It's rather interesting of how much exactly was lost in translation and/or edited out of the original works. A bit lengthly of a video, but worth every second. Especially the tidbit in which it elucidates the documentary hypothesis.
Once our meaninglessness becomes more difficult to ignore, do we invent virtual worlds to occupy our minds or can we take the next step and see how to live without the need for such distractions?
I'm reminded of a Buddhist metaphor. If you are in prison you can escape, because you and the jailer are separate. However, if you are a prisoner of your mind, how can you escape? When you are both the jailer and the prisoner, escape seems impossible. Turning our minds into better prisons through VR might avoid the otherwise idleness of a large swath of society and the problems therein, but I wonder what effect that will have on our psychology. A mind that gets everything it wants is not necessarily a healthy one.
But, now that I think of it, maybe the quickest way for people to witness the futility of the endless game of desire/gratification/new desire might actually be to give the mind carte blanche!
Anyway, thanks for sharing that thought provoking article.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby. Pretty sure every religion has to include a belief that some part of yourself will live on after death. Be it your soul going to heaven/hell, reincarnation etc. In that light it's silly to call atheism a religion.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
in my opinion atheism is a religion, as it implies an act of faith, an arbitrary decision on how is something that at now we have no scientific ways to prove true or false.
we have more than enough evidence, unless we believe in a world wide conspiracy of scientists, ship and plane pilots and on an over, that the earth is not flat.
but we have no proof at all that the universe was created 6000 years ago or not, created with all the fossils and the other "evidences" that make us think that is much older.
if someone tell me that the universe was created 6000 years ago i can not prove it false as he can not prove it true, even if i personally find very unlikely that hypothesis.
so i want to introduce you at a very diffused religion, the church of science, and to its priests.
that is apparently very close to the scientific method, but in reality is the complete negation of it.
i do it under spoiler to avoid a text wall
lets start with an example, a yt video that i recently saw, from a person that self entitle himself as scientist, on the homeopathic medicine.
he was talking of the placebo effect, of how it can be relevant and how tests on potions have to be done with the double blind control, and this is to be 100% scientist.
he was also telling that for the homeopathic medicine the double blind control tests are not used.
then, as he had decided by himself that the homeopathic medicine is a big prank, as there is almost no concentration of the active molecules in the final product that basically is water or sugar pills and the water memory and other theories have not been proved, he spent the rest of the video telling, in a subtle way, that who use the homeopathic medicine and the doctors that prescribe it are idiots.
can you see the flaw, the point where he ceased to be scientist and became a priest?
1. double blind tests are not done = we don't know if it works or is only a placebo.
2. the way it should work is not demonstrated (but this does not imply that is something that we have still to discover, the radioactivity or the possibility to split an atom in smaller components were true even before we discovered them, the very word atom means "that can not be split")
3. instead to be scientist and tell "until a double blind test is done we don't know if that kind of medicine works or is only a placebo" he decided that is a fake, only cause the proposed ways it should work are not demonstrated. and maybe it works for other reasons that are not even hypothesized. that decision is not scientific method, is an act of faith, that turned a scientist into a priest.
i don't link the video cause is in italian language, but if needed i can provide the link.
a true scientist uses correctly the scientific method, without mixing it with personal opinions, and further more never produces truths, only theories, that are good until something better is created. and never takes the fact that something is not still proved as an evidence that it is false.
i find plenty of church of science priests around...
talking of religion as act of faith in something we can not demonstrate false or true the only scientific position is agnostic, as i can not demonstrate i don't know.
both atheism and believing in some religion or in a supreme being/creator/whatever are only personal opinions on something we at now have no way to prove true or false, so i think that somehow atheism is a religion itself.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
That difference is subtle in language, but profound in worldview.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
No, no. Those are the same.
Fwiw, here is a pretty good description of the difference from Wikipedia:
"Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist."
Of course in this discussion, and on earlier pages when this came up before, we have been calling negative atheism, agnostic atheism and positive atheism, gnostic atheism. An agnostic atheist might be waiting for proof before arriving at a knowledge claim but a gnostic atheist has already settled the matter.
"I don't believe there is a god" = negative atheism.
"I believe there is no god" = positive atheism
Edit: My perception of the term "atheist" has changed because of these discussions. I used to assume it was the latter, but now I assume it to be the former, that is without further clarification. Otherwise, A-theism simply means without belief in deity(ies).
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
No, no. Those are the same.
Fwiw, here is a pretty good description of the difference from Wikipedia:
"Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist."
Of course in this discussion, and on earlier pages when this came up before, we have been calling negative atheism, agnostic atheism and positive atheism, gnostic atheism. An agnostic atheist might be waiting for proof before arriving at a knowledge claim but a gnostic atheist has already settled the matter.
What if you don't care if there is or isn't a god? Would that be atheist or agnostic? I think there are more than a few people that couldn't care less about the 'spiritual' and rarely, if ever, think about it. Is there a category for that?
I guess I can speak for some atheists since I am one. I usually would call myself a "soft atheist", but I also meet a lot of the definitions I've read of "hard atheist".
I don't believe that any god(s) exist.
I believe that a preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that no god(s) exist.
I remain open to any convincing evidence that god(s) exist.
I am well educated and have well considered pretty much any "evidence" and also logical argumentation anybody could possibly present here that god(s) exist. I find the argument from design or creation *especially* weak and unconvincing, after a lifetime of study, so I frankly doubt that it would be anything but a waste of all our time and frankly rather frustrating and aggravating for both you and me to go around and around about that tired old argument yet again.
So, all that said, am I a hard or a soft atheist? In yet another definition, I am also an agnostic, since I'm not sure it's even possible for us to know if god(s) exist.
I'd say I'm all three of those things - soft atheist, hard atheist, and agnostic.
Emotionally, I'd love nothing more than to have the God of my Christian upbringing present Himself to me and prove that He exists, loves me, and wants to give me eternal life through his Son. The very fact that I emotionally would want and wish for that so much makes my own judgment of the facts of existence highly suspect.
There is one label I would apply to myself without hesitation - Hard Skeptic.
I know nothing. And I believe nothing until I experience it with my own senses.
@Balrog99 I was going to coin a new term, apatheist, but it already exists:
Apatheism considers the question of the existence or nonexistence of deities to be fundamentally irrelevant in every way that matters.[
Could you be apatheist without being atheist? A theist is someone who believes in god. And an atheist is someone who does not have this belief. An apatheist sounds like someone who does not have this belief and additionally doesn't even care to examine it.
@belgarathmth it's perfectly reasonable to be hard about some god claims and soft about others. However you might probably want to reconsider or clarify "And I believe nothing until I experience it with my own senses." There are things that are real you have not or even cannot sense. I've never been to Australia but I believe there is sufficient evidence to believe it exists without experiencing it through my senses. I've never sensed an atom yet I believe they make up matter.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
No, no. Those are the same.
Only thing to do at this point is to suggest a logic 101 course.
EDIT: Giving you the benefit of the doubt, here is a very simple practical example
The number of blades of grass in my yard is either even or not even. There either is a god or there is not.
Let's say the **evenists** claim the number is even. The theists claim there is one.
I say, "I don't believe you, show me the evidence." I say, "I don't believe you, show me the evidence."
That doesn't mean I believe the number is not even (odd), that is a separate claim. That doesn't mean I believe there is not one, that is a separate claim.
The number of blades of grass in my yard is either even or not even. There either is a god or there is not.
Let's say the **oddists** claim it's not even (odd). The anti-theists claim there is not one.
I say, "I don't believe you, show me the evidence." I say, "I don't believe you, show me the evidence."*
That doesn't mean I believe the number is even (not odd), that is a separate claim. That doesn't mean I believe there is one, that is a separate claim.
*depends on the specific definition of god
in my opinion atheism is a religion, as it implies an act of faith, an arbitrary decision on how is something that at now we have no scientific ways to prove true or false.
Many atheists here seem to think that there is not enough evidence to assume existence of any God, so I wouldn't call that attitude "act of faith", or "arbitraty decision".
Regardless of that, religion is something more than act of faith. I believe that sun will rise tomorrow morning, and I have no other reason, but the fact that sun usually rises every morning. You could call my belief arbitrary, and you'd have a point. It still doesn't make it a religion of sun rising, or anything like that. Atheism contains statement about one thing - existence of god, and religion tends to cover and entail much more.
Or in other words - opinion on things that we have no scientific way to prove one way or another is one thing, religion is something different.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
You definition of religion is a can of worms in itself. Is a kid who believes in the tooth fairy a pagan?
No more than a kid who believes in UFO's is a UFO cultist.
Sure it is! You belive things without confirmation just like the rest of us.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
You definition of religion is a can of worms in itself. Is a kid who believes in the tooth fairy a pagan?
Why did you have to go and bring Pagans into this, leave us tree-smok... I mean tree-huggers alone.
Comments
Are you sure about that?
Well, I meant the existing part.
I don't remember my life when I was 3. I definitely existed for it.
https://qz.com/1562585/the-seven-moral-rules-that-supposedly-unite-humanity/
It's rather interesting of how much exactly was lost in translation and/or edited out of the original works. A bit lengthly of a video, but worth every second. Especially the tidbit in which it elucidates the documentary hypothesis.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-meaning-of-life-in-a-world-without-work
"What is a religion if not a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together?"
Once our meaninglessness becomes more difficult to ignore, do we invent virtual worlds to occupy our minds or can we take the next step and see how to live without the need for such distractions?
I'm reminded of a Buddhist metaphor. If you are in prison you can escape, because you and the jailer are separate. However, if you are a prisoner of your mind, how can you escape? When you are both the jailer and the prisoner, escape seems impossible. Turning our minds into better prisons through VR might avoid the otherwise idleness of a large swath of society and the problems therein, but I wonder what effect that will have on our psychology. A mind that gets everything it wants is not necessarily a healthy one.
But, now that I think of it, maybe the quickest way for people to witness the futility of the endless game of desire/gratification/new desire might actually be to give the mind carte blanche!
Anyway, thanks for sharing that thought provoking article.
Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby. Pretty sure every religion has to include a belief that some part of yourself will live on after death. Be it your soul going to heaven/hell, reincarnation etc. In that light it's silly to call atheism a religion.
It was silly in the first place, anyway.
Atheism is non-belief. You're wrong.
Also, here are a couple of common definitions
commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
Atheism conforms to neither.
The Earth is flat and only 6000 years old! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
We're all atheists about the vast majority of gods. Some just go one step further.
but we have no proof at all that the universe was created 6000 years ago or not, created with all the fossils and the other "evidences" that make us think that is much older.
if someone tell me that the universe was created 6000 years ago i can not prove it false as he can not prove it true, even if i personally find very unlikely that hypothesis.
so i want to introduce you at a very diffused religion, the church of science, and to its priests.
that is apparently very close to the scientific method, but in reality is the complete negation of it.
i do it under spoiler to avoid a text wall
he was talking of the placebo effect, of how it can be relevant and how tests on potions have to be done with the double blind control, and this is to be 100% scientist.
he was also telling that for the homeopathic medicine the double blind control tests are not used.
then, as he had decided by himself that the homeopathic medicine is a big prank, as there is almost no concentration of the active molecules in the final product that basically is water or sugar pills and the water memory and other theories have not been proved, he spent the rest of the video telling, in a subtle way, that who use the homeopathic medicine and the doctors that prescribe it are idiots.
can you see the flaw, the point where he ceased to be scientist and became a priest?
1. double blind tests are not done = we don't know if it works or is only a placebo.
2. the way it should work is not demonstrated (but this does not imply that is something that we have still to discover, the radioactivity or the possibility to split an atom in smaller components were true even before we discovered them, the very word atom means "that can not be split")
3. instead to be scientist and tell "until a double blind test is done we don't know if that kind of medicine works or is only a placebo" he decided that is a fake, only cause the proposed ways it should work are not demonstrated. and maybe it works for other reasons that are not even hypothesized. that decision is not scientific method, is an act of faith, that turned a scientist into a priest.
i don't link the video cause is in italian language, but if needed i can provide the link.
a true scientist uses correctly the scientific method, without mixing it with personal opinions, and further more never produces truths, only theories, that are good until something better is created. and never takes the fact that something is not still proved as an evidence that it is false.
i find plenty of church of science priests around...
talking of religion as act of faith in something we can not demonstrate false or true the only scientific position is agnostic, as i can not demonstrate i don't know.
both atheism and believing in some religion or in a supreme being/creator/whatever are only personal opinions on something we at now have no way to prove true or false, so i think that somehow atheism is a religion itself.
Its not non-belief. Its a belief in the non-existence of something. Religion is just systematic belief of something unproven.
No, it's not a belief in the non-existence. This is your mistake. "I don't believe there is a god" is not the same as "I believe there is no god."
That difference is subtle in language, but profound in worldview.
No, no. Those are the same.
Fwiw, here is a pretty good description of the difference from Wikipedia:
Of course in this discussion, and on earlier pages when this came up before, we have been calling negative atheism, agnostic atheism and positive atheism, gnostic atheism. An agnostic atheist might be waiting for proof before arriving at a knowledge claim but a gnostic atheist has already settled the matter.
"I don't believe there is a god" = negative atheism.
"I believe there is no god" = positive atheism
Edit: My perception of the term "atheist" has changed because of these discussions. I used to assume it was the latter, but now I assume it to be the former, that is without further clarification. Otherwise, A-theism simply means without belief in deity(ies).
What if you don't care if there is or isn't a god? Would that be atheist or agnostic? I think there are more than a few people that couldn't care less about the 'spiritual' and rarely, if ever, think about it. Is there a category for that?
I don't believe that any god(s) exist.
I believe that a preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that no god(s) exist.
I remain open to any convincing evidence that god(s) exist.
I am well educated and have well considered pretty much any "evidence" and also logical argumentation anybody could possibly present here that god(s) exist. I find the argument from design or creation *especially* weak and unconvincing, after a lifetime of study, so I frankly doubt that it would be anything but a waste of all our time and frankly rather frustrating and aggravating for both you and me to go around and around about that tired old argument yet again.
So, all that said, am I a hard or a soft atheist? In yet another definition, I am also an agnostic, since I'm not sure it's even possible for us to know if god(s) exist.
I'd say I'm all three of those things - soft atheist, hard atheist, and agnostic.
Emotionally, I'd love nothing more than to have the God of my Christian upbringing present Himself to me and prove that He exists, loves me, and wants to give me eternal life through his Son. The very fact that I emotionally would want and wish for that so much makes my own judgment of the facts of existence highly suspect.
There is one label I would apply to myself without hesitation - Hard Skeptic.
I know nothing. And I believe nothing until I experience it with my own senses.
Could you be apatheist without being atheist? A theist is someone who believes in god. And an atheist is someone who does not have this belief. An apatheist sounds like someone who does not have this belief and additionally doesn't even care to examine it.
@belgarathmth it's perfectly reasonable to be hard about some god claims and soft about others. However you might probably want to reconsider or clarify "And I believe nothing until I experience it with my own senses." There are things that are real you have not or even cannot sense. I've never been to Australia but I believe there is sufficient evidence to believe it exists without experiencing it through my senses. I've never sensed an atom yet I believe they make up matter.
Only thing to do at this point is to suggest a logic 101 course.
EDIT: Giving you the benefit of the doubt, here is a very simple practical example
Many atheists here seem to think that there is not enough evidence to assume existence of any God, so I wouldn't call that attitude "act of faith", or "arbitraty decision".
Regardless of that, religion is something more than act of faith. I believe that sun will rise tomorrow morning, and I have no other reason, but the fact that sun usually rises every morning. You could call my belief arbitrary, and you'd have a point. It still doesn't make it a religion of sun rising, or anything like that. Atheism contains statement about one thing - existence of god, and religion tends to cover and entail much more.
Or in other words - opinion on things that we have no scientific way to prove one way or another is one thing, religion is something different.
No more than a kid who believes in UFO's is a UFO cultist.
Why did you have to go and bring Pagans into this, leave us tree-smok... I mean tree-huggers alone.