Gravity is magic, existence, consciousness photons, dark matter, all of it. No I’m not trying to be too sarcastic, nor am I quite completely crazy. I mean that I find those things magical, and that existence itself is supernatural. Literally, things are, whatever the scientific explanation for why things are is not relevant, this isn’t some sort of enhanced ID argument, just the way some people express their general wonder that there is anything at all.
None of that means I don’t believe that reason and science can describe much of existence in some satisfactory ways. A creator who couldn’t make a universe without leaving his fingerprints all over it wouldn’t be a very capable creator would he? In many ways I suspect this sort of faith ends up as some special case of the simulation argument, and is completely unfalsifiable and untestable by definition, but I was never trying to convert you, or anyone else, only explain what I believe and why I can believe in magic and quantum physics and algebra and vaccines and logic and all sorts of other fun things I don’t know much about.
You would really have to define religion before you could start answering this question. Is it a fundamental property of religions not to make unprovable statements? How can you differentiate between adherents who make assertions, adherents who write holy books or give teachings and the religions that result? Or do you mean that where some religions (such as Abrahamic faiths) do make historical assertions, their historicity is less significant than their spiritual significance?
Sure, I’ll define religion - and follow it up with concise, authoritative definitions of art, reason, truth, and beauty before I break for dessert. I kid! No, I define religion as the internal discipline of subjectivity. It is purely metaphysical, not unlike psychoanalysis and surrealism. They are practices which can facilitate, for some people, attaining certain states of mind and/or being. BUT there are people for who religion means belief and/or faith in weird stuff, deities, etc. There are lots of philosophical problems wrapped up in this. If you know your god is real, why bother having faith in them? Is having faith in my table going to help my computer from falling on the floor? Can one enjoy weirdness for its own sake without needing to believe in it?
I will concede that getting people to believe in random nonsense can easily be an exercise to dupe the unwary to accepting other things without thinking, merely a crass bypassing of the critical faculties. It can also be, not unlike a skillfully applied drug, a means to help a person to avoid overly discursive thinking which has run amok, in favor of something more nuanced, perhaps allowing for greater subjectivity. Like any powerful technology of the mind, it has a huge potential for abuse and danger.
This is something like what I mean, although “spirit” can be seen as having supernatural connotations. It might not be controversial to consider that a person could benefit from different kinds of consciousness or awareness, and there need not be any supernatural motivation or explanation of it. I am sure that there are some people for whom this ruins the whole enterprise - but I am not one of those people. Mythology does not exist to teach people about the events of the past, far from it, it exists to help people in the present to consider their place in life and in the world.
If you think gravity is actually magic or supernatural, you are so far off the deepend that carrying on the discussion further is essentially a waste. My crazy gay hating the world is 4000 year old sister can agree that gravity probably isn’t god magic at work. If you really feel that way, there isn’t a scrap of earth left to anchor yourself on. Gravity can be awe inspiring. If by “magical” you mean “not actually magic, but I sure as shit don’t understand it” then you are just being pedantic. Cool. You think it is “magical”, hopefully you understand that it isn’t really magic that involves a wizard/god/ghost/spirits/whatever waving their arm/tentacle/wand/crystals/etc around to violate the laws reality.
My statement wasn’t about the actual wording you use to express awe. I said that the way I describe it to people is to say, “I don’t believe in magic”. I mean it literally. I magic isn’t real. No Harry Potter, no Zeus, no Thor, no God, no Merlin, no spells, and no wands. Sorry. If you believe otherwise, that is certainly your choice, but I am just pointing out a nice blunt line in the sand why I am a merry old atheist. Magic isn’t real. Merlin magic, Jesus magic, Muhammad magic, Hindu magic, Harry Potter magic, etc, it all goes into the same waste bin of make believe.
Don’t get me wrong. I like magic. I have a pile of sci-fi and fantasy books that can attest to it. It isn’t real though. Sorry.
If you don’t want people to think you number among the perpetually offended, you should dial back the whinging passive aggressive pearl clutching because that certainly sounds like a habitual affect rather than something that just happened for the first time. Also, unless people were raised in such conditions that they have been hardwired to respond to that a certain way, nobody takes that behavior seriously. So unless there’s a deeper need to be ridiculed, you’re drilling a dry hole.
I think you can get from religious experiences to “God exists,” but not to “God exists in the classical theist sense.”
And our language and concepts often fall short when describing everyday human experiences, so we rely on metaphors, and sometimes literalize each others’s metaphors, and sometimes tear down literalizations of each other’s metaphors, so I can’t help think that our language and concepts will fall short when describing something which extends far beyond human experience.
And then someone beats children because their culture including their interpretation of their religion tells them its right…
I wonder if you’re not painting with an overly broad brush there. Are all (or even most) anti-theists bullys? Granted, we may not be defining anti-theist the same way.
I can produce a stack of studies that assure you that corporal punishment, even when it’s not “harsh,” is correlated with negative outcomes and has terrible effects on child/caregiver attachment security.
“Pearl clutching” is an interesting choice of language, since it’s usually aimed at liberals who conservatives think are too politically correct, often to defend things like homophobia or casual racism. It’s essentially a coded way of saying “I know what I’m saying/doing is offensive to many people, and I don’t care.”
I’m not personally offended by sophomoric insults against Christianity any more than I am against sophomoric insults against Islam or Mormonism. I just think they’re stupid and lower the level of discourse, and I’m disappointed that you think this is the right forum for it.
Possibly true. I am not normal or entirely sane in the classical sense of the word. However I do believe in the literal truth of scientific theories and the validity of reason and empirical experiment. The last three books I’ve read or listened to were… I’m apparently bad at remembering titles… But the one about Einstein and the Quantum “the valiant Swabian?” or something, wonderful book, the one by Penrose about cyclical time and origins of the multiverse, and some wonderfully awful thing by Clark Ashton Smith, which adds nothing to my point.
Possibly I am being pedantic, God/The meaningless void knows it would be my full-time hobby if I didn’t work against the tendency. But it’s also possible I just did a terrible job of explaining how it is that I believe the very fact that things exist at all to be ‘magical’…
I do not believe in any way that there exists replicable ‘supernatural’ effects that can be demonstrated and proven through experiment. And I I take it as a matter of faith that a creator wouldn’t leave such glitches in the matrix, as they would undermine the entire principal of free will…
There’s some fundamental difference of philosophy, in the very most fundamental, axiomatic truths we accept about the nature of existence that leads to this divide, and I’m not smart enough to explain it, or haven’t found the way to explain it yet. If I still got high I’d mumble about Godel and Hempel’s, but I’m sober and understand that even if there’s an answer in there, I don’t know what it is.
Finally thank you for your time and the reply and have fun being a merry atheist, I’m quite sure the God I believe in loves you anyway.
Really? My own child is 27, and I haven’t really given too much thought to the notion in the last five/ten years, I was certainly brought up in a world where spanking was was not just normal, but where NOT spanking was considered bizarre and abnormal.
USA Indiana, I was born in 1967 so I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s in what was considered a very ‘typical’ American state and city. And yes I often imagine the world is composed of people just like me, only with funny accents, so do most people…
In fact when I was a child it was assumed that any adult who you let watch your children for more than a few minutes had the right, if not actual duty to spank your child. But I am in no way married to the idea, as I mentioned in another post I barely spanked my child at all, and was certainly not spanked more than a dozen times myself. I have absolutely no problem with the idea that it might be a practice which should be abandoned entirely, though at 47 I’ve not put too much thought into the matter, since it seems unlikely I will acquire or have children who are of an age where I might have to consider the issue again.
That said, Southern Indiana is close enough to being a part of the “south” that despite my entirely liberal political leanings I’m naturally skeptical of anything that seems to be the accepted gospel of the intellectual elites of our coastal masters.
[quote=“vrplumber, post:126, topic:49670, full:true”]
Intelligence and Reason are the biggest enemies of religion, after all.
[/quote] Add Faith, love and charity, and you’ve completed the list.
Neither the uncaring infinite void, nor She[1] that created the universe from nothing is likely to be in any way limited to interacting or understanding things the way we are. Seems unlikely that the sort of sounds that monkeys make (human language) is able to in any express the all that is meaningful or possible even in a completely materialistic sense.
1: Just for fun, anyone who honestly believes a creator who is by definition singular would actually have a gender is even crazier than I am.
[quote=“cahutchins, post:136, topic:49670”]
and I’m disappointed that you think this is the right forum for it.
[/quote]Well I can’t say I’d lose any sleep over that even if I thought you were telling the truth, which is not something I’m taking for granted.
