are saying, and then because you have considered as true what they are saying, you were able to see evidence for the veracity of what they are saying, and thus accepted them as true. This is a process that is both deductive and inductive.
I seriously doubt that all on your own, you've figured out that you are not your body. I bet you've first read that in the BG, and then it stuck in your mind, and then things went from there.
I think you may be underestimating the effect that seriously considering some scriptural propositions brings about in one's mind.
This is not the same as believing to believe. Some propositions appear to be such that even to just suppose for the sake of the argument that they are true, they bring about an identifiable effect on one's mind.
This how the process of convincing someone (such as for purposes of commercial advertising or in a court of law where a lawyer tries to convince a jury) works on ordinary people; but it can happen also when we read a book that lays out a line of reasoning.
I don't insist. It is merely the working hypothesis I have adopted (without necessarily believing it true) and is entirely consistent with what I have been saying here and elsewhere.
Agreed. As I said previously, we could discuss the nature of reality, and what we each mean by "reality", but then last time that was raised I got accused of equivocating.
Reality I would put I the same basket as god, in that it is unknowable. God may be the reality. I see it as though there are layers upon layers of wallpaper in front of us, and we scrape away at them revealing new layers underneath. We think the wallpaper follows reality and gives a reasonable approximation of it... We can feel the bumps and grooves of the surface of reality underneath (or at least we think we do), but no matter how much scraping, all we can do is get to another layer.
And there is then the question of whether there is even a "reality" underneath all the wallpaper, or whether it is just wallpaper all the way.
I would concur, and with the Buddhist perspective.
Which begs the question of how one knows this. I am not convinced anything can be known other than self-evident things, or with underlying (usually unspoken) assumptions.
But surely someone who lies knows themself that they are lying, so while I agree it's a possibility, I don't concur with the last part, at least not from the individual's point of view. For me this possibility is with regards someone convincing themself of a "truth" for the purposes of ego, irrespective of, or more likely in ignorance of, any more accurate perception.
Someone lying would be a third option, where they know one thing but speak another.
True.
There is also the possibility that one admits to knowing nothing, and one works merely on a practical level, accepting that there are assumptions we take for granted which might prevent us from ever "knowing".
The difficulty here is that it is not always easy to convey that position, especially in casual parlance, and so one comes across as making claims of knowledge when actually one is not. Unfortunately I do it myself too often, and you quite rightly keep asking "how do I know that?", which makes me (hopefully) clarify my position.
wynn,
I don't think the concept hasn't been fully grasped as yet.
Or it happened the way I said it did.
Why? Have you experienced something like that?
jan.
I don't think the concept hasn't been fully grasped as yet.
Or it happened the way I said it did.
Why? Have you experienced something like that?
jan.
But this is a really hopeless, and useless position; one might as well do away wit the notion of "reality" altogether and say we're in illusion and forever stuck in it.
Which begs the question of why one would be interested in whether another person is realized or not.
The stuff people do for the sake of ego aren't to be underestimated. People generally seem to derive great satisfaction from feeding their ego. There my be a lot more to this.
Earlier with LG, I brought up the issue of one-upmanship, and he didn't reply. Too bad he's been away.
While this agnostic position seems sensible, I'm not so sure it is tenable or stable.
Memory can be a tricky thing - there's hindsight bias.
It's possible that based on this hindsight bias, you've come up - probably unconsciously - with a palatable explanation for how you've come to hold as true what you hold as true; and this explanation is such that it protects and feeds your self-image.
People keep finding holes in this explanation of yours, though, which could mean that said explanation is a product of the workings of defense mechanisms.