The negative connotations of Atheism and popular assumptions about atheists.

So what? All I'm saying is that it is possible to believe with incomplete certainty that something is true or will happen.

I obviously disagree.

Everyone else seemed to realise. It was quite clear what I meant by degree in the context. I'm actually intruiged by what possible meaning you could have construed in my post (using degree geometrically) that you not only understood, but disagreed with.

Of course I'm talking about beliefs based on some sort of reason. Where did I ever imply that I wasn't?

Why would I be talking about beliefs with no basis?

It is clearly not an irrelevent tangent. This is an example of someone believing that there is a certain likelihood of a certain proposition being true. An example of non-binary belief.

 

So you meant an increment of measurement did you ?

Well FYI percentages are not measured in degrees. I don't have the foggiest why you mention angles to me..

So what? It was the example you offered mate. That's what. Not a good one i may add. Something is either true, false or shall we say a probability. Now choose your measurement, stick with it and be clear. A dice has so many ways it can land. A knowable. Now make a couple of the sides not the numbers they are supposed to be but let them be any infinate number. Now how much do you know of what will land ??

Obviously then, you should enlighten me as to what you would call it.

What did they realise?

I'm sure you really dazzled them!

Beliefs could be any number of things. Specify the belief for me please as they vary greatly. And variable are many. Some known and some not.

Well tell me what belief you are talking about. The belief in God. Or the belief that rain falls from a cloud. Or global warming. Or or or what ?

Like I said i don't need to check your link or argue the toss of a statistic to see that something is going on with climate change. I already know that.

I am sure there are plenty of examples of non binary belief..

FYI, I am not Strafio. I am not here to argue his side of his debate with you.

 

That seems to extend far beyond any specifics of this argument.

What exactly are you arguing then?

 

cloudhandz there is something you don't seem to grasp... so I'm going to try and help.

When discussing say whether there can be degrees of belief over say the existence of God someone may present you with an example, an analogy or a metaphor to explain their point.

For instance, say someone was discussing this topic then they tried to highlight their point by giving the example of how people can legitimately have different degrees to how far they believe global warming to be a problem.

The problem you seem to have is that you believe the person is now no longer talking about the original topic and has instead decided to discuss global warming. This is not the case. They are using an example to illustrate a point but the point is directly linked to the original topic.

It seems that everytime someone discusses an example or analogy with you, you get completely lost after one or two posts but maybe if you try re-reading posts you might be able to see the relevance yourself without constantly having to ask people to demonstrate it for you.

 

But the question is, if my degree of faith is less than absolute and god exists anyway, am I going to hell?

 

It depends which God.

The Catholic God - not if you where sincere in your dout and good
The Evangelical God -probably hell for you
The Sikh God -not if you where good
The pantheist God - no hell
The 100 million other conceptions of God, who knows.

 

I think I'll go for the catholic god, then. At least you know where you stand with the old git.

 

Oh really. And when you are lost for a point you resort to personal attacks ?

Why do you bother to mention angles to me when you were clearly useing percentages in your examples?
Just wished to point out to you that there is no correlation between angles and percentages..

Why not just put your hands up you made a mistake in the get go. Or you too proud to be corrected by a dunce who doesn't have the foggiest.

I am 'arguing' ( to use your word) that your posts are conveying an innacurate picture of what you are attempting to argue.

Fairly simply -I respectfully disagree with your position..

 

Thanks so much CKava, you're always helping me out. It's very appreciated.

 

I'm too right to be corrected by a dunce.

What alternative would you propose?

 

What was it you were right about?

A belief is not a probability, and a probability is not a belief.

Alternative to what? - I'm not sure what you are asking me. Please be clearer if you have a question. ie. Please structure them better thanks.

I was not the one making probabilities out of beliefs.

 

Conviction of the truth of a proposition

NOT : it is propably 62.355% true.. lol.

From online dictionary,
Belief:
1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.
2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.
3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons

This doesn't mention probability or percentages either. hmm..

 

If one of your beliefs was shown to be incorrect, would you change it?

 

Personally on topic of Atheism and connotations of it;

Basically I think the main thing with atheists is not ALL of them are closed-minded but nigh on all are. Almost every atheist I have met has said it is because they can't be bothered and because they see all the stuff about extremists on TV. Very very few of the atheists I have met have ever shown the same tolerance to religion that religion tends to show to them. This unwillingless to investigate at all is the main negative connotation of atheism I believe.

 

If you're an atheist then you believe that this life is the only one.
They likely have more important things to investigate.
I mean, have you researched all the religions you don't believe in or have you spent your time living to what you do believe?

 

Well I certainly know a reasonable bit about Buddhism, Islam etc. and their general beliefs. I have lived in a multicultural environment for quite a long time. I've still chosen to stay Christian

 

What I meant was, your friends probably gave a tonne of reasons for rejecting Christianity which proved to you that they didn't really understand it as you did and clearly hadn't investigated it properly. Have you given all these religions the this level of investigation?

You won't because it's not humanly possible.
There are some issues in life we can investigate but not all. Some we have to just work with what we know and/or follow our gut intuition. I think atheists have good reasons for not looking into religion, simply because:
a) Their secular worldview is working for them and there seems to be nothing wrong with it.
b) There's plenty of people who have looked into Christianity and come to the conclusion that it's wrong, so they can trust an experts opinion on this.

I personally think that if you fully understood my atheistic outlook then you'd agree with me. However, if I was to give you the books and philosophical studies you'd need to work through in order to understand my position, I'd understand it when you said that even if your Christianity was wrong that it was working for you.

 

Noooooooooooooo! (Hello again )

(I’ll answer this first as it is a glaring misunderstanding of what I have said).

Belief or disbelief is binary only in that you hold a belief in proposition P, or you don’t. Law of non-contradiction: P or ~P. There is no logical option to be in-between believing and disbelieving. It is nonsensical. If you believe, you believe… EVERYTHING ELSE, is disbelief.

But this doesn’t deny different degrees of a belief.

Let’s take theism (belief) and atheism (disbelief) in our example.

There is no logical option of being ‘inbetween’ these two positions here. It is, by definition, impossible.

But you can have different degrees within each position. Thus you can have diffrent degrees of theism, and diffrent degrees of atheism.

So we can get theists who are certain or positive of their position (the fundamentalists, or strong theists) gradually to those who are not certain but believe anyway, weak theists.

Likewise, we can get atheists who are certain or positive of their position (although don’t confuse them with strong/fundamentalist theists, unlike them strong/positive atheists base their position on logic and will be willing to be disproved), and we can get atheists who are negative in their position in that they do not deny that a god exists but just don’t believe in one.

Too many people are under the impression that theism is being certain god exists; atheism is being certain god doesn’t exist, while agnosticism is being impartial. This notion completely ignores the degrees within each position.

Not quite. My position is, as David Hume once said: "a wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence"

Therefore, what I’m saying is that we should hold our beliefs in proportion to the available evidence. The better the evidence, the more convinced we can be, the worse the evidence, the more we must refrain from certainty.

Thus, if we have no evidence for a proposition, we shouldn’t accept it.

I think you ignore that we can and do have different degrees of certainty in a belief (which as explained above, doesn't contradict the 'binary' of belief/disbelief)

The problem is ignorance and a lack of critical thinking and logical thought.

When we are faced with a proposition or claim we look at it for problems, things that don’t conform to our current knowledge, thing that seem unlikely or impossible. We look at the plausibility and probability of the proposition or claim. If our internal analysis doesn’t find red flags, we see no reason to reject it.

However many people lack the knowledge and critical thinking required to make a sufficient judgement on some things. For example, someone might see a video or image of a ghost like effect and conclude that it is a ghost and by extension that ghosts exist. Or, if they might hear of something that seems miraculous, and conclude it is a miracle from god. In both cases the phenomena didn’t raise any ‘red flags’, and this is because the person either already believes the phenomena and see this as a conformation, and/or they lack the ability to critically analyses the phenomena.

But if you have such abilities, and you see what looks like a ghost you don’t determine that it is one, until it can be shown that it isn’t. Of course not. Rather you either reject the claim that it is a ghost based on your existing knowledge of such phenomena (“perhaps it is a lighting illusion or effect?” you might ask), or you withhold belief that it is until further information is available. This is probably done intuitively.

Wrong. We are constantly internally analysing. To demonstrate how easy it is, look:

Going to the shops doesn’t break any know laws of science or knowledge et cetera. I know people go to the shops all the time, on a daily basis. So it’s no stretch of the imagination in accepting your statement. This is all done intuitively. It takes no time at all. In fact it’s an almost instant process. Are brains are constantly doing this. And even if I accept it and it turns out to be wrong, it doesn’t create any major problem, or require major changes in are understanding, therefore given the lack of any major problem that may occur, I would probably be less rigorous that say, the claim of speaking to the dead.

In short, when we see problems, we examine in more detail, but it doesn’t mean were not, or are not analysing. We are internally analysing, we always are, it’s just that this analysis only comes to the fore when problems arise, which it when we turn to a more conscious state of analysis and focus.

It seems you think that when we are working intuitively we are not analysing… that we only analyse when we notice problems. This is not the case.

No, it isn’t. If they are not using rationality, they are being irrational. No one has any qualms at pointing this out to people in most cases, except then it comes to religion.

No, I just used example which clearly demonstrate the ramifications of your statement.

I’m saying that we are not polite and we do not respect beliefs of quite a lot of people. I don’t see why religion should get an intellectual pass.

 

When you talk about degrees of believe there suddenly becomes a grey area between clearly believing and clearly not believing. Where is the line drawn between belief and non belief? So there becomes a genuine ground between clear belief and clear disbelief. This is the ground that many who describe themselves as 'agnostic' hold. So bringing in 'degrees' in does clash with the "you should see yourself as one or the other!" we had in the background.

Some of Hume's ideas have stood the test of time.
His strong empiricist assumptions are not among this number.
I'm not sure of your definition but in my experience evidence implies a form of empiricism. Maybe you mean something different by evidence?
The fact is, many propositions are determinable a priori. Metaphysics, for example, is a priori. Almost all the arguments for and against God are a priori so evidence is practically irrelevent. God stands or falls on a priori reasoning.

So it's not like an empirical claim where we should base opinions on evidence.
It depends on our understanding of metaphysics.
In empirical sciences, the method for determining truth or falsity is conceptually simple - you work out the necessary tests and see if reality measures up. Metaphysics doesn't have such a simple method.
In metaphysics, our first theory has to be a guess or taken from granted.
From there we fine-tune it - we see problems/inconsistencies and ammend the theory appropiately. You remember the argument that convinced me of atheism? It was the necessary conditions for supernaturalism and what that logically entails.

The critical thinking claim is ungrounded.
If by ignorance you mean "there's something they don't know".
However, in the same way Newton was ignorant about general relativity.
Einstein was ignorant about quantum physics.
The only thing you can claim against many theists is that they've gotten something wrong, not they haven't attempted to make good use of reason.
There are some clear cases of theists who are clearly ignoring reason but I don't think you can extend this towards God belief in general.

Yep. No disagreements here.

Right. So we have to ask the question - why should seeing a ghost raise 'red flags'?
Is it because ghosts are metaphysically impossible?
Because they haven't been explained by science yet?
Both rely on a person's metaphysical theory.

Again, this depends on our metaphysical beliefs.
We only feel the need to raise such questions if something seems wrong with there being a ghost.

No. I agree with you. Intuition is subconscious analysis - it's part of my argument for why we should generally trust it. However, when we are talking about people thinking critically we are talking about what they do consciously.
After all, everyone - rational or not, does this subconscious analysis.

I think that religion gets a bit more lenience than some 'crazy' beliefs because it is often associated with 'goodness' but there is also a large difference in credibility. Especially with religious moderatism. The flaws in such a belief are sutble and small. I mean, a large amount of scientists believe in God and don't feel their rationalising acts against this belief.

 

No, it doesn’t. I’m amazed you can’t grasp such a simple idea.

There are degrees within each side, but not between each side.

There are degrees within theism, and degrees within atheism, but there are no degrees between theism and atheism. You clearly misunderstand this.

Hume’s statement - "a wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence" - should be the dictum of all scientists and sceptics. There is no possible reason one would argue against it.

It influenced the following similar statements…

”The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness” (known as the Principle of Laplace) - Pierre Simon Laplace

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" - Marcello Truzzi

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - Carl Sagan

The evidence of the scientific method is sufficient. I think the scientific method is our best method of gaining knowledge. Unless you can demonstrate another process…

These arguments are based on logic, which is self evident.

Why. So many people lack the critical thinking skills to sufficiently analyse claims and phenomena.

I’m talking about arguments based on ignorance, ignorance of what they are analysing, ignorance of critical thinking skills, ignorance of logic, which in turn results in logical fallacies and so forth.

E.g.
“We don’t know how or why we are here, it must be god.”
“That looks like a ufo/ghost, so it must be.”
“Evolution can’t explain this, therefore god exists”
“I can’t explain X, so instead of saying I don’t know; I’m going to conclude it is the work of god.”
”Sylvia Brown appears to be speaking to dead people, I believe her, I’m not going to be sceptical.
etc etc etc…..

Such arguments do not demonstrate good use of reason. If they were using good reason, they wouldn’t be making such arguments in the first place.

As for your examples. No, not like the fact Newton was ignorant of general relativity. Rather like when he couldn’t explain things about the universe passed his laws of motion, he simply invoked god. (Have you watched the Beyond Belief conference videos? There is a great presentation by Neil deGrasse Tyson on how some of the great scientists revert to god when they could no longer further there science)

As for Einstein, he was ignorant of QM but he didn’t invoke god to fill in his ignorance. Was he event aware of the possibility of QM discovery?

Simple… there is likely no good reason that it is a ghost, we know people fake such claims, and we know of no other claim that has been substantiated. Thus, there are very good reasons to be sceptical of such claims.

See my other comments which you agreed to: when we are faced with a proposition or claim we look at it for problems, things that don’t conform to our current knowledge, thing that seem unlikely or impossible. We look at the plausibility and probability of the proposition or claim. If our internal analysis doesn’t find red flags, we see no reason to reject it.

But that has no relevance on the truth of the claim. Just because someone believes in ghosts, and believes the claim is therefore true, doesn’t mean it is.

I still think this is often part of our subconscious analysis. He we wake up and see the street is wet outside, or all the cars are covered in snow, we immediately conclude is has been raining and snowing respectively. This is critical thinking, but it is done on a subconscious level.

The only time the analysis comes to the fore is when we notice problems and inconsistencies or don’t understand it etc.

I couldn’t really care what it is associated with. I insist on the right of every argument to be heard AND refuse to grant immunity from critique to any position. I have no sympathy for anyone who wants to protect their beliefs from rational discourse. No one can claim the right to go unchallenged. The problem with religious currently is that it only has to assert its beliefs, and is not expected to follow through with rational argument and evidence.