The Dids theory of human [censored]-upery.

[Razor]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
See, being an atheist means I don't have to disprove a god-damned thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Being an atheist means you don't believe in the existence of God. If you can't prove God doesn't existence but believe he doesn't anyway you've made a leap of faith.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, absence of belief is not the same as belief of absence. Get what I'm saying? The burden of proof is on those who believe, not those who don't.

[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't about burden of proof... it's about whether or not everyone makes a leap of faith.

[Aloysius]

7 - Just e-mailed my buddy (a biologist) - but if memory serves there were recently a rash of books written by microbiologists and geneticists railing against science's "reductionist, biochemical view of life". When he e-mails me back I'll provide a bunch of links (I don't remember any books off the top of my head, nor have I read them, maybe others can chime in on this).

The point is that even at a micro-cellular level, the life processes (according to people who actually know this stuff) involve unexplained phenomena that they can not explain with current science.

Meaning, to Razor's point - there is some leap of faith even at the highest levels of scientific understanding for life, what's binds us together, what makes things go... if it's purely biochemical great, and maybe we will get to a point where it can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt - but if you say there is no metaphysical state, you are taking a leap of faith in believing it is 100% biochemical, and similar to a religious person, you are making this claim with incomplete information.

I understand your argument that there is much more empirical information to go on - but there is still a significant faith component for most people (cause frankly, most people don't know that much stuff).

There are many, many things in our day-to-day and in our overall belief system, whether we are religious or not, that we take on blind faith alone.

-Al

[7ontheline]

Al,

You're certainly right about that - the deeper you get, the more unknown concepts you find. My contention is that the scientific process continues to discover more and more, explaining the physical world further with each day. Shouldn't that count for something? In the end, we're probably limited in our understanding regardless of whether we believe in the metaphysical or not, but the scientific method keeps getting closer to a better explanation for how things work that is not really open to argument.

Razor, I'm not going to respond to you anymore. I like El D's forum and his rules. I think we're just going to have to disagree. We're probably too far apart to approach the question in the same way anyway. The other thread is probably a better place for this discussion anyway.

[Razor]

[ QUOTE ]
In the end, we're probably limited in our understanding regardless of whether we believe in the metaphysical or not

[/ QUOTE ]

Given this we are probably not that far apart.


All,

I guess I did hijack this thread (first time for everything I guess) my apologies to Dids.

However, in a weak effort to retroactively save myself. I would make the argument that the inability of humans to understand the influence and scope of faith (broadly defined) on their thoughts and actions contributes significantly to human [censored]-upery.

[NajdorfDefense]

Agree with OP. According to scientists, 90% of the universe - dark matter - is missing. Oh, and the universal constant may not, in fact, be constant.
Of course there are things we do not know, and perhaps even cannot know.
Neither of which sheds any light on whether or not God exists. Only that if you have faith in physicists and cosmologists when they tell you that 90% of the Universe is missing, you are no different than any religious person who takes the existence of God/Allah/YHWH on faith. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

[NajdorfDefense]

[ QUOTE ]
There is a fundamental flaw of most religions that once you believe in ... Consequently your own beliefs scare you into acting like your doubts do not exist. .. This is the exact opposite of science, which actively encourages its believers to try to test its "facts".

[/ QUOTE ]

Paluka, do you believe the standard model of physics?

"The standard model of subatomic physics builds up everything out of a few basic elementary particles: the electron, the muon, and the tau; the electron-neutrino, the muon-neutrino, and the tau-neutrino; the up and down quarks; the charm and strange quarks; the top and bottom quarks; all the antiparticles of these; the gluon bosons; the weak-electromagnetic bosons W, Z, and the photon; and the Higgs boson.

So far we have found, in our particle accelerators, direct evidence of the existence of everything but the Higgs boson."

Do you believe in the Higgs boson? If so, why? There's no evidence of it that anyone's ever found.

If not, what do you replace for the standard model of physics in your belief system of how things work? Doesn't there have to be a system/model that is reproducible and testable a la the scientific method? How long should we accept the non-existence of the Higgs boson from physicists? 10 years? 1000 years? More?

If you're not sure either way, aren't you the same as any religious believer who can't prove anything but decides to have faith in whatever belief system they choose?

[Potvaliant]

[ QUOTE ]

We all make a leap of faith, suggesting that someone else's leap of faith is desperate or ridiculous (effectively mocking or criticizing that leap) while completely ignoring one's own leap is silly (though predictable) and is a large part of what makes these types of discussions somewhat useless.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't know if someone has mentioned this already, but agnostics do not make a leap of faith. From what I personally have experienced, people of faith are unable to recognize or accept the basic philosophical difference between atheists and agnostics. IMO this is what makes these types of discussions difficult.

[Big Poppa Smurf]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

And the only reason anyone believes there is no God is because they haven't been properly trained. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] God!


[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

I really don't see the point in believing in God if you had to be "trained" to do so, that just sounds like brainwashing to me.

Dids,

[ QUOTE ]
is our utter inability to accept that there are things that we do not know. We suffer such discomfort in these situations, that we grasp for explanations that may not make the most sense, but make us feel the best.


[/ QUOTE ]

You can think of organized religion as an answer to your question - generally accepted and agreed upon answers for some of our most pressing (and still unanswered) questions: what happens when to me when I die? how did we come to be?

Your question assumes that many people find religion comforting. Religion isn't always comforting. Many religions have destroyer gods and apocolyptic ends to the world - the Norse religion held that the side of good would lose at the final battle. Additionally, much of Christianity is centered around what can be viewed almost as threats - behave in this way or suffer punishment (this is more true of the Old Testament God, but Hell is still Hell right?)

OK I lost my train of thought here, I think it was that these aspects of religion aren't very comforting, but then I realized that to some they may still be more comforting than not knowing.

[BigSoonerFan]

[ QUOTE ]
Agree with OP. According to scientists, 90% of the universe - dark matter - is missing. Oh, and the universal constant may not, in fact, be constant.
Of course there are things we do not know, and perhaps even cannot know.
Neither of which sheds any light on whether or not God exists. Only that if you have faith in physicists and cosmologists when they tell you that 90% of the Universe is missing, you are no different than any religious person who takes the existence of God/Allah/YHWH on faith. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not quite the same. The 90% "missing" is not because of faith but because of the actions of the universe and galaxies. They have logical explanations that are easily explained on why dark matter most likely exists, and they have evidence. There is no evidence of a higher being, even though some people will try to use the argument "just look at the beauty in the world", etc.

[cnfuzzd]

I WILL NOT GET DRAWN IN, I WILL NOT GET DRAWN IN,

since no one else has mentioned it, though, i will comment.

people who make the arguments about things like dark matter/energy, or undiscovered yet predicted quantum particles as proof that scientists believe in non-provable facts are being utterly stupid. Both of these ideas are scientific theories, which, while perhaps considered by many scientists to be accurate, are not yet considered proven statements of fact. More relevently, many scientists are working very diligently to test these theories, so that they can either be validated, or discarded in favor of newer, better theories.

To go further, the analogy continues to fall apart when you consider that both dark matter and the higgs bosun are considered such likely theories because they fit well in accordance to what other, already proven theories or equations say about the universe. These theories replaced older, outdated theories based on new empirical data and/or theoretical deduction. While two thousand years ago christianity did graft itself onto contemporary religious thought, its hardly the same thing.

Its also fairly shortsighted to claim that belief is enough to justify itself. Merely believing in something does not make it okay to hold that belief. White supremecists "believe" they are the superiour race, some people believe that one should pay ones taxes, and some in the current administration believe their war in iraq is justified. None of these beliefs are validated simply because they are held by someone. It is critical in our society that we hold up all beliefs to a very thorough examination, and determine what, if any, potential benefit they hold for humanity, and how we can morph these beliefs into something more appropriate for our culture. Organized religion not only fails to make these changes, its utterly refuses to be held up for any sort of examination at all.


damn, i done got drawn in.



pjn