This would almost seem like an arguement if those things you were describing were essential aspects of religion, which they aren't. Your "tone" strikes me as being much less interested in the logic of the issue, and much more interested in simply proving your point.

I find this arguement to be lacking. You've simply stated your point of view, just as you did in the previous post, which I accidentally skipped for reading willravel's posts, which were intelligent, well thought out arguements. I have enjoyed them thoroughly.

I guess the true root of our disagreement now is that "There is no god." only really qualifies as a doctrine if you assume the existence of a god. If not, then it would not. It is in some ways, as roachboy said, that we lack the true ability to see the matter from each other's perspective, try as we might. The issue is located at the very root of our understanding of everything.

Sorry it took so long for me to get back, I've only got certain times of day where I get the opportunity to log in.

yukimura: its sometimes hard to tell what is happening in a debate like this one when you decide to head into it and things are already unfolding--so i thought you were responding in part to my previous posts, when apparently you werent. mea culpa.

at any rate, the one you bit above has more to it than you think--consider what nouns do (not what they say) and you'll figure it out. this not as a function of a desire to be cryptic, but more because i have a ton of stuff to do at the moment....if it's not clear what i am getting at, let me know and i'll say more when things calm down.

I get what you're saying, but it boils down to the same point. Religion is also a noun. Christianity, Bhuddism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confuscianism (sp?), all of these are nouns as well. Noun is such a vague descriptor. What I interpreted you to be really saying was "atheism is a noun, and nothing more". I appreciate your point of view too. I'm not saying it's not valid or based in logic, just that you didn't do much to express that logic. That's probably because you're too busy to spend all that time chatting away on a forum about definitions of words. I recognize that I probably seemed a little on the offensive in that previous post, and I apologize. It's been a long and stressful day of very big events.

On the lighter side, the court hearing went through, and in ten days I should be a homeowner. Hooray.

ok so quick-like...

nouns group phenomena.
if you project that grouping back onto what is grouped, you generate a unity to it that is only a function of the fact you've named it..and which need not have anything to do with the phenomena beyond that.

damn...no time.

congrats on the hearing. i'm not sure what you mean, but that's ok: i assume it's good. home owning is not bad, that's the basis for the inference.

Atheism isn't a religion, and those who seem to act as if their atheism is a religion I'm willing to bet are more angry with 'god' and are atheists by defiance. The 'you let my child die' type. They want to hurt god by 'deconverting'.

I posted I was Asmurfic, because I don't believe in smurfs. I view belief in god at the same level and probability of smurfs. I am Atheist and Asmurfic equally.

Life is simple and is never as complicated as people tend to make it. Therefore God exists :D

Does this mean that you once believed in smurfs?

To be clear, an atheist need not have once believed in god. My kids will be raised atheist.

I was speaking to Ustwo specifically since he said he was once Catholic and he is now equally atheist and asmurfic.

And, for the record, I was raised atheist. What's interesting to me is that I have a friend who describes himself as post-Christian, which I think speaks to the fact that his foundation of morality and social outlook was built on the Christian belief. I've brought this up before, I'm sure.

Following that our previously established hiatus has ended...


I said that what we don't know is implicit in all science. The fact that you don't see it doesn't meant that it isn't there.

No, you're misunderstanding it.

See http://encyclopedia.tfd.com/Heisenbe...inty+Principle

Specifically
Heisenberg isn't an ellipses, it's a period. Unless new information comes to light, that won't change.

I wasn't talking about heisenberg, i was talking about quantum theory, of which the heisenberg is apparently an essential member. By rejecting heisenberg you are rejecting quantum mechanics, which you have every right to do. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails as a man of science, though.


Incidentally,


If i am ever an intellectual of note, i hope that there is a washed up child actor who disagrees with me who is willing to debate me. I'm thinking frankie muniz.

Heisenberg absolutely is an ellipses.

for what it's worth, i have been an atheist since, well..., maybe 1971 or so. it was the result of a long process, very well-thought through.
wanted to--tried to--be religious, like the rest of my family, but i just couldn't see it. religions work "well" to varying degrees for some people, but not me. i see them as a weakness, an external crutch. but i realize other folks, most notably those adherents, do not. that's fine.
i just wish they would be as tolerant of my beliefs as i am of their's.
i saw a license plate, indiana i believe the state, which had a big "in GOD we TRUST" emblazened on it, like a university-style plate, alongside the numbers.
that REALLY offends me. suppose i could have a "no god" vanity plate?
no, i tried. the state of iowa d.o.t. told me it was too offensive.
yup. great country.

That you assert it does not make it so. Show some evidence.

p.s.
You're not on fire, are you. :(

The experimentation demonstrated that it's the current method is incapable of measuring the movement, not that it could never be measured.

I'm under the weather. And someone left halloween cupcakes where my beagle could get them and I was at the vet's office for 2 hours this afternoon. He should be okay, but I'm exhausted.

No and I'm not really sure if I ever really believed in god or if it was just defereance to the authority of the Church.

I realized I was an atheist when I was 8, in Church. I'm not sure if that qualifies as believing in God per say even if I did when I was 7. The whole concept of Jesus loves you blah blah never really sank in, I didn't so much renounce my faith as just looked around and saw that it just didn't make any sense.

Despite being now about 30 years ago I remember it rather clearly. I was sitting on the left side of the church, about half way back. It was a weekday morning mass which I went to on my own because I felt that it had to be a 'good' thing to do, plus being in a Catholic school I was able to hang out for a while before school opened which seemed fun. A very old priest was reading something or other, and there was a smattering of elderly people in the Church, something which you would expect to only see on a weekday morning. It just sort of dawned on me, less of an epiphany and more of a giant 'duh'. There was no god in that church, and no god anywhere else for that matter. I had no knowledge of advanced biology, plate tectonics, molecular clocks, or even the apparently important Hindenburg's uncertainty principle. Even without anything beyond a slightly advanced 3rd grade scientific understanding I could see that it just really didn't work, on any level.

The problem with religion, is not in how it violates scientific principles, but how it violates good old common sense. Perhaps this is why, a question which so many would think of as complex seems so simple to me. I almost have a hard time discussing it with people because I feel like I'm talking to a child who still believes in Santa.

So, just because I want to get this straight, You believe that there is no god as a basic tenent of Atheism?

That's not how i interpreted it at all. From the article that i linked to, which is from an online encyclopedia for whatever it's worth, it seemed to make it pretty clear that any way around heisenberg had been ruled out.

I happen to think that there almost certainly isn't a god based on a reasonable conclusion drawn from evidence. That means I'm not a theist. If one is not a theist, one is an atheist.

It should be noted what will doesn't believe in agnostics either.

Ok. I happen to be a stikler for understanding and agreeing on definintions so that all parties are speaking to the same concept. I have always viewed atheism as a belief that there is no god. From my perpsective, I think that what you (Will) are stating is agnosticism or the witholding of acceptance of theism or atheism because there is no evidence to support either.

True theists believe that there is no requirement for evidence... they are faith based. If Atheism holds in the belief that there is no god, then it too is faith based and does not require evidence.

I have a sneaking suspicion that most athiest are in fact agnostics.

actually, most atheists classify themselves using the terminology that will is using. strong and weak atheism. agnosticism is a different descriptor entirely. atheism deals with whether or not one believes in a god. agnosticism deals with whether or not you believe that its possible to ever have proof of god, or knowledge of god's existence. thus, you could have an agnositic atheist, or an agnostic theist. i would argue that you should have gnostic theists and atheists as well; however, the term gnostic is tricky because it refers to an early movement in the christian church that many believe was heresy.

Bill Maher uses the word rationalist to describe those who are what I call weak atheists. That may be a better term as it describes what I am as opposed to what I'm not.

Rationalist? Okay term?

I would like to have an easy, understandable term: either you believe in a god or believe that there is no god. No weak, strong.

Agnostic: Latin for do not know? Not tied to Gnosticism. Therefore a term used when faith is not accepted. eg, the scientific approach that Missourians prefer. Rationalists would fall in this category.

"Common sense" is irrelevant in both religious and scientific terms. "Common sense" says the earth is flat; the moon, the sun and planets revolve around the earth; the earth isn't hurtling at a few thousand kilometers through space etc.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."-- Albert Einstein

I'm neither, then.
Oy vey.

Care to expand on the 'oy vey'?

The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree

I found that hard to swallow at 8. Common sense, or I should perhaps say, just really easy to figure out.

leto: the problem with the first portion of that is that those two choices are not the only choices available. an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in god. after that distinction, there's a lot of disagreement about issues.

for the second bit - that's my point. agnosticism isn't relatived to Gnosticism. however, i hold that one can feel (because i myself think this) that would be possible to know god or proof his/her/existence, were he/she/it a real phenomenon/being/whatever as portrayed in one of the major religious texts, pick your flavor.

ustwo: that may have been snarky, but it cracked me up. :D

Surely we can go one day without a snide remark?

Common sense describes none of these. The Earth can easily be demonstrated as not flat by a layman who can see someone or something travel over the horizon and then return with tales of... jack shit. No one falls of the end, thus the world is not flat. The sun, moon, blah blah... it's all a matter of very, very simple astronomy. When one realizes the movement of the stars relative to the sun and moon it becomes strikingly obvious. As for distance from the Earth to the sun? Triangulation. Take the position of the sun in the sky on two points on the Earth at the same time from far apart, then triangulate. Bam, about 92,000,000 miles. Common sense is not sitting there and guessing like an idiot. It's idiots that slow scientific development.

*Shakes his head*

Apparently you don't understand what common sense is and why it contradicts logical thinking, so I'll help you out.

Look up at the sky during the day and observe the sun. It appears to move across the sky. Now do the same with the moon. It also appears to move across the sky. Since you observed both the sun and the moon to move across the sky during the day, then it stands to reason that they both orbit the earth. That's what 'common sense' is. This is why the geocentric theory was accepted as fact for so long; Because 'common sense' dictated it to be true. We assume what we observe with our senses to be true, even when they might not be. None of your examples involve 'common sense', but rather the application of logic (Science) in order to solve a specific problem or answer a specific question.

Generally, 'common sense' inhibits logical thinking.

But-- Hey!-- Since you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to this guy ;)

Why you can't trust common sense

Helping out by weakly condescending? Do you actually speak to people this way? Do you think people listen?
Common sense is not sitting there making counterintuitive guesses.
Common sense is a starting point, not a conclusion. After you've allowed common sense to tell you that god makes no sense, you allow your rational and scientific mind to explore what does make sense.

BTW, Richard Dawkins uses a Mac. I win.

Sometimes. Depends on my mood.

You did :D

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how would "The sun revolves around the earth" be counter-intuitive? Given the fact that the sun appears to revolve around the earth, it's counter-intuitive to believe that it's the earth which moves (After all, we don't notice the fact that the earth is actualy moving through space at several thousand kilometers per hour) and the sun is stationary. Hence why it was 'common sense' that was geocentric theory was true and why Galileo was a nutjob ;)

Common sense is, in essence, neither. It's an intellectual cop-out, almost like giving the argument "It's so because it is". There's no discussion to be had.

*See above*

Didn't you watch the video? If you did, you'd know just how not possible your statement is. Common sense and logical thinking simply don't mix.

He uses a mac to feel even more superior to the common man while overpaying for a machine that has less available software. He even makes a bad joke about PC's being Virus machines in The Ancestors Tale and its a shame that such a man can't figure out how to avoid spyware when he goes to zooporn sites :p

I enjoy reading Dawkins to a point, but he is the epitome an ivory tower intellectual, and therefore he can't use the masses PC. My guess is he wears crocks too.

So one can simply look at the sun without considering the stars? It's beyond stupid. Weak ass assumption ≠ common sense. As soon as one takes into consideration the movement of the stars in the sky, it becomes clear.
Common sense is about recognizing systems in nature and then basing projections on the understanding of those systems.

It's why I use it...
Does zooporn mean what I think it means? If so, then that's a big LOL for a world renowned biologist. Also, it's nice not worrying about spyware. What does defrag mean? I have no clue.
The ivory tower would have a huge Apple insignia?

Apparently it's not as clear as you say it is, because it took science to disprove the geocentric theory, which was considered to be 'common sense'. If you look up at the sky you have no reason to not believe that the moon, the sun and stas don't revolve around the earth, as you can see them 'move' across the sky.

No, not it's not. We call that logical/abstract thought (aka, science). Common sense is using one of your five senses-- Usually sight-- To derive a 'common truth' about the universe.

Something being considered common sense and being common sense are not always in harmony.
Ignoring evidence isn't common sense.
Not it's not? There's nothing natural about ignoring reasonable evidence, and if ignoring evidence is common, well then it doesn't make any sense thus only fulfilling one of the two descriptive terms.

it is not a good idea to rely on "common sense" in an argument--you cant define it (above, i think il is closest in no. 436)---if it is more or less what hermeneutics types call "prejudice structures," then they are as much a filtering system as an apprehension system.

if you look at the german "alltagsgeschichte" (history of the everyday---the german is probably spelt wrong) sometime, you find a pretty damning analysis of petit bourgeois "common sense" as a system of perceptual filters--difficult to localize, difficult to specify, but not so hard to infer as being-at-work --that enabled folk to carry on their normal lives in the midst of deportations and not really notice much of anything. this work is mostly about the 1930s-40s in germany. it is about trying explain how genocide organized as the nazi party organized it was possible, not administratively, but more at the level of popular consent.

common sense is a way to refer to ideological effects that we perform in the normal run of our lives, when we are not particularly paying attention, when we are not particularly focussed..its a kind of immediacy, a frame that operates within the context of immediacy, which shapes it without requiring any particular effort.

any recursive statement entails a break with "common sense".

If works just fine if I don't take into account petit bourgeois "common sense" as a system of perceptual filters.

Call it 'really basic deductive reasoning' if it makes it seem better.

I thought common sense meant simpler things, like not sticking your hand in the fire and not stepping off a cliff.

What the hell happened to atheism?