Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lostkitten3
Knowledge is something that can be proved scientifically, over and over again, by anyone following the same procedures.
In this manner, you demonstrate your lack of understanding of scientific method.
What you are proposing is the logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent.
Scientific method builds increasingly refined models from which to make useful predictions. The means by which such models are refined, is by testing falsifiable hypotheses, so that errors in the predictive power of a model are uncovered, allowing the model to be modified to account for the finding. It is a process of successive approximation toward a highly predictive set of models that can be relied on in fields like engineering and so forth, permitting us to advance our quality of life. In a very real way, it is the most reliable form of divination.
quote:
Given that most people's belief in god is via miracles, these would be anomalies that happen once in a blue moon, and no one (at the time) can explain why, so they call it something greater than themselves i.e. god.
Most people? Are you aware of how far you are overextending your generalization contrary to evidence?
If we assume that you meant "most of those people who believe in the judeo-christian-islamic notion of god, do so due to miracles," such that your statement makes a bit more sense, then it seems pretty clear that you are missing a quite fundamental point: most of those people believe, not because of miracles, but rather because it has been expected of them that they believe by some group (e.g. family, friends, society, etc.) whose expectations they have been inclined to attempt to meet at the time when they started believing.
This is similar to how most people in North America and Western Europe in the modern era believe democracy to be a good thing, or believe that killing is "wrong," or any number of other social and cultural norms, rules and beliefs that are internalized during the course of rearing. Without rearing, a child does not internalize these norms, rules and beliefs, and will be a blank slate or what is known as a feral child. Such a child does not normally develop language, either.
Miracles as a basis for belief... that'd be the day.
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God is a story earlier humans made up to explain things like floods and death. We should have outgrown it by now.
You apparently have an equally lacking comprehension of early civilization and the social aspect of evolution.
Leaving aside that humanity has changed very little in the course of recorded history (some 8.000 years, at best), it is a pretty solid assumption that competition has been a part of evolutionary selection pressures. Starting with the assembly of the first primitive bilipid layers, if not before, it has been demonstrated that the formation of impermeable membranes has been instrumental in evolution. Exclusionary social and group identities, such as religions, take on the role of socially impermeable membranes, creating the necessary seperation and tension to facilitate the rise of selection pressures and beneficial conflicts, as well as limiting breeding stock sufficiently to enhance the overall genome (with raiding of other groups as a means by which to exchange the beneficial traits that are accumulated over time, while exchanging harmful traits with less frequency).
Bear in mind that many religions have their roots in the worship of men of authority and women of beauty.
The word "god" originates with PIE gHot, whose meaning is "that which is called out to," essentially. Mother is god in the eyes of a child. Doctors are gods in the eyes of the ill. States and companies are all gods in the eyes of those who are unemployed. Insurance companies are gods to those in need of reparations. Pension funds are the gods of the old and infirm. The almighty dollar is god to the whole capitalist world, surpassed only by the god called "oil," in whose name the cradle of life itself was savaged before the current occupation of it.
But there is another sense of the word, too, and that brings us back to the worship of men of authority and women of beauty. As late as the 20th century, it was common for Chinese peasants to worship beurocrats. In the 21st century, like the 20th before it, people worship the idols of Hollywood. On every school in the western world, the jocks are worshipped. In every sport, teams and players are worshipped. Come 4th of July again, a pretty huge chunk of bona fide atheists in America are going to worship an idea and a flag.
These are the real meanings of the term "god."
And I posit we have more of them now than we ever did as primitives.
Care to propose how we are to outgrow this, or what, exactly, the Beatles were made up to explain?
As for the flood and so forth... leaving aside evidence of several major floods in the area where the tale originated... the flood is a retelling of the older legend of Unamapishtu in the Sumerian mythos, in which humanity enters into a pact with Enlil to not destroy the environment, and to practice family planning for all time, lest the waters rise again to make the world uninhabitable and the people die off in famines. Whether the event has any real world antecedent or not, the message itself is one that it would have been pretty fucking useful for us to pay attention to. Pity the Jews screwed us over for political reasons that have been out of date for like millenia and the Saulist Christians have prevented inquiry into this up to the point where Secularism threw the whole shebang out the door.
Haven't you ever heard of the term "moral of the story?"
In conclusion, it is time to outgrow your own sense of superiority over those who have not yet "outgrown" what you demonstrably have exactly fuck-all comprehension of, save how to bow down, say your "hail dollars!" and hope you don't get crucified for giving the inappropriate sacrifices to the IRS.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Is Atheism a religion? - 
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..) Or reality. Real reality.....
Theists assume that a supernatural entity/being/god exists. Atheists assume that no such thing exists. Both are comfortable with their assumptions and neither likes to admit that what they are doing is, in fact, assuming. It is an assumption to postulate the existence or nonexistence of something that has yet to be proven or disproven. 
Ahhh...i'm driving myself insane!!!!!!!!! 
Physics and math are like blech....i WANT there to be something more. But i know that is based on my fears of mortality and futility. Even though i know this, i still want things to matter. 
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