Nowhere357

sigh. Well I suppose "gullible" is a step up from cowardly liar.

Your personal belief imo has been tricked by your lack of imagination. For example, are you aware of the concept of group mind? That a human body is made of many living cells which give rise to a single mind? That bee hives and ant colonies behave as if they have group minds?

Are you aware that a thread common through all religions in all cultures through all time is a sense of transcendental awareness? That a common result of religion is a code of morals, and morals help describe an individuals relation to the group?

Are you aware that the existence of mind is unexplained by current physics? That in fact minds would be entirely unknown to science except for the fact that we each have direct access to our own?

Anyone who thinks life is not mysterious is blind. And anyone who thinks that it is not possible that there is a germ of truth to our spiritual search is ignorant.

[/rant]

Shadowy Man

And anyone who decides to make up an answer to the mystery because they can't handle searching honestly is being intellectually disingenuous.

Nowhere357

I agree. I think we know that an important reason for the existence of religion is to help answer the unknown - before the invention of science, this was very important. So it seems likely that our brains are wired to accept supernatural type explanations.

This tells me that some, perhaps many, theists are simply dealing with things the way their brains are set up - they basically have no choice. It's very interesting to me the way many theists can be very logical and rational and intelligent, unless the subject is their belief structure.

asgardhaven

callmejay

Do you (agnostics)consider yourselves agnostic about the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, or about (US tv psychic quack) John Edwards?

No because in both those examples there are phenomena that can be subject to testing. The Loch Ness Monster would occupy a physical space or leave physical evidence if real. Therefore its possible at least in the the theoretcal sense( I relive the actual physical envronment of the Loch makes the search difficult) to rule out its existance based on an exhaustive search of a constrained locale.

John Edwards makes claims that can be compared against a control group (ie either random guessers or avowed nonpsycics using his methods). It can be run as an experiment.

That same sort of testing isn't possible when it comes to determining what happened at the very beginning of everything (before it comes up I already recognize that there doesn't have to be a beginning, it could be a series of Big Bangs and Collapses, although recent evidence points toward continuing acceleration of the universe)
There is no methodology to use to explore this area except principals of logic and thought experimentation (ie Occum's Razor).

asgardhaven

Nowhere357
So it seems likely that our brains are wired to accept supernatural type explanations.

Perhaps the same mental processes that proved evolutionaraily advantagous, like pattern recognition an inference, proved susceptible to this sort of issues because they are for the most part selection neutral(the susceptiblity to superstition that is)?

DMB

I think you can explain a lot by supposing that our brains are wired to have a tendency to accept authority. Already you see in chimpanzees that the young have a lot to learn from their elders. This is magnified many times in human beings, which have a very long childhood. To be fully human, we have to learn how to function as part of human society, including avoiding all the myriad dangers we will face.

Instead of having to test every plant to see whether it is nutritious or poisonous, we learn from our elders what we can safely and usefully eat. All the details of tradition and etiquette are passed down to us. Since we are social animals, this kind of learning is vital. So if we are told that to be real man in our particular tribe we need to go around with a pair of underpants on our head, and if we see all the respected people doing so, why should we not do likewise?

It would seem that Natural Selection does indeed favour conformists, but there is enough advantage for occasional rebels to keep a small proportion of them cropping up in each generation. As a result, human society is not entirely static.

Nowhere357

I'm not sure I understand your meaning, because I see "evolutionarily advantagous" as contradicting "selection neutral". I must be missing something - please explain?

Btw I like your screen name.

Nowhere357

:notworthy

Ever since I read "The Emperor's New Clothes", I've known that I was the kid in that story.

Bumble Bee Tuna

RBAC, you seem unwilling to learn the difference between the two terms.

Atheism does NOT imply that atheists are 100% sure of things, and agnosticism isn't a term for "not sure/undecided".

If anything you might be in need of the terms strong atheist and weak atheist, not the disparaging "true atheist" and "pseudo-atheist" that you use.

A "true atheist" is someone who doesn't believe in god(s). Nothing more, nothing less.

-B

Rational BAC

OK BBT--------

I was responding to a post stating emphatically ----THERE IS NO GOD !!!.

(How does that fit in with your weak atheism, strong atheism divisions?)

I call that statement THERE IS NO GOD pure unadulterated atheism. No doubt, no ambivalence. Atheism at its essence.

Or maybe you do not agree with that poster's statement.

Can you --BBT-- state THERE IS NO GOD in good conscience?

(A simple yes or no will do.) You can add on qualilfiers later but first answer the question.