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The Positively Atheist Thread


Bjornebye
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Ah, so that's that then.

 

 

Genuine apologies for the assumption, Stu. It was based on the fact that religion seems to make your blood boil, so I thought you wouldn't associate with any religious types - I was wrong and I'm sorry.

 

As for your question, I believe there are lots of lovely and intelligent people who believe in Heaven and Hell. Personally I have no great conviction on it. I would say that I don't believe there is a red bloke sticking a trident up people's burning arses for all eternity, which is what some people conceive of "hell".

 

I do believe in a spiritual plain, and I believe there is a huge amount of stuff that is beyond human comprehension, so I would not rule out the existence of heaven. What that would "look" like, if indeed it "looked" like anything probably wouldn't be misty lush vegetation and gently chirping birds. They are within the realms of human understanding, and is the only way we can imagine - the limits of the human brain.

 

The way the brain learns /understands is to associate new knowledge with existing knowledge. Therefore it is very difficult for us to look beyond what we know to conceive of something as abstract as "hell" and 'heaven". Beardy bloke and red man fit the bill.

 

Do you believe in any kind of spiritual plain, Stu?

Lovely words, but on what do you base your beliefs?

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Lovely words, but on what do you base your beliefs?

The belief that we as humans dont know anywhere near close to everything yet?

We've only been able to invent flying machines in the last century or so and are only just understanding the workings of the physical side of the human body and know little about the human mind so it would be arrogant to believe we know very much at all as a species.

Surely we are still learning and I suppose this is why some of us dont instantly dismiss that there is something more to life and death.

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The belief that we as humans dont know anywhere near close to everything yet?

We've only been able to invent flying machines in the last century or so and are only just understanding the workings of the physical side of the human body and know little about the human mind so it would be arrogant to believe we know very much at all as a species.

Surely we are still learning and I suppose this is why some of us dont instantly dismiss that there is something more to life and death.

So the God of the gaps? As we dont understand something there must be a supernatural explanation. I get that if you live in a cave, the weather, seasons, diseases etc are all scary and we invented gods to explain them. Unless I'm completely mistaken that argument has never worked though has it? Is there a single example of something we don't understand being confirmed as supernatural?

 

We are getting to the point where we understand what happened billionths of a second after the Big Bang. What's left for your God to do? Even if, and it's a fucking MASSIVE concession, she started the Big Bang is she worth thinking about because she's done fuck all for 13 billion years.

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So the God of the gaps? As we dont understand something there must be a supernatural explanation. I get that if you live in a cave, the weather, seasons, diseases etc are all scary and we invented gods to explain them. Unless I'm completely mistaken that argument has never worked though has it? Is there a single example of something we don't understand being confirmed as supernatural?

 

We are getting to the point where we understand what happened billionths of a second after the Big Bang. What's left for your God to do? Even if, and it's a fucking MASSIVE concession, she started the Big Bang is she worth thinking about because she's done fuck all for 13 billion years.

Supernatural explanation? Where have I said that?

I just dont believe that we have all the answers yet.

I actually thought it was the religious zealots that werent open to other possibilities yet this thread seems to indicate they exist on both sides.

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Supernatural explanation? Where have I said that?

I just dont believe that we have all the answers yet.

I actually thought it was the religious zealots that werent open to other possibilities yet this thread seems to indicate they exist on both sides.

What did you mean by 'something more to life and death'?

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Supernatural explanation? Where have I said that?

I just dont believe that we have all the answers yet.

I actually thought it was the religious zealots that werent open to other possibilities yet this thread seems to indicate they exist on both sides.

 

Only religion claims to have the answers.

 

The one thing we can be absolutely certain about is that there is no god out there judging whether or not you deserve to live for all eternity, and therefore religion is false.

 

Whether there is anything "else" is open to debate, though of course, there is no evidence in favour of it, and the notion would appear to be nothing more than the usual arrogant anthropocentrism.

 

I think we would all be better off if the majority of people on the planet would face the facts: this is a relatively insignificant rock floating through space, life is not a dress rehearsal, and when you are gone, you are gone.

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Ah, so that's that then.

 

 

Genuine apologies for the assumption, Stu.  It was based on the fact that religion seems to make your blood boil, so I thought you wouldn't associate with any religious types - I was wrong and I'm sorry.

 

As for your question, I believe there are lots of lovely and intelligent people who believe in Heaven and Hell.  Personally I have no great conviction on it.  I would say that I don't believe there is a red bloke sticking a trident up people's burning arses for all eternity, which is what some people conceive of "hell".

 

I do believe in a spiritual plain, and I believe there is a huge amount of stuff that is beyond human comprehension, so I would not rule out the existence of heaven.  What that would "look" like, if indeed it "looked" like anything probably wouldn't be misty lush vegetation and gently chirping birds.  They are within the realms of human understanding, and is the only way we can imagine - the limits of the human brain.

 

The way the brain learns /understands is to associate new knowledge with existing knowledge.  Therefore it is very difficult for us to look beyond what we know to conceive of something as abstract as "hell" and 'heaven".  Beardy bloke and red man fit the bill.

 

Do you believe in any kind of spiritual plain, Stu?

 

It doesn't make my blood boil actually mate, it just frustrates me and I think it's a corrosive force in society. I think often people, for some reason, equate taking the time to challenge religion with having some unquenchable fire of hatred for it that must pour out at its mention. What does make my blood boil is trying to have honest conversations on it and having people you discuss it with duck and dive and swerve to get away from logical or moral points which are uncomfortable for religion (of which there are many) because they'd rather be intellectually dishonest than possibly upset some religious types. Often that involves a lot of misrepresentation of points, which is also annoying.

 

I have very little issue with your "spiritual plain" concept and would take very little time out of my day to try and challenge it. My issue was the idea that there are people that genuinely believe in the hell from the scriptures but that it doesn't inform their actions day to day - just plain nonsense, it's the worst things you can imagine for the rest of eternity, how could it not.

 

You'd have to define what a spiritual plain was but I doubt you could come up with a definition I believed in.  Given none of us have experienced the spiritual plain before we were born one would doubt if it's something that we should concern ourselves with once we die. I'd also ask what was happening on this spiritual plain for the 99.9% of the time in the universe that we weren't about. That's the thing with these big answers - there are almost always ones that place huge importance on humans (a species that will be the blink of an eye over the course of history). We are clever apes flying round on a rock, it probably isn't any more complicated than that.

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Only religion claims to have the answers.

 

The one thing we can be absolutely certain about is that there is no god out there judging whether or not you deserve to live for all eternity, and therefore religion is false.

 

Whether there is anything "else" is open to debate, though of course, there is no evidence in favour of it, and the notion would appear to be nothing more than the usual arrogant anthropocentrism.

 

I think we would all be better off if the majority of people on the planet would face the facts: this is a relatively insignificant rock floating through space, life is not a dress rehearsal, and when you are gone, you are gone.

You went pretty quickly from "only religion claims to have the answers" to your own claim of absolute certainty.

 

Absolute certainty remains unmoved in the face of contradictory evidence. Surely, if God turned up tomorrow and sent a quire of angels to dance a conga on your front lawn, you would have to reconsider your views on his non-existence.

 

I know it's a fine distinction between "absolute certainty" and Stephen Jay Gould's definition of "fact" but it's one that's always worth making.

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Surely, if God turned up tomorrow and sent a quire of angels to dance a conga on your front lawn, you would have to reconsider your views on his non-existence.

 

As that other great Liberal JM Keynes once said, when the facts change, I change my mind.

 

In the event that any credible evidence for the existence of an Interventionist God appears, over and above the zero evidence we currently have, then I would have to waver from absolute certainty.

 

As it stands, I am quite comfortable with the term "absolute certainty". If I said that I was absolutely certain that I would go blind if I gouged my eyes out, or that I was absolutely certain that I would bleed all over the place if I cut my hand off with a cleaver, nobody would pull me up for it. It's a most odd double standard.

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Why would you claim to be religious if you didn't actually believe in all the supernatural stuff that goes along with it? Isn't that what being religious is?

 

Not necessarily ... I know several church attending atheists. They would tell you that for them it's about community, fellowship and trying to do the right thing and live by a moral code. They call themselves Christian but don't believe in God or even that Jesus was anything other than some fella with some decent ideas for his time. 

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Fuck that, I thought the whole point of being an atheist was to avoid Sunday School & going to Church.

 

They don't think they are atheists, but since they don't believe in God it doesn't matter what they think they are. Atheism is just the absence of belief in God. We're all born atheist.

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It doesn't make my blood boil actually mate, it just frustrates me and I think it's a corrosive force in society. I think often people, for some reason, equate taking the time to challenge religion with having some unquenchable fire of hatred for it that must pour out at its mention. What does make my blood boil is trying to have honest conversations on it and having people you discuss it with duck and dive and swerve to get away from logical or moral points which are uncomfortable for religion (of which there are many) because they'd rather be intellectually dishonest than possibly upset some religious types. Often that involves a lot of misrepresentation of points, which is also annoying.

 

I have very little issue with your "spiritual plain" concept and would take very little time out of my day to try and challenge it. My issue was the idea that there are people that genuinely believe in the hell from the scriptures but that it doesn't inform their actions day to day - just plain nonsense, it's the worst things you can imagine for the rest of eternity, how could it not.

 

You'd have to define what a spiritual plain was but I doubt you could come up with a definition I believed in.  Given none of us have experienced the spiritual plain before we were born one would doubt if it's something that we should concern ourselves with once we die. I'd also ask what was happening on this spiritual plain for the 99.9% of the time in the universe that we weren't about. That's the thing with these big answers - there are almost always ones that place huge importance on humans (a species that will be the blink of an eye over the course of history). We are clever apes flying round on a rock, it probably isn't any more complicated than that.

 

You often bring "logic" into it, Stu.  "Logically" there isn't a God.  That's not what faith is about.  The debate can never be on your terms, and that's what winds you up. 

 

I know loads of people who have had spiritual experiences, by the way.  They defy logic too.

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As that other great Liberal JM Keynes once said, when the facts change, I change my mind.

 

In the event that any credible evidence for the existence of an Interventionist God appears, over and above the zero evidence we currently have, then I would have to waver from absolute certainty.

 

As it stands, I am quite comfortable with the term "absolute certainty". If I said that I was absolutely certain that I would go blind if I gouged my eyes out, or that I was absolutely certain that I would bleed all over the place if I cut my hand off with a cleaver, nobody would pull me up for it. It's a most odd double standard.

It's not really a double standard. You can claim certainty for those things because you can demonstrate how and why they would happen. It's much harder to prove the non-existence of God, not least because first you would have to establish a definition of what God is (or what he would be, if he existed) and even people who believe in the fucker disagree violently on that
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You often bring "logic" into it, Stu.  "Logically" there isn't a God.  That's not what faith is about.  The debate can never be on your terms, and that's what winds you up. 

 

I know loads of people who have had spiritual experiences, by the way.  They defy logic too.

I know someone who swears he's a Russian spy.

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You often bring "logic" into it, Stu.  "Logically" there isn't a God.  That's not what faith is about.  The debate can never be on your terms, and that's what winds you up. 

 

I know loads of people who have had spiritual experiences, by the way.  They defy logic too.

 

No, intelligent people deciding they don't need to use their brain for this one particular area of life winds me up. Just holding up a card that means rational though is no longer worthwhile. "If I think about it properly it doesn't make sense, so I'll stop thinking about it".

 

I'm sure you do know people who say they have had spiritual experiences (undefined still). Religion tends to be good at fostering them. 

 

You just keep thinking about how lucky you are that your god decided to give these few people, from a species that is the blink of an eye on a spec of dust in the universe, these spiritual insights. Quite the thing. Not sure why you'd bother with the billions of years either side of human existence though. You could ask yourself that or just go "I don't like logic...on this one question (but not every other one in my life) so I'll avoid the problems with it".  

 

You don't even need logic when it comes to an interventionist god, just morals. Just basic morals.

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If you aren't a theist then you are an atheist, the two are mutually exclusive by definition.

To be a theist or atheist you need to understand there is a concept of God. If we are categorising newborns a la Dawkins then isn't agnostism their default? Without knowledge rather than lack of belief?

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To be a theist or atheist you need to understand there is a concept of God. If we are categorising newborns a la Dawkins then isn't agnostism their default? Without knowledge rather than lack of belief?

I don't think you have to understand there is a concept of God - which you then reject - to be an atheist. That is religious propaganda.

God is a taught concept. Before anyone is taught to be a theist they are by definition an atheist.

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To be a theist or atheist you need to understand there is a concept of God. If we are categorising newborns a la Dawkins then isn't agnostism their default? Without knowledge rather than lack of belief?

 

Agnostics are atheist by definition. If you don't know, you can't believe. It's not a problem to be both though. And Dawkins has fuck all to do with these categorisations, which predate him by centuries.

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In fairness (?) people are also stupid, irrational nobheads in other ways (psychics, horoscopes, trickle-down economics, etc.)

 

There is a universal illogical streak in human minds. Organised religions are masters at exploiting it.

Yes. But it's okay to challenge them without being called some sort of cunt militant.

 

Some people seem to drop their bullshit radar for religion but keep it well tuned for all the other guff. No consistency.

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