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Quest for Truth

Started by Absolute_Agent, June 16, 2019, 09:02:36 PM

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Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on August 01, 2019, 11:52:54 AM
I respectfully disagree with your child psychology.  Child development is very complicated and poorly understood.  You are making claims based on ideology, not experience.

Well, actually, I was a child myself once, so there is some experience. 

"But wait, there's more".  I was 16 when my youngest sister was born.  And being the Good Big Brother that I was, I helped raise her (being adored is addictive).  I watched her learn.  I watched her explore her new world.  I was there when she discovered bees sting (and removed the stinger).  So I know.  But any actual parent knows that even more than I.  I was just a temp.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Baruch

Quote from: Cavebear on August 01, 2019, 12:43:33 PM
Well, actually, I was a child myself once, so there is some experience. 

"But wait, there's more".  I was 16 when my youngest sister was born.  And being the Good Big Brother that I was, I helped raise her (being adored is addictive).  I watched her learn.  I watched her explore her new world.  I was there when she discovered bees sting (and removed the stinger).  So I know.  But any actual parent knows that even more than I.  I was just a temp.

Not to denigrate your experience.  But how you interpret the reality of helping to raise your kid sister as a teen ... is dependent on your ideology.  It isn't pure empiricism, but interpreted empiricism.  Yes, children automatically learn, but in nature, it is how to be cavemen/cavewomen.  Nothing in our biological background prepares us to the 18th century Parisien philosophes.  For Rousseau of course, that huge contribution of parental culture is corruption.  But at least he didn't claim it didn't exist.  This is why the same newborn can be taken anywhere, raised to local standards, and produce an adult from any 200+ cultures.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Unbeliever

Quote from: Cavebear on August 01, 2019, 10:13:53 AM
I won't bother to point out errors in religious texts.  That gets nowhere.

It may not get us anywhere, but it sure can be fun with literal Bible-believers who believe it has no errors or contradictions at all. It's entertaining to watch their verbal gymnastics trying to stuff two opposing verses or passages into one logical construct.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever

#228
Quote from: Absolute_Agent on August 01, 2019, 10:59:48 AM
Religion is also a kind of science.  Theology has developed organically over time.  The difference is we are concerned not with the material world but the world internal to the self. There is much evidence for God, but it is most importantly internal to the self.  Our methodology for developing knowledge is different as well.  In science, you first observe, then form ideas and hypotheses about those observations.  Over time those hypotheses grow into theories and laws that accumulate into knowledge.  In religion the process is reversed.  We first receive revelatory transcendant knowledge from within; then we believe it; then we develop applications and interpretations of that knowledge for our current time-space continuum.  Over time, that faith bears fruit as observations manifest in the external material world confirming our beliefs. I consider both methods as valid.  There is a peer review process in religion as well, but it is quite naturally, mostly intuitive.

Sent from my moto e5 play using Tapatalk


OK, so what "fruits" has religion ever produced? How has religion ever made human life better? Or is it just the hope that religion might be true that gives comfort to people? Other than that, I don't know to what "fruits" you're referring.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever

Quote from: Cavebear on August 01, 2019, 11:23:07 AM
Deleted some portion of original post for brevity...

1.  Please list the evidence for a deity of any kind.
2,  I am impressed that you know the difference between hypothesis and theory and laws; most people don't.  But saying that religion reverses the process suggests a logical failure.

Consider this...  No one is born with religious beliefs.  Like racism, "it has to be carefully taught" (apologies to 'South Pacific').  It is therefore human-made.

I like the way Hitchens put it:

QuoteHowever, a moment in history has arrived when even a pigmy such as myself can claim to know more - through no merit of his own - and to see that the final ripping of the whole disguise is overdue. Between them, the sciences of textual criticism, archeology, physics, and molecular biology have shown religious mythology to be false and man made and have also succeeded in evolving better and more enlightened explanations.

Oh, and this Heinlein is good, too:

QuoteThe most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.

God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever

Quote from: Cavebear on August 01, 2019, 11:46:09 AM
You are in error, of course.  Children seek knowledge automatically.  They taste, touch, feel everything.  They reach for that mobile above the crib.  They collect information (turkey good; broccoli bad - or vice versa).  We spend our childhoods learning verifiable facts.  We discuss them with each other. 

But it takes adults to teach religion.  And it isn't easily accepted.  Deities are like a parent that is unmanageable.  We fight the idea.  Then they take you to Sunday school where the nice lady talks softly (this is not from personal experience) and tells you about the best Daddy-In-The-Sky.  And Mommy nods her head in church and Daddy nods his head.  And if they nod their heads, you should too, because it MUST be true if they say so.

Science comes naturally to children.  Religion does not and has to be carefully taught.

Heil!

Quote from: Ernestine L. Rose, in [iA Defense of Atheism[/i], 1878]
If belief in God were natural, there would be no need to teach it. Children would possess it as well as adults, the layman as the priest, the heathen as much as the missionary. We don't have to teach the general elements of human nature - the five senses, seeing hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. They are universal; so would religion be if it were natural, but it is not. On the contrary, it is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so. Even as it is, they are great skeptics, until made sensible of the potent weapon by which religion has ever been propagated, namely, fear - fear of the lash of public opinion here, and of a jealous, vindictive God hereafter. No; there is no religion in human nature, nor human nature in religion. It is purely artificial, the result of education, while atheism is natural, and, were the human mind not perverted and bewildered by the mysteries and follies of superstition, would be universal.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on August 01, 2019, 02:54:53 PM
It may not get us anywhere, but it sure can be fun with literal Bible-believers who believe it has no errors or contradictions at all. It's entertaining to watch their verbal gymnastics trying to stuff two opposing verses or passages into one logical construct.

Oh sure, fun to ruin their day.  And I do sometimes.  But sometimes I think "Oh crap, Another One" and I get tired of the same junk.  Granted, this one is a bit better than average...
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on August 01, 2019, 02:23:31 PM
Not to denigrate your experience.  But how you interpret the reality of helping to raise your kid sister as a teen ... is dependent on your ideology.  It isn't pure empiricism, but interpreted empiricism.  Yes, children automatically learn, but in nature, it is how to be cavemen/cavewomen.  Nothing in our biological background prepares us to the 18th century Parisien philosophes.  For Rousseau of course, that huge contribution of parental culture is corruption.  But at least he didn't claim it didn't exist.  This is why the same newborn can be taken anywhere, raised to local standards, and produce an adult from any 200+ cultures.

Children are learning in a scientific manner (think, test, connect, integrate).  I think the difference between a child and Parisian is more a matter of degree of complexity.  The Parisian philosophist (that's deliberate, I hate philosophy) is still using original childhood skills.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

Quote from: Cavebear on August 01, 2019, 03:13:43 PM
Oh sure, fun to ruin their day.  And I do sometimes.  But sometimes I think "Oh crap, Another One" and I get tired of the same junk.

Yeah, like (just as an example) when they try to claim that hell is just "separation from God" and not really a cosmic barbeque, I like to show them Psalm 139:7-8, which says we can never be separated from God, not even in hell:

Quote from: Psalm 139:7-8 (KJV)
7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.


QuoteGranted, this one is a bit better than average...

Yeah, at least he writes well enough that we don't have to translate his posts into English!
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on August 01, 2019, 02:59:45 PM
OK, so what "fruits" has religion ever produced? How has religion ever made human life better? Or is it just the hope that religion might be true that gives comfort to people? Other than that, I don't know to what "fruits" you're referring.

I often avoid this out of consideration for my theistic friends (yes I have some) because they really can't tolerate the thought of being truly dead.  I'll admit it gives me trouble sometimes.  How can the world continue without me in it, they ask themselves.  Wasn't it Edwrd G Robinson who asked himsef (as a character) "Can this be the end of Rico"?

Yes it can.  My parents are dead.  Flat stone cremated dead.  They ceased to exist.  And I'm not getting younger.  It is a hard road to plow.  I sometimes feel like I'm in a book I won't know the end of.  And it's HARD! 

So when I tell theists that their whole belief structure is false and they won't wake up after death to some heavenly paradise, I feel "guilty" somehow.  But there isn't anything else...

Downer award for the year, right?
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on August 01, 2019, 03:22:33 PM
Yeah, like (just as an example) when they try to claim that hell is just "separation from God" and not really a cosmic barbeque, I like to show them Psalm 139:7-8, which says we can never be separated from God, not even in hell:
Yeah, that's a favorite.  Even theist friends who are trying to comfort me (meaning well) say "but hell is just really distance from God".    Sometimes, I say, "the further the better".  But we know better.  Death is like the swatted housefly.  END OF LINE!
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

Quote from: Cavebear on August 01, 2019, 03:28:37 PM
I often avoid this out of consideration for my theistic friends (yes I have some) because they really can't tolerate the thought of being truly dead.  I'll admit it gives me trouble sometimes.  How can the world continue without me in it, they ask themselves.  Wasn't it Edwrd G Robinson who asked himsef (as a character) "Can this be the end of Rico"?

Yes it can.  My parents are dead.  Flat stone cremated dead.  They ceased to exist.  And I'm not getting younger.  It is a hard road to plow.  I sometimes feel like I'm in a book I won't know the end of.  And it's HARD! 

So when I tell theists that their whole belief structure is false and they won't wake up after death to some heavenly paradise, I feel "guilty" somehow.  But there isn't anything else...

Downer award for the year, right?

Well, I don't talk about religion much at all out here in meat-space. But if someone wants to convert me to their way of believing (which doesn't happen very often these days), I won't hold back for the sake of their feelings. Especially when they use the same false arguments and emotional bait they always do use. And on line, here at the forum, it's them coming to us, for whatever reason, so I don't hold back here, either. I do try to keep my arguments academic, though, and not let it descend into personal attack.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on August 01, 2019, 03:38:55 PM
Well, I don't talk about religion much at all out here in meat-space. But if someone wants to convert me to their way of believing (which doesn't happen very often these days), I won't hold back for the sake of their feelings. Especially when they use the same false arguments and emotional bait they always do use. And on line, here at the forum, it's them coming to us, for whatever reason, so I don't hold back here, either. I do try to keep my arguments academic, though, and not let it descend into personal attack.

Good point.  I don't really want to burst my friends' balloons, so I avoid it a bit in (as you say) "meat time".  They aren't deep-thinkers and sometimes all I want to do is share a pizza.  I save it for places like here where everyone who comes is prepared for some challenging questions.

With a bit of irony, I say bless this site, LOL!
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

Quote from: Cavebear on August 01, 2019, 03:52:56 PM
like here where everyone who comes is prepared for some challenging questions.

Yeah, ideally, but many come quite unprepared for even unchallenging questions.  LOL
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on August 01, 2019, 03:56:07 PM
Yeah, ideally, but many come quite unprepared for even unchallenging questions.  LOL

That's what the bonus labels are for.  You get to something like "jellyfish" and you've been around long enough to survive, and be attacked.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!