Faith is Faith, no matter what you think is true

[Crunchy Cat]

How can all of you who claim that God doesn't not exist because there is no proof, when you don't really have proof of anything at all.

Proof exists of lots of things... that computer you are using for example. The bulk of atheists I have observed don't accept the assertion "'God' exists" as truth because no supportive evidence (let alone proof) exists. Some atheists (such as myself) take it a step further by saying that some specific 'God'(s)doesn't exist. This is the result claims running thousands+ years without supportive evidence and science continually finding contradictory evidence to those claims. In fact, I am not aware of any particular claim of 'God' that doesn't fall into this category; hence, all existing claims of 'God' would be falsified.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

BTW, the title of the thread didn't seem relevant:

"Faith is Faith, no matter what you think is true"

Using the expanded definition of faith the statement reads:

"Unconditional trust is unconditional trust, no matter what you accept as truth"

 

[Regulus]

that's where you misunderstand. as an atheist, i have no belief in god, or adherence to organized religion, nothing else. look up the word atheist in the dictionary, it doesn't mean someone who believes in the non-existence of god. it means someone who refuses the assertion that god exists without offering any counterassertion. some athesits undoubtedly believe that god does not exist, but that belief is seperate from atheism.

I apologize then. Forgive me for the misinterpretation.

I did not know... and that was an ignorance on my part.

and you would be hard pressed to find any collective atheistic claims, considering that they are not an organized body or association that publishes articles or teachings or makes claims. i believe some scientists or philosophers may make the claim that the universe was created through a chance occurence, but that is a different group of people altogether from atheists.

Again, my apologies.

i'm gonna go ahead and say that that statement pretty much makes no sense at all.

Your right it didn't. I am sorry. But when I said thiests I didn't mean all who believen a God, only those who believen the Omnipotence. Alright, so you don't rely on faith. Though at the same time not all thiests do. I don't. I the end I can't answer the question of why God itself was never created, thus that would also be an eventuality of chance.

not true, you're really hung up on the idea of atheism as a religion. its not, you will have to come to terms with that eventually. science is a method developed by humans to measure and explain reality. it is what we have relied on for thousands of years of human development, and when done correctly, it has yet to fail us. i would much rather rely on that to provide me with answers about the nature of the creation of the world and the possibility of an afterlife as opposed to a set of myths that have been summarily abused for political ends,debunked and partially disproven over and over again throughout the last 2,000 years.

But athiests have science going for them on all other "gods" out there, but the omnipotent being has yet to be something debunked, and yet it still remains a possibility.

Again, I apologize, I didn't mean to make it sound like there's no science involved when athiests debunk "gods".

and in addition to that, i rely on my experiences as well. unfortunately for me, i guess i'm not "ready" to see god's plan, so it hasn't been revealed to me. in which case i would say that that makes god cruel and unfair considering that no one, myself or anybody else, knows exactly how to go about asking for or attempting to acquire an understanding of this vision. it is just randomly bestowed on you apparently.

God doesn't choose these experiences, as God wouldn't interfer with the learning experience. It would be illogical for you to be here if God takes the liberty of picking and choosing.

My experiences were signs from my relatives that were dead, one being the DVD player shuffling itself, turning on by itself and opening as I come in.

I am sorry you have never had these experiences. Though mine are luke warm. And trust me, these signs may be a gift, but they eventuated after my step father, grandfather and father died all in short span between 2003 and 2006.

I'd try that in any day for no signs.

 

[DJ Erock]

A chair exists. I can produce an instance of it that has a relationship with reality.

So you think that reality is what you can produce an instance that has a relationship with you? I may be off, but I kind of interpret this to mean that its reality because you can interact with it, touch it and whatnot, correct? Assuming that's true, then to someone who is colorblind, a red light may be grey, but to you its red. So which one is reality?

Basically what I'm getting at is that reality is not relative. And that being true, the qualify factor of what makes something real cannot be your experience with it.

Did you read the Allegory of the Cave, the link for which I posted above?

 

[DJ Erock]

My overall point, I think, is that everyone relies on faith at all times if they want to see something as real or believable

 

[charles cure]

So you think that reality is what you can produce an instance that has a relationship with you? I may be off, but I kind of interpret this to mean that its reality because you can interact with it, touch it and whatnot, correct? Assuming that's true, then to someone who is colorblind, a red light may be grey, but to you its red. So which one is reality?

Basically what I'm getting at is that reality is not relative. And that being true, the qualify factor of what makes something real cannot be your experience with it.

Did you read the Allegory of the Cave, the link for which I posted above?

you know, i think there are two types of reality. there is an individual reality and a collective reality. for the individual, their way of seeing red is the only way to see it, and the only basis for defining all other shades of red. however, the individual can agree with others that their individual conceptions of red all have similar characteristics, and thus a real shared definition of red is established. thats the way that reality works, the indivdual has a personal reality but must necessarily act in a world where collective reality is defined in a slightly different way.

 

[charles cure]

My overall point, I think, is that everyone relies on faith at all times if they want to see something as real or believable

your point fails because you are not using the word faith correctly. the word "know" or "knowledge" indicates that something is certain within the framework of your established reality. this knowledge comes from observation, testing, experience, etc.

faith is a different matter. faith is trust that something is true without express knowledge of why or how or even if this trust is correctly placed. belief is predicated on an inability to obtain empirical evidence for or against a particular hypothesis.

faith, belief, knowledge, and reality are strictly human constructs, defined by the limitations and characteristics of the human mind, and as such do not exist outside of that in any fixed way. reality, although shared by people out of necessity in order to form working societies, is a subjective thing. however, humanity has established for itself a framework by which it can understand how individual or group actions will effect their environment, lives, and interrelationships. this method of fact-based analysis is a way to collectively define reality in a way that makes sense to all but a small proportion of the human race.

 

[KennyJC]

My overall point, I think, is that everyone relies on faith at all times if they want to see something as real or believable

So even though atheists will have 'faith' that the 42A bus will be on time - this equates to faith that gave us religion? Is this the same faith that allows a literal beleif that Jesus was the literal son of the creator of the universe who bodily ascended to heaven?

I'm sorry but the latter is a dangerous type of faith that see's otherwise sensible people rocked towards extreme intolerance and loathing of gays, women, people of other races, cultures and new ideas.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

So you think that reality is what you can produce an instance that has a relationship with you?

Nope. I am not sure what reality is. The best generic speculation I can come up with is that its the presence of information and their relationships. I particularly like the M-Theory. What I can say with near certainty is that truth has a 1:1 correspondence with reality; hence, producing an instance of a piece of reality is proof of its existence.

I may be off, but I kind of interpret this to mean that its reality because you can interact with it, touch it and whatnot, correct? Assuming that's true, then to someone who is colorblind, a red light may be grey, but to you its red. So which one is reality?

You were off and I'll address the hypothetical question anyway. Reality is the same for both of the people. One person is simply able to differentiate photons in more granualarity than the other person.

Basically what I'm getting at is that reality is not relative. And that being true, the qualify factor of what makes something real cannot be your experience with it.

The qualifying factor for something being real would be it's presence. We might be able to fully detect it, we might not, and anything in between. No particular claim of 'God' that I know of can be detected; hence, we have to question the origin of the claim. My study of of this has shown it's due to human psychological needs. Wesmorris summed up a groups need in the most concise statement I have ever seen. Humans need bullshit to bind them together. For the individual, people need a deep relationship with themselves. 'God' appears to be the bullshit that binds people and the ego for self-relationship. In this context, 'God' very much exists as an idea.

Did you read the Allegory of the Cave, the link for which I posted above?

Nope

 

[Oli]

Regulus:

I am sorry you have never had these experiences.

I've "met" a "ghost", "spoken" with my dead grandmother, seen several UFOs and been RELIABLY "psychic" for significant periods of my life.
At no time did I feel the need to ascribe these "experiences" to god, a supernatural or extraterrestrial agency. Or the Illuminati.
The first thought that came to my mind on each and every occasion was "Wow, that's strange. I wonder what caused that".
And the only reliable explanation that fits all of those is that sometimes weird shit happens.
More study would provide definite answers but each experience is so transient or subjective that it's probably not possible.

 

[Regulus]

Explain a feather appearing in a box never opened, and I will take that seriously Oli

Cute Oli, real cute, Illuminati. Yes, I believen the Illuminati are out to get me.

Oli despite the fact that we are debating I just laugh everytime you use that statement. I am sorry, I am not making fun of you, I just find how you use these explanations humorous. It's a compliment really.

 

[Absane]

Should I get involved in this topic? I am having an internal debate as to whether or not it would be worth my time.

 

[Oli]

I can't explain the feather in the box, just as I can't explain the "ghost" I met or my "psychic" periods. What I said was that I accepted them as something strange without ascribing meaning (or motive) to them.
They were just some weird stuff that happened and I didn't decide that there was a "reason" behind them.
Life is full of things that can't (at the moment, with luck) be entirely explained, but I don't jump to supernatural explanations just because something occurred that doesn't fit with what I already know.

I am sorry, I am not making fun of you, I just find how you use these explanations humorous. It's a compliment really.

Hey, if you can't have a laugh what's the point?

 

[Crunchy Cat]

I can't explain the feather in the box, just as I can't explain the "ghost" I met or my "psychic" periods. What I said was that I accepted them as something strange without ascribing meaning (or motive) to them.
They were just some weird stuff that happened and I didn't decide that there was a "reason" behind them.
Life is full of things that can't (at the moment, with luck) be entirely explained, but I don't jump to supernatural explanations just because something occurred that doesn't fit with what I already know.

Hey, if you can't have a laugh what's the point?

I can't even begin to stress how important what Oli just stated is.

 

[SnakeLord]

My overall point, I think, is that everyone relies on faith at all times if they want to see something as real or believable

I will agree that at times many people will experience moments of 'faith', (the completely worthless kind associated with belief in gods).

As an example: for no good reason I had 'faith' that I was going to win the lottery last night.

The thing with that kind of 'faith', is that once you decide to be rational again, you realise what a complete and utter waste of time it is.