thedigiMESS

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle wrote:
�On the balance of probability, I find that naturalism as a world view comes closer to being �right� than theism does��

Kim, your post was well written thank you. If you don�t mind I would like to ride your coattails here and follow with a few more thoughts of my own that you have helped to crystallize.

The fundamental difference between theists and non-theists is not that one group believes in god and that the other doesn�t (although I understand that this is all of the information necessary to accurately distinguish between the two groups), the FUNDAMENTAL difference, and the point that I guess I was trying to make in my original post, but never really got around to, is in how the two groups view the world.

The theists subscribe to a magical view of the world where everything is not necessarily bound by the laws of nature, whereas non-theists generally accept that all things have a natural explanation. This is the key difference. It just so happens that belief in god works out to be a fairly accurate barometer for distinguishing between these two profoundly different worldviews. But, the mistake is in thinking that the belief in god (or the lack thereof) is what these two competing ideologies are about.

Belief in god, or not, is the point at which the two worldviews, magical and naturalistic, converge. It provides a convenient and precise way of distinguishing between the groups. But the paths and the processes by which each of the groups arrives at the point of convergence, where they are measured and divided, speaks volumes more about their respective outlooks than whether or not they happen to believe in god.

An atheist is an atheist precisely because he/she does not believe in god (okay CX?), but this is not exactly WHY an atheist is an atheist (please bear with me). Theists typically begin with faith in a deity and then construct their reality accordingly; facts and observations must be manipulated and/or omitted to match their worldview. The non-theist begins without any precepts, but rather, follows the facts and observations to wherever they may lead.

So when the theist and the non-theist both arrive at the same point to answer the same question, whether or not they believe in god, they will have each arrived there by entirely different means. The theist will answer �yes� to the query because that is precisely how they came to be a theist in the first place and the non-theist will answer �no� because upon reviewing all of the facts and observations he/she will be left no other (natural) choice.

At this point the theist remains a theist and the non-theist becomes an atheist, but the fundamental difference between the two remains the same, one believes in magic while the other is content with nature.

Belief in god is merely the litmus test that helps us differentiate between the two competing worldviews.

-thedigiMESS

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

Hi digi,

The difference of world view is pretty much what I was getting at, and it's the culmination of a bunch of ideas and arguments I've been playing around with over in the philosophy forum.

The fundamental thing is that "world views", as such, are circular and self-supporting belief systems. But circularity is a logical fallacy, so there is no valid logical argument that you could make for finding one world view false, and the other true. (This, of course, relies on the logician's definition of "truth". Who knows what a Christian means when he says, "God is the way, the truth, and the light". As far as I can see, that phrase simply coopts terminology from Taoism, classical logic, and Zoroastrianism respectively, and entirely disregards the specific meanings of those words in their original context. But I digress...)

Any world view is valid, provided it is true to itself. But not all world views are equally useful. A world view that more closely reflects our observation of and experience with reality is going to be more useful in most ways than a world view that doesn't.