General Chat

Bev, I don’t think it is, we have changed our beliefs many time over the past few millennium and think we are changing all the time, like when I was at school religious education was a compulsory subject, not today, Henry 8th changed it, you can look back and see many changes, we learn about so many different cultures now, many have different faiths, some are very barbaric so who’s right?

You are right RB - but faith is timeless.

Looking back through history, it seems to me that science as way of proving previous science wrong, every thing we believed to be true at the time changes with new evidence, take the world is flat wrong, world is the centre of universe wrong, ok then the Sun is the centre of the universe wrong, the atom is the smallest particle wrong the list goes on and on, we as humans learn more and more about the world and universe we find new ways to see things we constantly improve are methods, what we believe today as fact because that’s all are technology will allow at this moment, will tomorrow become wrong and new evidence will prove that, so no matter what you believe in today you can bet the future will prove you wrong.

Janey

During my debate with Eldrick yesterday, he said that my beliefs were 'ridiculous' (his words) because there was no scientific evidence to back it up. He (nor anyone else really) has any idea of my beliefs but he constantly requested 'evidence' for me to justify them.

Evidence can be (and is) falsified. Ask any lawyer, sales person or parent telling a child about Father Christmas.

Oh Mick -- it's not that I don't *want* to change 'em.

It's just that it isn't seemly to try to. ;)



Beverley:
"Surely the point is, we are all entitiled to believe whatever we want to believe without having to justify it."

Actually, you're entitled to believe whatever you want to believe. Period. (To say otherwise would just be nonsense anyway -- how could anyone ever know what someone else believes, let alone prohibit them from believing it?? So entitlement, or rights, really don't come into it.)

Justification is only an issue if there is an attempt at prohibition -- if a government could show a genuine need to prohibit someone from believing something, and then the believer could try to justify believing it. If that even made any sense, of course.

Otherwise, no one *has* to justify any belief. And no one sensible would say they did. There's no punishment for having a belief, so how could justification for it be needed??

"I accept Eldrick (and like-minded thinkers) belief that scientists are Gods in their own right"

No you don't, unless I've missed Eldrick or someone else saying something incredibly stupid.

You just made that up, didn't you?

Why would you make up something incredibly stupid and pretend that someone else said it? Is that what "respectful" looks like?

"Just because they have done experiments and written a report you don't 'know' for yourself unless you have done those same experiments in the same conditions."

Read up on "evidence". It is evidence if it *can* be reproduced. If someone credible does the experiment, and someone else credible replicates it, and no one credible tries and fails to replicate it, we got us some evidence. (Calling Dawkins names doesn't make him non-credible, Len, in case you were wondering.)

I don't insist on waiting until the sun is up every morning before I'll believe it is going to rise.

Surely the point is, we are all entitiled to believe whatever we want to believe without having to justify it. I accept Eldrick (and like-minded thinkers) belief that scientists are Gods in their own right but, how does anyone know they are right? Just because they have done experiments and written a report you don't 'know' for yourself unless you have done those same experiments in the same conditions. I believe what I want to believe and would fight to the death to enable me to continue believing. That doesn't mean my beliefs are right - just that they are mine.

That's remarkably brief and concise Janey - for you.

The difference is that I am an Evangelical Atheist -

I want to change their beliefs.

"There is no god, and Richard Dawkins is my prophet!"

"a long dark night when there is nothing and no one else to hold on to"

is what it is to be *human*. I prefer to experience the full reality of that, myself.

Of course, myself, I don't initiate any discussion of anyone else's choices. Not unless we're already very, very familiar and I want to know what they'll say. Their beliefs are theirs, and they're entitled and welcome to them.

Unless and until they try to make the world in their image. And the plain fact is that very large numbers of them do.

Without their scripture to quote and their authorities to appeal to, how would they manage to campaign against things like same-sex marriage, women's reproductive rights, heck, the abolition of slavery?

It isn't me who wants to drag believers' beliefs out of their closets. ;)

But of what use is false comfort?

It's all very well to believe something because it "makes you feel good",

But I would rather know the truth no matter how bleak that may be.


xxxxx mick

If faith gives people comfort and courage in adversity and compassion for others and, if as so often it is, it is just intensely personal and not rammed down the non- believers throat...then is it fair to mock it? It may not be proveable, it may be a fools hope...but if it helps someone through a long dark night when there is nothing and no one else to hold on to...what does it hurt to let it be.

Caught you out Len - you have posted that one before!

Eldrick - you are in the finest form I have ever seen on here! More power to you!

Faith - the ultimate con trick!


xxxxxxx mick

Len:

"particularly the Geneticist Prof. Richard Dawkins who has published a book 'The God Delusion' disposing of God. Dawkins is one of those narrow minded souls. He may be offended by being referred to as a soul, but there you go. These people never seem to stray beyond the confines of their own particular discipline."

Do you actually have some basis for maligning an individual not here to reply, in this way?

Maybe you would go call him a "soul" directly, and see what his reaction is. I don't think he'd be "offended". I think he'd consider you a boor.

Hahahaha. I act as if Len might actually respond.


A list of Richard Dawkins' publicatins can be read here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_publications_by_Richard_Dawkins

Would that I were so "narrow-minded" is all I can say.

Now Prof Eysenck, he apparently had a soft spot for the woo. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Eysenck

That's the point where the mind is so open it leaks. ;)

The greatest field of exploration remaining to science is that of the mind. Most scientists still claim the mind to be a brain function and purely physical but emerging scientific evidence shows it is quite clearly non-physical and, therefore, not a product of the brain. It is not so fanciful to suppose that once we fully understand the enormous power of the mind and how to harness its product thought we will be on the threshold of a development far more revolutionary for humanity than the industrial revolution. Some scientists claim that the problem will never be solved because our brains are not equipped to understand our own consciousness. There are others, and I like to tag along in their wakes, who believe that there is a cosmic intelligence of which our consciousness may be part or from which it devolved (Jung’s Collective Unconscious?).

The generic term for the energy that pervades life and the universe may be called Life Force. Some cosily think of it personified in the shape of a little, bearded old man, with a harp, sitting on a cloud. Whether an Asian, Negroid or Caucasoid little old man the concept is infantile. In any case, why not a woman? Sceptics and some scientists do not believe in it at all, particularly the Geneticist Prof. Richard Dawkins who has published a book “The God Delusion” disposing of God. Dawkins is one of those narrow minded souls. He may be offended by being referred to as a soul, but there you go. These people never seem to stray beyond the confines of their own particular discipline. Professor H J Eysenck, who occupied the Chair in Psychology at London University and was Director of the Psychological Dept. at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospitals said "Scientists, especially when they leave the field in which they have specialised, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous".

Of all the bewildering elementary particles in the physicist’s inventory, the most ghost-like is the neutrino. Its existence was predicted in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli, on purely theoretical grounds but it was not until 1956 that the actual neutrinos, emanating from the Atomic Energy commission’s huge nuclear piles, were trapped in the laboratory by Reines and Cowan

The reason why it took so long to detect them was that the neutrino has virtually no mass, no electric charge, no magnetic field and is not affected by gravity. It is not captured or repelled by the electric or magnetic fields of other particles whilst flying past them. A neutrino originates somewhere in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or perhaps in another galaxy and, travelling at the speed of light can go through the solid body of the earth as if it were empty space. It can only be stopped by a head-on collision with another elementary particle and the chance of that is infinitesimally small. Fortunately, there are enough around that collisions do occur which enabled them to be detected. In the time it takes to read this sentence billions, coming from the sun and other stars, are streaming through our skulls, our bodies and the earth beneath our feet as if such solids were non-existent. To the unprejudiced mind, neutrinos have a certain affinity with ghosts – which does not prevent them from existing. This is not just a whimsical metaphor. The absence of ‘gross’ physical properties in the neutrino’ and its quasi-ethereal character, encourages speculation about the possible existence of other particles which would provide the link between mind and matter. 96% of the cosmos is composed of ‘dark matter’. "Dark" in this context is a term meaning "unknown". Thus the eminent astronomer V.A Firsoff suggested that “mind was a universal entity or interaction of the same order as electromagnetism and there must exist a modulus of transformation analogous to Einstein’s E=mc² whereby ‘mind stuff’ could be equated with other entities of the physical world”. He further suggested that there may exist elementary particles of mind-stuff (consciousness) with properties somewhat similar to the neutrinos.

The universe, as seen by a neutrino's eye (if it had one) would look very unfamiliar. The earth and other planets simply would not be there or might, at best, seem as thin patches of mist. The sun and other stars may be dimly visible as they emit some neutrinos. A neutrino brain might suspect our existence from certain secondary effects but would find us very difficult to prove as we would elude the neutrino instruments at its disposal.

Our universe is no truer than that of the neutrinos - they exist but they exist in a different kind of space and probably, almost assuredly, other entities also exist but they are governed by different laws. In our universe, so far as is known, no material body or energy can exceed the speed of light because at this velocity it’s mass and so inertia become infinite. The neutrino, though, is subject to neither gravitational nor electromagnetic fields so that it need not be bound by this speed limit and may have its own, different time.

From earlier analyses of mental or conscious attributes, it appears that they have no definite location in the so called physical (or gravi-electromagnetic) space, in which they resemble a neutrino or even a fast electron. This suggests a special kind of consciousness-space governed by different laws - which is corroborated by the para-psychological experiments and findings made at Duke, Princeton, Freiberg, Edinburgh, Manchester and other Universities and respected centres of learning around the world. It seems that consciousness/ mind/spirit/soul, call it what you will, is subject to laws of its own, defining a different type of space-time. Another way of putting it is "another dimension"

Well I want evidence against it then Eldrick. I think it is just a case of we shall have to wait and see.

I for one shall hedge my bets.....and go for believing in the good guy. If the other belief is true....I won't be losing much, will I? :-))

I don't disagree with what you have said there at all Janey.

just thinking........imagine going back to king tuts times ,and saying oh in the year 2000,theres gonna be metal birds flying in the sky.lolol.they,d never believe it.or try to explain cars and buses to them .
just food for thought .

Yes, well there's the thing.

I don't know of any non-believers engaged in much of a campaign to persuade believers of much of anything. Non-believers tend to want to be left alone.

It's the believers who campaign not just to persuade the non-believers, but to organize the world according to how they think their beliefs call for it to be organized, and this quite often results in one of those *their fist -> our noses* kinds of situations.

Having people importuning one on one's own personal private doorstep to engage in their persuasive efforts is bad enough. Having them campaign for laws and institutions that, they claim, are consistent with their beliefs is much worse.

They attempt to control others and compel them to behave as they direct, when they have *no* evidence of any authority for their instructions. And, of course, to punish non-compliers.

And that's the real harm done by - some - believers.

Just ask Galileo. ;)


Oops, the dit-dits.

One of the very few places on the net I find it being used is in something by an old chum of mine in Australia. ;)

"What's with the dit-dits round the word protesters?
Like, you think it was a Rent-A-Crowd? How lame..."

"No, really, you can't do that."

I CAN you know Janey lol..and did ;)

I was however using the word 'evidence' in its broadest sense (Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion), evidence that satisfies MY OWN rigorous logic and rationality, not necessarily 'evidence' that would satisfy Eldrick's or yours or a court of law :0)

( BTW is "did-dit" actually a word/s..just that I've not heard it before...I shall use it all the time now )

"The fundamental nature of evidence is that it is communicable" that may well be so ... ( eg I can communicate the evidence that proves that the death penalty is not a detterent but people have the right to ignore that evidence if they so choose ....and often do lol)

On religion/ spirituality I do not NEED to provide evidence because I am not seeking to convince anyone of anything. In fact, if I HAD concrete evidence I wouldn't give it to you. :)

Rose, again:

"But I don't need those words, I have the 'evidence' of my eyes and my heart and my brain. ( and something 'more' than the combination of those three) ."

No, really, you can't do that. You can't put a word in did-dits and thereby use it to mean something it doesn't mean.

Whatever you have from your eyes and your heart and your brain, it ain't evidence, did-dit or no, "something more" or no! Unless, of course, what you have from your eyes, for instance, or that "something more", actually is evidence. ;)

The fundamental nature of evidence is that it is communicable. Here, those were my words, but I just googled them -- "evidence is communicable" -- and look where the phrase turns up. ;)

http://debatepedia.idebate.org/en/index.php/Debate:_Atheism


* Religious Dogma provides a Haven for Social Ignorance.
Even assuming the theological premises of religion are valid, the epistemological basis for divine gnosis, cannot be communicated free of interpretation and bias. In contrast **knowledge obtained through empirical evidence is communicable** as the skeptic can independently repeat the observation or analysis of data. If wisdom exists in the social proscriptions of a given religion's dogma then that wisdom can be empirically verified. On the other hand if "the message" has been altered or misunderstood by "the messenger" then in obedience to religious authority pious society does not question the validity of the claims through empirical means. Thus flaws remain which lead to unjust persecutions and unnecessary conflicts such as jihad's, witch trials, and inquisitions.