Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bitesh]

No, I don't have a rebuttal. Or rather I do, but then I find a rebuttal to my rebuttal, and it doesn't really end. None of us are right. We can't be. It's beyond us to be right. We can only hope to not be wrong.
I've taken too long to post this and now someone else has posted in between. He makes a good point. But so did the poster before him, and the one before. We all make points in a picture, but we do not see the picture.
This is the best I can come up with. It's just way too big. And the harder you look, the less you see. It sounds like vague bullshit, I'm sorry. I can write all I want I'll never get to the point.
It cracks me up.

EDIT: read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, and try to "grokk grokking"

[Fenrir]

Ironically I now think that the biggest reason for faithlessness is a lack of balls - to put it bluntly - within the intellectual community.

No, I do have testicles. Thank you for your concern.

None of us are right. We can't be.

Ah!—but, If you can not be right, then the assertion “None of us are right. We can’t be,” can not be right. Right?

[bitesh]

None of us are right. We can't be.

Ah!—but, If you can not be right, then the assertion “None of us are right. We can’t be,” can not be right. Right?
[/quote]

Oddly enough.

[Lord Dullard]

No, I don't have a rebuttal. Or rather I do, but then I find a rebuttal to my rebuttal, and it doesn't really end. None of us are right. We can't be. It's beyond us to be right. We can only hope to not be wrong.
I've taken too long to post this and now someone else has posted in between. He makes a good point. But so did the poster before him, and the one before. We all make points in a picture, but we do not see the picture.
This is the best I can come up with. It's just way too big. And the harder you look, the less you see. It sounds like vague bullshit, I'm sorry. I can write all I want I'll never get to the point.
It cracks me up.

No, actually, I think you're pretty much spot-on, there.

I could go into my own reasons for abandoning the position that there may NOT be a God - whatever God might be (I certainly don't think of Him/Her as a toga-clad bearded cloud-fairy, that's for sure) - but the essence of them is 'we have no idea what the hell is going on, but I firmly believe there's something more than what we can figure out, and it's alive, not inanimate chaos'.

My own view of humans and our perception of reality - and our understanding of our own situation - is that we are like nerve endings in something huger than we can comprehend, and held up to that thing, our interpretation of the reality around us is as simple and nonsensical as the information about pain/pleasure/pressure/etc. generated by a nerve ending. Relative to what's really going on as perceived by the larger entity or reality that's receiving those signals - the brain, as it were - I don't think we have a clue. Especially about our own place within the bigger picture. And I suspect that if we did, we'd be scared shitless.

[Fenrir]

I hope you understand the difficulty in supporting any position on any matter by beginning with “We have no idea what is going on, and we never could have one.”

[Criptfeind]

At least he is not dishonest about it.

[Leafsnail]

It sounds like vague bullshit, I'm sorry.

...Yeah.  It kindof does I'm afraid.  I can't really grasp anything you've said but I'll point out that all I was saying was that people accepting the validity of other people's beliefs wouldn't cause them to stop discriminating.  You'd have to show them that they're wrong to do that.

At least he is not dishonest about it.

But he is contradictory in that he goes on to say he does have an idea what's going on.

[penguinofhonor]

Somehow this thread outcome isn't surprising.

[Lord Dullard]

I didn't say 'we never could have one', so let's start out by leveling with each other: you've already tried to put words in my mouth.

What I said was that if we did know, it would scare us shitless.

And anyhow, even if I had said that, the only difference between a purely agnostic and logically scientific belief system and the one you just described is the point that I just refuted. I.e., it is an admission that we have no idea what the hell is going on. If you're the hopeful type you MIGHT believe we have a chance of finding out one day, but then again, you might not. There's a good possibility we'll blow ourselves up, die out, or just never evolve physically or technologically or intellectually enough to even have a clue.

Edit:
Multiple conversations going on at once are confusing. I'll respond to those who address me directly, otherwise I'm not sure exactly who/what you're responding to.

[Fenrir]

I didn't say 'we never could have one', so let's start out by leveling with each other: you've already tried to put words in my mouth.

You did not, but you agreed with bitesh, and he said that. So I have made no such effort to put words in your mouth. You might accuse me of minor carelessness, but not knowledgeable and willing misrepresentation.

[Shinotsa]

Hmm, have I mentioned that atheists make up 10% of the population? There is no social pressure for people to stop being religious. Atheism is not a religion, and thus does not seek converts. Thus there is no coordinated pressure to swell atheistic ranks, as it is purely a lack of a religion. The social pressure from religious persons, however, is quite prominent and in many cases is a coordinated effort. Thus it should be the atheists dying out and not religious persons, as there is a larger percent of the population actively attempting to gain converts, versus a small minority that does not.

Also, I cannot accept the comment "lack of balls" without feeling a little attacked. It wouldn't have hurt to attempt to replace it with a euphemism instead of an openly hostile statement. Regardless, I fail to see how faith, believing in something without any degree of proof, is a virtue. In fact, the virtue of faith that I recognize is that it promotes adaptation. Religion started to explain the world, and once we came up with equations and predictions to replace it it evolved into something more. No longer do we have dogmas and holy books that are followed to the word. Each religious person believes in something completely separate, and has a reasonable degree of certainty that they are right.

Ironically faith allows religion to display the theory of evolution. The ideas that work survive, and those that don't die off. This is why most religious people now can accept the theory of evolution, while half a century ago accepting it alongside religion was unthinkable.

Also I have to point out that "it sounds like vague bullshit" is intuitive rather than analytical. Just thought that was interesting.

[Lord Dullard]

I didn't say 'we never could have one', so let's start out by leveling with each other: you've already tried to put words in my mouth.

You did not, but you agreed with bitesh, and he said that. So I have made no such effort to put words in your mouth. You might accuse me of minor carelessness, but not knowledgeable and willing misrepresentation.

Except that he did not claim that we could never have an idea of what's going on, either. Unless I'm reading what he wrote in that post completely wrong, he said that none of us are right - which seems to be a perfectly valid viewpoint if you admit that none of us have the least idea of what the greater universe around us really is, where it came from, or what it's doing at the moment (or outside the bounds of space/time that we have an inkling about) - and that it's beyond us to be right, which is also completely valid. Unless you think there's somebody on this planet who DOES know all the answers at the moment, and that they could be 'right' about any of the infinite amount of big questions?

He did not say 'in ten thousand or ten million years, when we may have gone through any number of technological, physical, intellectual, or spiritual evolutions, we will still not have a clue', which is how you seem to be interpreting his statements.

Hmm, have I mentioned that atheists make up 10% of the population? There is no social pressure for people to stop being religious. Atheism is not a religion, and thus does not seek converts. Thus there is no coordinated pressure to swell atheistic ranks, as it is purely a lack of a religion. The social pressure from religious persons, however, is quite prominent and in many cases is a coordinated effort. Thus it should be the atheists dying out and not religious persons, as there is a larger percent of the population actively attempting to gain converts, versus a small minority that does not.

That's kind of a ridiculous stance to take. It doesn't matter that a set of viewpoints is or is not a religion - there is no rule of reality dictating that something has to be a religion for a group of people to support the idea and try to convince others of its truth. Take pretty much any set of political viewpoints, for example.

Also, I cannot accept the comment "lack of balls" without feeling a little attacked.

That was my fault for using a statement that, yes, sounds rather hostile. Allow me to put it in context: I was speaking from the position of somebody who had a personal revelation about their own faithlessness being directly caused by a cowardly refusal to confront some of the scarier questions I had about reality, and I broadbrushed most agnostics/atheists that way - rather foolishly - rather than making a more reasonable statement. Which I will now do: I think that at least a good portion of unfaithful people are unfaithful because of social pressure and personal cowardice, but certainly not all of them. And the ones who aren't may not be 'wrong', though I would definitely disagree with them.

[Fenrir]

I supposed that is what he meant by “None of us are right. We can’t be,” but, of course, it makes no use of the word never, so I have made a mistake. However, I would put forward that there is no reason to suppose that I meant to do so, and it does not permit one to discard my point, which was that you were making an assertion about the matter after agreeing that we can presently know nothing, and that is contradictory.

[bitesh]

people accepting the validity of other people's beliefs wouldn't cause them to stop discriminating.

That does not make sense to me.

But he is contradictory in that he goes on to say he does have an idea what's going on.

Ok, I have an idea, it's just my idea, and it's probably not right. "Having an/no idea" might not be a very pertinent expression to use when speaking of such delicate matters.

What I said was that if we did know, it would scare us shitless.

My understanding is that if we were anywhere near knowing, we'd be way beyond being shit-scared of anything.

There is no social pressure for people to stop being religious.

I have to disagree with this, as I see Lord Dullard's point that there are a number of atheists who (believing they are absolutely right) adopt a smug, superior attitude and label believers as stupid automatically. I know this, I have experienced this.

I'd also like to point out that ultimately being a believer or not has no influence whatsoever on being a "righteous" person. I'm not sure "righteous" will be interpreted as I intend it, though, but I can't really say otherwise succintly.

[Lord Dullard]

I supposed that is what he meant by “None of us are right. We can’t be,” but, of course, it makes no use of the word never, so I have made a mistake. However, I would put forward that there is no reason to suppose that I meant to do so, and it does not permit one to discard my point, which was that you were making an assertion about the matter after agreeing that we can presently know nothing, and that is contradictory.

Sorry, what assertion are you claiming that I made? That we'd be scared shitless if we knew the whole of things? I plainly stated that was my own view, not the absolute truth.