The great and all powerful religion thread!

Necuratul said:
The atheism that proposes to not believe in God is actually fairly well supported by science, because science gives us no reason to believe in God. However, the point of course stands for the strong atheist claim to the belief of nonexistence in God.
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I can see this, especially if an individual looks to science for explanations of everything. I suppose that maybe this could be a subtlety between agnosticism and atheism. Maybe the former leaves room for metaphysical possibilities where the other tends not to.

Necuratul said:
Actually, insofar as it is the immediate, natural, unlearned first response, it is in fact an inborn trait for an infant to believe that, as Berkeley suggested, that something that goes out of sight goes out of existence.

This is of course a silly belief when you consider the scenario in which two people are beholding one another, and one person turns so as to not see the other. This person will have to believe that the other person has gone out of existence, but of course the other person himself well knows that he still exists. Berkeley was a silly man...
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I have trouble understanding how it can be inborn. I guess what I question is what an infant is actually thinking. To what extent do they even evaluate the situation. I am sure I underestimate them, as they learn and develop so much in early months and years . How do they evaluate without language? That's a trip.
 
Well, studies conducted in the field show reasonably well that infants of a certain age no longer appear aware of or interested in objects that are suddenly removed from their view, as if the thing doesn't exist, whereas older babies will actually express surprise at the sudden occurrence and actually look for the missing object. I believe this is the idea posited by Piaget of "object permanence," which is kind of debated a bit as to what exactly this entails (whether it is a mental recognition or whether it requires the physical action of actually looking for the object), but the point is that the first natural response that a human being has to this phenomenon, based on research, seems to reflect the idea that they believe that it disappeared. Of course, this is not "inborn" in the same sense as it would be to say that God has instilled into his creations the idea of a higher power, but it is a biological circumstance. I wonder if this was ever tested on infants of different types of animals...
 
cookiecutter said:
I'm just going to be blunt: you are wrong. By definition atheism is not a positive belief in something, hence the use of the word NOTHING. Belief in nothing is necessarily not a belief because nothing is not something. Seems pretty obvious to me. I think Valerie was right when she said that we reach the limits of the English language here and I have a feeling you will not understand me. Nonexistence and nothingness are unfathomable concepts to humans because everything we have ever experienced exists and is something. Atheism is a rejection of the position that God is part of this experience.
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How do we know nothing is not something when, as you said, we have no idea what 'nothing' is? It seems to me you are assuming that nothing is in some way definable, when it isn't and if it isn't definable I don't think it is possible to surmise that a belief in nothing is, in fact, not a belief.
 
Necuratul said:
There is a substantially important semantic difference between not believing in a higher power (or lacking the belief that there is a higher power) and actively believing that there is no higher power. Both essentially can fall under the term atheist, but the first is a sufficient condition. The two are actually very different from each other; in other words, the former cannot be reduced to the latter, that not believing in a higher power is believing that there is no higher power. The former is also minutely different from the agnostic claim that whether or not there is a higher power cannot be known.
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I still don't understand how the negation of belief is not a belief in itself. How exactly are they isolated statements with no relation to one another? Again to use the postmodern example: they purport the destruction of grand narratives or ultimate truths, however this in itself is a form of an ultimate truth: that being that their is no ultimate truth. The same relationship seems to be at play here with Atheism.
 
We do have an idea of what nothing is. We know what it is insofar as we know that it is not something, and that is enough of a working understanding of nothing upon which we can build an understanding. Nothing is of course definable; namely, nothingness is absence; lack; void; the utter deprivation of all things.

Your last statement is muddled. You say that it isn't possible to surmise that a belief in nothing is not a belief. Well, that's obvious. A belief in nothing is, in fact, a belief. Nobody denied this. But there is a difference between a belief in nothing and the lack of a belief in something.
 
Death Aflame said:
I still don't understand how the negation of belief is not a belief in itself. How exactly are they isolated statements with no relation to one another? Again to use the postmodern example: they purport the destruction of grand narratives or ultimate truths, however this in itself is a form of an ultimate truth: that being that their is no ultimate truth. The same relationship seems to be at play here with Atheism.
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That is more semantic wordplay than anything else. To not have a belief cannot possibly be a belief in itself by the very nature of what it is to have a belief. If it was a belief to not believe in something, then the definition of what it is the have a belief would cease to have any function and would be rendered meaningless.
 
Necuratul said:
We do have an idea of what nothing is. We know what it is insofar as we know that it is not something, and that is enough of a working understanding of nothing upon which we can build an understanding. Nothing is of course definable; namely, nothingness is absence; lack; void; the utter deprivation of all things.

Your last statement is muddled. You say that it isn't possible to surmise that a belief in nothing is not a belief. Well, that's obvious. A belief in nothing is, in fact, a belief. Nobody denied this. But there is a difference between a belief in nothing and the lack of a belief in something.
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Again how so? Choosing not to believe something is choosing not to accept that belief, how is this in itself not a belief in the lack of belief?
 
Death Aflame said:
How do we know nothing is not something when, as you said, we have no idea what 'nothing' is? It seems to me you are assuming that nothing is in some way definable, when it isn't and if it isn't definable I don't think it is possible to surmise that a belief in nothing is, in fact, not a belief.
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Honestly, if you seriously can't tell the definition of the word nothing. Nothing is the lack of something. Nothing means it doesn't exist.

You are debating in a circle.
 
Death Aflame said:
How do we know nothing is not something when, as you said, we have no idea what 'nothing' is? It seems to me you are assuming that nothing is in some way definable, when it isn't and if it isn't definable I don't think it is possible to surmise that a belief in nothing is, in fact, not a belief.
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Nothing is definable. It is the opposite of something meaning it is not something. I don't know what you are getting at.

Necuratul said:
Your last statement is muddled. You say that it isn't possible to surmise that a belief in nothing is not a belief. Well, that's obvious. A belief in nothing is, in fact, a belief. Nobody denied this. But there is a difference between a belief in nothing and the lack of a belief in something.
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This made me think about what I said in my first response to Death Aflame and I think I will clarify what I said. I said that a belief in nothing is not a belief because it is not a belief in something. Now I am really confused. I'll just assume you're right though.
 
Death Aflame said:
I still don't understand how the negation of belief is not a belief in itself. How exactly are they isolated statements with no relation to one another?
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They're not isolated statements with no relation to one another. The proposition 'I do not believe that x' follows from the proposition 'I believe that not-x', but the latter does not follow from the former. This is quite clear to anybody with an adequate understanding of the English language and a few moments of reflection. Suppose I am withholding my judgment with respect to the truth of proposition x. If I am withholding judgment with respect to the truth of x, then it follows that I lack belief in the truth of x. That is, I do not believe that x. That clearly follows because the negation of 'I do not believe that x' is logically equivalent to 'I believe that x', which means I am not withholding judgment, and that contradicts the proposition that I am withholding judgment. Accordingly, 'I believe that not-x' does not follow from 'I do not believe that x' since (1) 'I do not believe that x' follows from 'I withhold judgment about x' and (2) 'I believe that not-x' contradicts 'I withhold judgment about x'. Therefore, it cannot be the case that not believing that x is tantamount to believing that not-x. Additionally, withholding judgment about x is not a belief about x. It is by definition not a belief about x, nor is it a belief about anything else. It might imply or presuppose other beliefs, but if you mention that then you're just changing the subject.
 
So to summarize your fairly complex post: the lack of belief in something is not equivalent to the belief in nothing for a particular topic? (Is this correct? I am not a philosophy major or anything, my expertise lies elsewhere).
 
Yes, as I said. :p

Lack of belief or absence of belief is not an active quality. It's suspension of judgment. I suppose that you can argue that you are choosing to withhold that judgment and you therefore are of the belief that you should withhold judgment on the topic, but that is not to say anything about the topic itself. Your beliefs about the actual topic in fact do not exist (i.e. you have no beliefs on the topic). So yes, to say, for example, "I do not believe that you have a ham sandwich up your ass" has a different judgment value than if you were to say "I believe that you do not have a ham sandwich up your ass." The latter implies the former, but the former can only be traced to the latter with the additional step of actually having an active negative belief (i.e. believing something is not the case).
 
Alter said:
Catholicism is the only sect that I agree with somewhat. I am totally anti-evangelical though.
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evangelicalism is so obnoxious
the traditional latin mass is quite a beautiful experience though; i also love gregorian chant... i attended a latin mass on ash wednesday a few years ago
catholicism itself while it certainly has it's fair shares of fundies and whack-job's seems to be a more intelligent and 'modern' religion than evangelicalism
 
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