No doubt?
I know of people who say they've been reincarnated.
Can you prove they weren't?
Can you prove it's a belief in the supernatural?
Can you prove they did fly on the Concorde?
Isn't being an Atheist a religion?
- Thread starter iHaveNoIdea
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I know of people who say they've been reincarnated.
Can you prove they weren't?
Can you prove it's a belief in the supernatural?
People can say anything they want.
if you think the corncorde may be supernatural because you dont know anyone who flew on it then is there really any point in discussing this?
Quite.
If you can't see the correspondence between my statement and yours then I agree: there's no point continuing.
Which is nothing to do with spidergoat's statement.
It's all how you look at it. The material that makes up our bodies didn't appear spontaneously, it came from previous organic matter. The genes "carnate" and "re-encarnate", that is the present situation.
should have said that earlier. traditional reincarnation also requires a creator.
False again.
(And for your information I know more about the existence of Concorde than you do).
No more than any other hypothesis.
It only requires a soul. I agree the traditional concept is a supernatural one. But the difference with Buddhism is it doesn't require faith in the idea, or faith in anything. Enlightenment is a tentative proposition which the student may or may not confirm with their own observation.
How do you know?
1) Because I've been been a follower of the programme since it was first promoted.
2) I'm an aerospace technology analyst.
3) I've been on the Concorde four or five times (not for flights but for engineering analyses).
so why did you say its existence is comparable to reincarnation?
Please read the relevant posts slowly.
I didn't.
I stated that your comment on spidergoat not knowing anyone who is reincarnated is similar to claiming not knowing anyone who's been on Concorde is evidence of it being supernatural.
Simply because you don't know anyone who has [done X] is NOT a valid argument for claiming that [X] is supernatural.
Why not?
Obviously?
Why is it obvious? Do you know anyone who has?
I know people who claim to have, but I also know people who claim to have met ghosts.
I wonder how long I can keep this going...
The point is that simply not knowing anyone who has done [whatever] is NOT a valid reason to declare that [whatever] is supernatural.
Get it yet?
We've been down this road before. Playing around with the etymology of the words isn't a particularly fruitful way of deciding what the term really means and it is certainly no help in assessing the arguments. The word theism is ultimately related to the worship of the sun through the root dyeu which means shiny.
Nor does history provide much of a frame of reference. Christians, for example, were charged as atheists by the Romans since they denied the existence of traditional Roman gods. If effect, they considered the disbelief in any god to be atheistic.
There is never going to be a concise and easy definition of atheism that fits every argument because there is no such concise and universal definition for god. I find it far more fruitful to address the issue logically and according to the actual positions and arguments. The only reason to do otherwise is in order to press the word into serving an ulterior motive.
The common assertion (and the one you seem to be making), that atheism is necessarily an unqualified belief that no god(s) exist is false. But even if we force the definition, it does not invalidate the position (of weak atheism for example) but only means the term atheism is being used incorrectly in that context and some other term should be used.
~Raithere
Of course that's possible.
They can do wonderful things with photoshop and paid actors.
True, but if you add in an assumption about you being a Westerner of European extraction, the estimates of spiritual beliefs, religious practices and ritural observances start to become more specific and reliable.
The point being that perhaps this confusion is more an issue of (naive) cultural reference than misapprehended definitions as such.
its not really possible and certainly not probable.