What do atheists think that "to know God" means?
- Thread starter wynn
- Start date
Arioch, again I have to ask why you're bothering with this. Trolls live for this kind of attention and mindless byplay. You are giving her exactly what she wants, while diminishing your own standing in the process.
If it helps, everyone not named Yazata or Lightgigantic understands you've gotten the better of this exchange. You've reduced her to "I know you are, but what am I," for crissakes. Walk away before it gets out of hand.
If it helps, everyone not named Yazata or Lightgigantic understands you've gotten the better of this exchange. You've reduced her to "I know you are, but what am I," for crissakes. Walk away before it gets out of hand.
What does that mean?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Tweeeet! Aaaand that's game.
Well guys, it lasted a whopping 10 posts - 4 hours and 6 minutes total.
The OP's decision in post 349 to continue the bickering instead of addressing the debate, ends the game.
Game goes to atheists.
Those of you who wish to bicker are free to do so. Those of you who wish to discuss, may, if you wish, still abide by the no personal attacks mandate.
Well guys, it lasted a whopping 10 posts - 4 hours and 6 minutes total.
The OP's decision in post 349 to continue the bickering instead of addressing the debate, ends the game.
Game goes to atheists.
Those of you who wish to bicker are free to do so. Those of you who wish to discuss, may, if you wish, still abide by the no personal attacks mandate.
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DaveC426913
I'll try, really, really, really hard to maintain the modicum of civility to be expected by an old curmudgeon despite my urges to pick up a metaphorical ballbat.
In the mean time how about a couple of glasses of post game fine wine...
http://kipac.stanford.edu/kipac/
These visualizations are fermented from the best fruits of observation, computerizations and understandings on Earth. Knowing how good the science is behind them allows for the full body of understanding even the video generation can grock.
http://www.physorg.com/space-news/astronomy/
This is a more everyday vintage with freshness, yet still having substance.
Both should be on your favorite lists.
Grumpy
I'll try, really, really, really hard to maintain the modicum of civility to be expected by an old curmudgeon despite my urges to pick up a metaphorical ballbat.
In the mean time how about a couple of glasses of post game fine wine...
http://kipac.stanford.edu/kipac/
These visualizations are fermented from the best fruits of observation, computerizations and understandings on Earth. Knowing how good the science is behind them allows for the full body of understanding even the video generation can grock.
http://www.physorg.com/space-news/astronomy/
This is a more everyday vintage with freshness, yet still having substance.
Both should be on your favorite lists.
Grumpy
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I'm not sure how this thread got launched into a discussion of abiogenesis in the first place. Sciforums threads have an annoying tendency to be kind of attitude-driven stream-of-consciousness meanderings, especially when they've lasted for hundreds of posts. They become ego-contests as opposed to thoughtful discussions.
Sciforums-style atheist-fundamentalists? They sure act like they do.
They write with what appears to be utter confidence that they've got everything figured out in its broad outlines, and that any remaining mysteries about reality are simply questions of detail that will inevitably fit into their present conceptual categories.
More troublingly, they typically assume that everyone that disagrees with them is not only mistaken, but evil and stupid as well. Just like their religious brothers, atheist fundamentalists can be hugely abusive towards everyone who fails to conform.
I think that hard-line positions in life often tend to attract the kind of personalities for whom every intellectual disagreement becomes an ego-contest. Accepting that different opinions exist on many questions isn't easy for them. We see it in politics as well as in religion. It isn't an accident that religious fundies are often hard-right politically, while the corresponding militant atheists are often hard-left.
At this point in human history, no final and definitive philosophy exists. Just personally, I don't think that such a thing will ever be achieved by human beings.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
In the mean time how about a couple of glasses of post game fine wine...
http://kipac.stanford.edu/kipac/
These visualizations are fermented from the best fruits of observation, computerizations and understandings on Earth. Knowing how good the science is behind them allows for the full body of understanding even the video generation can grock.
http://www.physorg.com/space-news/astronomy/
This is a more everyday vintage with freshness, yet still having substance.
Both should be on your favorite lists.
Grumpy
Niiice. I'll enjoy them with a glass of Shiraz and a fat stinky Cohiba.
Yazata
That was LG's questions about his mischaracterization of what science says and his question about "age, get sick and die" which led to afterlife which led to his diversion about chaos, which led to "beginning of the Universe, maintainance(which we never got an explaination of what that means)and destruction of the Universe" and then his demeaning of the evidence that supports life's beginnings and misunderstanding that the journey of a thousand miles(I simplified it to one mile)begins with a single step, and that taking that first step and not reaching a goal was not a failure. I think that covers the highlights.
Scientists readily admit where they are not certain(theist's don't seem to know how), and they have reason and evidence for what they have confidence in. There are not two equally valid "sides" to these kind of questions, there is what can be evidenced and then there is everything else. We have never claimed to know everything, but what we do know is not guesswork(as LG continually claims). And if the details DON'T fit they often teach us more than if they do. The greatest exclamation in science is not "Eureeka!", but is "Now that's strange." There is no faith in science, what science claims has evidence and reason backing up those claims. That I am an atheist simply means I do not accept as real the copious supernatural claims of theists, that I am a scientist inform my reasons for being an atheist, but that is not necessarily true of most atheists.
Terrible people, those fundy atheists! Good thing we don't have any around here! They operate without evidence just like the religious ones do(as I have said repeatedly).
Grumpy
That was LG's questions about his mischaracterization of what science says and his question about "age, get sick and die" which led to afterlife which led to his diversion about chaos, which led to "beginning of the Universe, maintainance(which we never got an explaination of what that means)and destruction of the Universe" and then his demeaning of the evidence that supports life's beginnings and misunderstanding that the journey of a thousand miles(I simplified it to one mile)begins with a single step, and that taking that first step and not reaching a goal was not a failure. I think that covers the highlights.
Scientists readily admit where they are not certain(theist's don't seem to know how), and they have reason and evidence for what they have confidence in. There are not two equally valid "sides" to these kind of questions, there is what can be evidenced and then there is everything else. We have never claimed to know everything, but what we do know is not guesswork(as LG continually claims). And if the details DON'T fit they often teach us more than if they do. The greatest exclamation in science is not "Eureeka!", but is "Now that's strange." There is no faith in science, what science claims has evidence and reason backing up those claims. That I am an atheist simply means I do not accept as real the copious supernatural claims of theists, that I am a scientist inform my reasons for being an atheist, but that is not necessarily true of most atheists.
Terrible people, those fundy atheists! Good thing we don't have any around here! They operate without evidence just like the religious ones do(as I have said repeatedly).
Grumpy
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Fundamentalist Atheists. Interesting. Never heard the term.
wynn,
The atheist, however, cannot be so grouped, and you cannot refer to the term atheist as having a fixed perspective. Some indeed may well have a clear concept of how everything began which does not include a god, but most others may simply have no idea. And of course all variations in between.
The theist is the epitome of closed mindedness - there is only a single answer, God, so there is no point considering anything else.
But the seasoned atheist tends towards complete open mindedness. Or IOWs, they simply state that they do not have any answers that can be confirmed and that the god concept seems to be one of the least credible explanations.
So to answer your opening post - there will be as many different answers as there are atheists since there is no agreed atheist dogma, apart from of course, that the theist claim for gods is not considered credible.
Beyond that the atheist may well attempt to fantasize about what theists imagine their god is like. The catch to such fantasy concepts is that we can imagine an infinite variety and still not find a version that might be true.
If theists and atheists were all truly honest they would all agree that no one really knows whether gods are possible or not.
The theist claims that God is the answer to everything. They have only that single perspective, and they do not consider any other possibilities. In this regard we can talk about theists as a group since they all share this.
The atheist, however, cannot be so grouped, and you cannot refer to the term atheist as having a fixed perspective. Some indeed may well have a clear concept of how everything began which does not include a god, but most others may simply have no idea. And of course all variations in between.
The theist is the epitome of closed mindedness - there is only a single answer, God, so there is no point considering anything else.
But the seasoned atheist tends towards complete open mindedness. Or IOWs, they simply state that they do not have any answers that can be confirmed and that the god concept seems to be one of the least credible explanations.
So to answer your opening post - there will be as many different answers as there are atheists since there is no agreed atheist dogma, apart from of course, that the theist claim for gods is not considered credible.
Beyond that the atheist may well attempt to fantasize about what theists imagine their god is like. The catch to such fantasy concepts is that we can imagine an infinite variety and still not find a version that might be true.
If theists and atheists were all truly honest they would all agree that no one really knows whether gods are possible or not.
That's what butthurt theists say when they run out of arguments.
Strong militant atheists would be a better tag, but yes, they are very real and sometimes just as irrational as the fundies.
Nonsense.
As an agnostic atheist, I whole-heartedly agree.
Of course that is not definitive - some may act that way in phases - like Dawkins' infamous "I think science is wonderful and if you disagree, you can fuck off". Very few strong militant anti-religious atheists exist [I hope], but nevertheless, they indeed exist. We non-believers are likely to have the world to ourselves in the future, lets not be another religion. If we claim to be bastions of rationality, defined as holding beliefs proportional to their logical sensibility and demonstrable justification by evidence, we must look back at ourselves and see if some of us are being irrational or not. We must not be hypocrites, just like the muslim leaders who say jihad is 'all political'.
Applying terms like "fundamentalist" and "militant" to atheism is a trick of theists in their never-ending attempt to paint atheism as a form of religion. You only forward their cause by propagating that nonsense.
There is nothing militant about thinking anti-science religions are destructive forces to society, and the opinion is based on observational evidence. There is nothing fundamentalist about atheism, as atheism is not a worldview. Nor is atheism what Richard Dawkins exemplifies when he tells anyone who does not agree with science to fuck off. The same comment could be made--and likely has been made--by dyed in the wool theists. They may be few and far between, but there is such a thing as a religious scientist.
But it is no secret that Dawkins thinks the world would be a better place without superstition. This, however, is not atheism. This is anti-theism. Atheism is simply a reactionary position to theism, and (depending on who you ask) either the position that one does not believe in a particular god, or the affirmative position that said god does not exist. One cannot make the claim that the world would be better without faith/religion/god--or that it would be nice if it were true, for that matter--within the scope of atheism. One has to adopt a separate position in order to make such a claim.
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I don't think Dawkins ever said that.
In any case, being strident or passionate, even "militant" about something isn't the same as fundamentalist.
In any case, being strident or passionate, even "militant" about something isn't the same as fundamentalist.
He did say that people who don't believe in evolution can jump out of a 10th story window.