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Author Topic: Religion  (Read 34308 times)

Bauglir

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Re: Religion
« Reply #345 on: May 31, 2011, 10:18:00 pm »

Since the link was so kindly provided and I didn't have to search for it, BEHOLD THE ALMIGHTY CHART. GAZE YE UPON ITS MAJESTY AND BE INCINERATED, YOUR VERY SOUL CAVED IN BY THE GLORY.

Yes, that's right. I worship the chart now.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT: I suck at tags.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2011, 10:26:44 pm by Bauglir »
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Religion
« Reply #346 on: May 31, 2011, 10:19:21 pm »

I mean, nice chart, but it is not in fact a argument.
It's not my chart, this argument is so prevalent that I had a million available to me from google.
Quote
Why not?
Because agnosticism isn't a statement of belief, it's a statment of knowledge. Agnosticism is the idea that we cannot be certain of the existance or non-existance of a deity regardless of that deity's actual status. Theism and Atheism, on the other hand, are like 1 and 0 respectively. God or No God.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
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No Gods, No Masters.

Criptfeind

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Re: Religion
« Reply #347 on: May 31, 2011, 10:20:44 pm »

Right. I am still not getting you, but let my try to make a rebuttal using your example.

How it is possible to say "I do not know if it is 1 or 0 but it is 0."
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Hiiri

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Re: Religion
« Reply #348 on: May 31, 2011, 10:22:18 pm »

Fundies say the darnest things.
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Bohandas

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Re: Religion
« Reply #349 on: May 31, 2011, 10:23:03 pm »

Just because a variable is unknown, doesn't make it random. A card-counter in blackjack doesn't know for sure the dealer will turn a 6 on facecard, but he's making the assumption that it will happen.

There are infinite amount of imaginable gods. So again, if the card deck has infinite amount of cards in it, with infinite amount of different numbers on the cards. No.. they won't have a clue what card he will pull out, no matter how long they play their silly game. :P

Edit: And just believing that he will pull out an ace the next time, does not make it so.

That is a very bad example. Once a deck of cards has been shuffled, the order of the cards in said deck is absolutely determined (barring the fantastically unlikely but technically possible occurence of large-scale quantum-tunneling events switching the placement of one or two cards that might occur every few billion years)  until those cards are rearranged. Whether you can predict the next card or not does nothing to change the order (Well, I suppose it might make the events described in the previous parenthetical note occur even LESS frequently if the cards were all laid out in such a way that you could directly observe the value of each, but the occurence it would be negating is so unlikely as to be negligible anyway)
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Religion
« Reply #350 on: May 31, 2011, 10:23:33 pm »

Right. I am still not getting you, but let my try to make a rebuttal using your example.

How it is possible to say "I do not know if it is 1 or 0 but it is 0."
"There's a number behind a card. It is either one or zero because we have been informed that the number is a binary representation. There are a number of clues to what the number is, but some of them are contradictory. In fact, pretty much all the clues saying the number is 1 are contradictory, so its a safe bet that the number is probably 0."
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
Quote
No Gods, No Masters.

Glowcat

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Re: Religion
« Reply #351 on: May 31, 2011, 10:26:19 pm »

Right from a dictionary.

a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
b : the doctrine that there is no deity

So no, a agnostic is not a atheist. (Which happens to be why we have two words.)

Please see the thread MetalSlimeHunt linked to. "The Dictionary" is a rather poor way of understanding complex philosophical concepts.

Not the least reason being that practically nobody is one of these "Strong Atheists" that some theists like to conjure up to prove that Atheists are just as religious as they are. And yes, that last bit is just a tad confusing. It's basically a semantic game meant to establish a strawman opponent and then claim victory over all those zealot Atheists because they couldn't prove that Undetectable Being X doesn't actually exist.

I am not, and I am more interested in the practical aspect of religions as their functionally in society and their internal logic to form a working system of ideology. And I am not Christian, not Atheist, not even westerners, and I like TEXT WALL!!!

You're one of those who attempt to bring something new to the table. I was referring to how these threads always tend to return to the exact same arguments, time and time again.
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G-Flex

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Re: Religion
« Reply #352 on: May 31, 2011, 10:28:48 pm »

Not the least reason being that practically nobody is one of these "Strong Atheists" that some theists like to conjure up to prove that Atheists are just as religious as they are. And yes, that last bit is just a tad confusing. It's basically a semantic game meant to establish a strawman opponent and then claim victory over all those zealot Atheists because they couldn't prove that Undetectable Being X doesn't actually exist.

I think some religious apologists confuse strong atheism with the assertion that a particular concept of God doesn't exist. You can assert, for instance, that the Christian God (for example) cannot exist as-stated due to contradictory qualities ascribed to Him, but that doesn't necessarily make you a "strong atheist", as you are not making an assertion about gods in general, just the one.
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Criptfeind

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Re: Religion
« Reply #353 on: May 31, 2011, 10:29:34 pm »

Fundies say the darnest things.

What the heck does this even mean?

Right. I am still not getting you, but let my try to make a rebuttal using your example.

How it is possible to say "I do not know if it is 1 or 0 but it is 0."
"There's a number behind a card. It is either one or zero because we have been informed that the number is a binary representation. There are a number of clues to what the number is, but some of them are contradictory. In fact, pretty much all the clues saying the number is 1 are contradictory, so its a safe bet that the number is probably 0."

Huh. That is interesting, and I understand where you are coming from. I disagree with you, but only on a semantic point.

Not the least reason being that practically nobody is one of these "Strong Atheists" that some theists like to conjure up to prove that Atheists are just as religious as they are. And yes, that last bit is just a tad confusing. It's basically a semantic game meant to establish a strawman opponent and then claim victory over all those zealot Atheists because they couldn't prove that Undetectable Being X doesn't actually exist.

Look at my face. This is my not caring face.

He said that a agnostic fits fully under the definition of a atheist. He said to look it up and that is what I did.

For the rest, I don’t give a fuck.
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Bohandas

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Re: Religion
« Reply #354 on: May 31, 2011, 10:31:41 pm »

If it's impossible to know if an entity even exists, then for all intents and purposes it does not, as the ontology of that entity has absolutely no bearing on us whatsoever. It's like asking "What might be in another universe that doesn't interact with this one whatsoever?" -- if there's no way to know, then there's no reason to entertain the idea in the first place.

Objection. Affirming the Consequent.

Could you actually explain how I've committed the fallacy there?

All I'm saying is that if it's impossible to know if an entity even exists, then there's obviously no reason to consider its existence. If something can't even interact with us in a way that makes its existence as an entity known, then there is no reason to consider it a possible entity.

My argument was more in objection to your analogy about other universes ("It's like asking "What might be in another universe that doesn't interact with this one whatsoever?" -- if there's no way to know, then there's no reason to entertain the idea in the first place."), wherein your argument seemed to be:

1.) IF (P) something does not exist THEN (Q)it will not interact with our universe

2.) A hypothetical paralell universe that does not interact with our universe will by definition (Q)not interact with our universe

3.) Said hypothetical paralell universe that (Q) does not interact with our universe (P)does not/cannot exist
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Bohandas

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Re: Religion
« Reply #355 on: May 31, 2011, 10:33:54 pm »

Right. I am still not getting you, but let my try to make a rebuttal using your example.

How it is possible to say "I do not know if it is 1 or 0 but it is 0."

I think it involves a quantum computation algorithm...
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counting

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Re: Religion
« Reply #356 on: May 31, 2011, 10:35:59 pm »

Fundies say the darnest things.

I thought text wall will help to slow down the increment rate of this thread, clearly I was wrong :P

People really don't like to read here. And introducing new working concept didn't help either. People like to debate on the philosophical level instead of observing the real effect of religions. You might think people are having them, because they WORK/have-function in human society.
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G-Flex

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Re: Religion
« Reply #357 on: May 31, 2011, 10:36:11 pm »

1.) IF (P) something does not exist THEN (Q)it will not interact with our universe

2.) A hypothetical paralell universe that does not interact with our universe will by definition (Q)not interact with our universe

3.) Said hypothetical paralell universe that (Q) does not interact with our universe (P)does not/cannot exist

Change 3 to read "does not exist for all intents and purposes". If something does not interact with you, then it is impossible to perceive its existence, therefore bringing up the question of whether or not something exists that can't interact with you is rather fruitless.
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counting

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Re: Religion
« Reply #358 on: May 31, 2011, 10:39:56 pm »

Not the least reason being that practically nobody is one of these "Strong Atheists" that some theists like to conjure up to prove that Atheists are just as religious as they are. And yes, that last bit is just a tad confusing. It's basically a semantic game meant to establish a strawman opponent and then claim victory over all those zealot Atheists because they couldn't prove that Undetectable Being X doesn't actually exist.

I think some religious apologists confuse strong atheism with the assertion that a particular concept of God doesn't exist. You can assert, for instance, that the Christian God (for example) cannot exist as-stated due to contradictory qualities ascribed to Him, but that doesn't necessarily make you a "strong atheist", as you are not making an assertion about gods in general, just the one.

Now, your are distinguished the terminology will, and then can you tell me each of their roles and function? As why should there be so many kind of differences? And what's the purpose of dividing people into groups, so they can paint different name tags on their T-shirt?
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Individuals trade with each other only through the intermediation of specialist traders called: shops.
Nelson and Winter:
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Montague

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Re: Religion
« Reply #359 on: May 31, 2011, 10:41:46 pm »

If it's impossible to know if an entity even exists, then for all intents and purposes it does not, as the ontology of that entity has absolutely no bearing on us whatsoever. It's like asking "What might be in another universe that doesn't interact with this one whatsoever?" -- if there's no way to know, then there's no reason to entertain the idea in the first place.

Objection. Affirming the Consequent.

Could you actually explain how I've committed the fallacy there?

All I'm saying is that if it's impossible to know if an entity even exists, then there's obviously no reason to consider its existence. If something can't even interact with us in a way that makes its existence as an entity known, then there is no reason to consider it a possible entity.

Atheism has different definitions and different degrees of adherence. I define it as somebody who asserts the absolute certainty that there is no god, deity, supernatural beings, ect (possibly lamely citing the lack of evidence)

I apologize, but you don't get to define words yourself for the purposes of an argument. "Atheism" is an umbrella term that only strictly requires what its etymology implies: A lack of theism.

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Also, this infinite belief systems idea, it has merit, but one has to make the assumption that any deity petty enough to send souls to miserable afterlives is involved enough to try to intervene.

Why would you assume this? Why are you trying to apply naive human psychology to unknowable and completely hypothetical transcendent entities? Why are you assuming anything at this point?

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So your right, there is perhaps no way to know if a deity exists or not, or what the character of that deity might be like. So we have to work on assumptions, hedging our bets and playing the odds.

The odds are unknowable.

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Sure, the deity could be a purple fire-breathing fish that only sends Mexican left-handed accountants to heaven. Think is, its not likely, if you analyses the ideas behind it.

Why is that any less likely than anything else, when the divine entities involved are completely arbitrary and unknowable?

Quote
Just because a variable is unknown, doesn't make it random.

Except in this case, it is, because we're talking about completely arbitrary hypothetical cases involving an infinite and uncountable set of religious and spiritual ideas that go beyond the Western concept of "gods", never mind your Abrahamic view of a vengeful man-in-the-sky.


Also, you're forgetting part of the risk here: When you "hedge your bets" and believe disingenuously in something, that takes mental effort that could be applied to real-world problems, or even honest religion. The hidden cost of Pascal's Wager (aside from the fact that it's, you know, completely bunk) is that the energy, time, and focus you spend on this one hideously arbitrary and pointless probability-game detracts from the energy, time, and focus you could be spending on other pursuits. The most arbitrary part of it is the fact that it even involves "gods" and an "afterlife", each of which are, again, individual snippets of belief within the infinitely large cluster of uncountable metaphysical and religious ideas.

Sure, you spend time, money and effort in pursuing some sort of spirtitual life, but it doesn't have to be so. After all, say you are in your deathbed, or sitting in row 12b on a plane on a plane nose-diving toward a fiery crash on a mountainside, your odds work in your favor if you just say "Oh Lord forgive this worthless sinner!" or whatever. Worst case, you die and are just dead. Best case, you go to heaven! Having not played the game in this circumstance removes any chance of going to heaven. Here, you are dead, or go dead and go to hell.

The game works, because while death is certain, any promise of an afterlife is not. I put my bets on the Abrahamic religions because for one, it involves an angry vengeful god that sends people to hell for not believing in him. Secondly, its rather trivial to cheat the system and not put too much time or effort into it, you don't really have to go to church or buy books or anything, just ask for forgiveness sometime before you die and commit some sin.

Also, just because there are infinite possibilities for a deity, you have to make the assumption that the more popular ones are closer to the truth. A petty vengeful god will make himself known, like the god in the Bible. So one tends to favor his odds toward the god written on millions of books and such and not so much the purple fire-breathing fish.

If you play your odds and go with the Abrahamic god, your best case scenario is heaven, and if you are wrong, well, you lose anyways. You are a left-handed Mexican accountant, tough luck, but at least you went out like a champ, playing the odds.
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