Does atheism make sense?
Offline If I say I don't believe in Leprachuans, we have an immediate understanding of what that means, i.e. that I don't believe in little green beings that place pots of gold at the end of every rainbow.
What you hear more often than not is a disbeliever who treats a disbelief in God, with God being conceived of as a simple concept like leprechauns, there by removing disbelief from any other implications like on a worldview, or philosophy, even though belief in God is never separated from the worldview, or perspective on life of the believer, for some reason atheist still feel that disbelief can be separated from a worldview, from a perspective on life.
If i were to tell a person who had no idea what the term Leprachaun means, he might ask me what is the meaning of "Leprachuans", i would tell him that they are little green men who place pots of gold at the end of every rainbow. And it's easy to see why a disbelief in Leprachuans doesn't have much of an implication on much else, like a worldview, my perspective on life. Because Leprechauns don't really have an emblematic quality.
The mistake by many atheist is to treat God as such as well, when God has a component that Leprachauns don't have, an emblematic conception of him, the representive of perspective on life, a worldview. That denial of God is in fact a statement affirming a particular view of life. A denial of a worldview is an affirmation of another one. A denial of a world with a transcendent purpose and meaning, is an affirmation of a worldview in which life has no transcendent purpose and meaning.
Nearly all theistic conceptions of God no matter what the particular sect of theism are statements of a perspective on life. God is emblematic of these conceptions.
For fundamentalist and others God is emblematic of the supposed inherent design and order of life. That if their belief is solely based on this, their God concept cannot be distinguished from what it's emblematic of (such as the silliness of separating symbols from what they are symbolic of). There statement on their perspective on life is that life has an inherent design and order, an atheist who denies this is affirming a perspective on life in which life has no inherent design and order. They are affirming certain parts of a worldview, by their disbelief in God.
For me, as a mainline Christian, my belief in God is solely based on a meaning and purpose to human existence, and that any future sense of disbelief would solely be based on a denial of this meaning and purpose. A belief in what this meaning and purpose is, and a belief in God don't equal two, God is only that symbol that embodies that meaning. And a denial of God is an affirmation of an alternative worldview. In fact the reason why I am not an atheist, a muslim, or a hindu, or a pagan, is that I don't believe in their worldview, I don't believe in what their Gods are emblematic of.
While atheism is not a complete worldview, it is an affirmation of a partial one, because a denial of God who is emblematic of a perspective on life, is affirmation of an alternative perspective on it.
A belief or disbelief in God is not the same as disbelief in toothy fairies, who are simply little flying hot chicks in bikinis, nothing more nothing less, a belief in God is composed of emblematic conceptions, symbolic of a perspective on life. All theistic beliefs no matter of what stripe can be broken down as such.
"I'm really an idiot! I have my own head way the fuck up my ass! Watch me dig myself into a hole over and over again!" ~Rook Hawkins (just citing sources)
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Education in logic via Wikipedia?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Hamy, I'm about to go to dinner, but I suggest you look up and read post 88 (my response to your previous post), perhaps you missed it before or something, and that's why you haven't responded. But I'm not going to correct your repetition of the same error, over and over again, until you do.
"I'm really an idiot! I have my own head way the fuck up my ass! Watch me dig myself into a hole over and over again!" ~Rook Hawkins (just citing sources)
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
I read it, and didn't respond because others said what I would have said, but as a favor to you, I'll personally address it. See you after dinner.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
I reread #88 also. It seems like the difference between you and an atheist is that the atheist's hope is contingent on his/her actions where yours is contingent on your belief in an unprovable being that may or may not help you (depending on his will) because you can't/won't/are afraid to do for yourself.
Please correct if I'm misreading.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Apparently not. What is the difference?
Ok, so I'll repeat the question. At what point does a human's present get so bad that they can no longer imagine things improving and desire that to happen?
I did. I don't.
My hope is partially derived from my observations of the past and present, not just observations of my own past and present. I'm not sure if you read it that way or not. In other words, I see that on balance, the world stays about the same and people behave about like people, so it seems reasonable to conclude that tommorow, it'll be about the same.
Also remember that I'm genetically programmed to be hopeful. So my hope is not solely dependent on any particular perceptions of the environment.
It doesn't seem to relate to anything I know as "hope." That's why I asked you to use a different word and define it so that I can separate this thing I'm thinking of as hope and this other thing (which is completely unknown to me) which you posit.
You see? It's possible you as a believer experience something I have never experienced, so I'd like you to define what you have that you think I don't. That way, I'll be able to evaluate whether I have it or not. By the way, I think you ought to know, I was a Christian for most of two decades, and I can't recall ever having anything that I would call hope that was different from anything I have now. Does that mean I wasn't a real Christian, or that God didn't love me enough to give me hope even though I believed in him?
Well, I'm not going to try to teach you a college level psych course over the internet. I have no idea if anyone has put any handy graphs on the interwebs. This isn't about polling. This is about the cumulative results of thousands, or maybe even tens of thousands of scientific experiments. If you'd like me to recommend some good psychology texts, I will.
Where I think you may be misunderstanding is this. In any given day, we perform thousands of individual actions. Most of them pass by our conscious notice because they are very insignificant or repetitive to the point that we ignore them. Nevertheless, we do interact with our environment in thousands of different ways, and if you think about it, in pretty much all of those instances, we go on the unacknowledged assumption that the results will be positive.
If you think about it, it's almost self-evident. (Almost...) Humans, like every other creature, have their own best interest at heart most of the time. It's basic evolution. If you have your own worst interests at heart... well, you'll probably die. Even the smallest of actions can be said to be generally geared towards making our lives good as opposed to bad. Our entire existence can only be said to be the result of us typically wanting good things for ourselves.
Read that last sentence... "wanting good things for ourselves." Now... alter it slightly... "Desiring good things for ourselves." One more.... "Hoping good things for ourselves."
Granted, self interest is not precisely the same thing as imagining things like whales not going extinct or children in Etheopia not starving, but if we're building a human psyche from the ground up, we realize that it's pretty much impossible to get to the point of imagining broad abstracts without first desiring our own well being.
That's a very rough sketch of how you can try to grasp the concept, but like I said, it's not a bumper sticker proof. You'd need to digest quite a lot of information to say that you have a complete understanding of it.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
theidiot, your argument is basically "The hope I have is real. Your hope is not." That's special pleading.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
But an atheist who believes that the cosmos was designed is hardly an atheist. I shortened that to "bad atheist" because it would be a poor atheist who believed in a cosmic designer. Are you with me?
If you weren't so busy being impressed with your own rhetoric, maybe we'd have a chance to understand what the hell you're talking about. Did you just say I was wrong for guessing that you think only through God there can be hope?
... and then tell me that the name of the thing that can give hope is God?
You probably want to rephrase that without the obvious contradiction.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Still formulating your definition for me, Idiot? Take your time. This is important.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
This is odd to me, I'm assuming your trouble with the definition of hope lies where you can't tell the distinction. even though where I asked you to tell the distinction is in the common usage of the word hope.
It puzzles me that you can't tell the difference between these two usages of hope: I hope the Eagles will win tomorrow, and I have hope the eagles will win tomorrow? And I have a nagging sense that you do know what the distinction is, but have a desire to play the troll, and pretend like you don't. I'm hoping that it might not be the case, but I don't have hope that it isn't.
The difference between the two sentences is readily accessible when we notice how the sentences themselves are distinct, and that would be with the use of the word "have" in the second sentence. Saying I have hope in something, means that I have faith that the hope will be fulfilled/realized.
You claimed that your knowledge of the past, and present, gives you hope that the future will be ok, your use of the word hope here, means that you have faith that your hope will be realized.
If i were to purchase a lottery ticket, I would hope that i would win, but there is a distinction between this and my claims of having hope in something. When I say i hope I will win the lottery (rather than I have hope that I will win the lottery) this doesn't imply that I actually have faith in me winning, or having my hope realized.
If I were to give you a lottery ticket for tomorrow's drawing, I'm sure you would hope that you would win, but do you not see the distinction in the usage of hope here, and you having hope that the future will be ok? You hope that you would win the lottery, but do you believe that it will be realized? Do you believe the future will be ok, will be realized?
Another word that we can use to signify having hope, is hopeful, but common usage of the word hope, allows us to use it as such without using hopeful in it's place.
Now, hamy, I have no interest in repeating this sort of "going over with you" again. I believe that any average reader would have understand from the get-go, at least after my previous clarification of it, what i meant.
I have no desire to continually break down terms, as if I were doing so for a child on an adult forum, i find it tedious, and judging that I come on forums for my own benefit, to better articulate my own ideas, and to see their faults, such exercises are rarely of interest for me to pursue.
So let's see after this post, if you understand the distinction between: "I hope no children are going to be killed in Gaza, and saying I have hope that no children are going to be killed in Gaza."
"I'm really an idiot! I have my own head way the fuck up my ass! Watch me dig myself into a hole over and over again!" ~Rook Hawkins (just citing sources)
And this is where you would be wrong, being, that that is not my argument. No where did I say my hope is real, and your hope is not. You can go back and read what i wrote, and tell me where you specifically think, this is what I am claiming, and I can clarify this for you.
"I'm really an idiot! I have my own head way the fuck up my ass! Watch me dig myself into a hole over and over again!" ~Rook Hawkins (just citing sources)
You say the difference is between hoping about something and having hope in something.
I say that I have hope in something a well as hope about things.
You say I don't have hope because then I'd be a poor atheist.
I say you're just calling your hope "true" and my hope "false".
When I say that, you just repeat that there's a difference between having hope and just hoping.
And around it goes.
It's a special plead argument.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
First, I am struck by one curious aspect of the phrasing of this statement.
"Having faith" that something is true is one thing, that we hear all the time.
But if you only believe you have that faith seems a curiously less certain version of "faith". Surely the "faith" you refer to is the promary feeling, ie you either have that feeling, that conviction, or not. You phrasing suggests you are absolutely confident that you have that feeling. That you aren't sure that you have the surety of "faith". So you have this slight element of doubt that you don't have a doubt that your faith is justified.
The confusion here seems to be because of different usages of the word "hope" as a noun.
According to my dictionary "hope" (noun) means:
1. a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen;
2. a person or thing that may help or save someone;
3. grounds for believing that something good may happen.
theidiot is clearly using it in the third sense, whereas simply "hoping" is equivalent to "having hope", but only in the first usage of the word.
So theidiot is claiming we have no grounds for our hope, whereas he believes he has. Which of course is still only a belief.
Believing that some benefactor is going to come along and rescue you you from despair will certainly give you hope, make you feel better, but then so will prozac or other drugs...
So it still boils down to whether the belief in the ultimate rescue from this 'vale of tears' is justified on more solid grounds than "it makes me feel better".
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Well, if I actually did say all that, than I'm sure it would be special pleading. I never even used the words "true" or "false" i.e. in that my sense of having hope is true and unbelievers sense of hope having hope false.
In fact Hamy has hope that the future will be ok, based on his knowledge of the past and present, there's nothing false about that sense of having hope, nor does it make him a poor atheist for having it. And if you read the above post, I specifically wrote than Hamy has hope in this regard, and never once did i refer to his hope as odd, false, or anything else.
I suggest if you would like to continue to accuse me of special pleading, that you use actual quotes of mine (and let's not snip them out of context), rather than you saying what you think i said, and giving me words that I have not once used, such as true and false.
"I'm really an idiot! I have my own head way the fuck up my ass! Watch me dig myself into a hole over and over again!" ~Rook Hawkins (just citing sources)
And, that was just poor wording on my part, it should just be:
"Saying I have hope in something, means that, I have faith that the hope will be fulfilled/realized." and the "i believe" part should be snipped.
"I'm really an idiot! I have my own head way the fuck up my ass! Watch me dig myself into a hole over and over again!" ~Rook Hawkins (just citing sources)
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
ROFLMAO So you admit it is imaginary, thank you.
There is just 1 reality. If you are saying there is something better than reality, what the hell are you referring to but something that could only be imaginary?
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.