Atheism and agnosticism thread

[rotting bones]

I'm no fan of Zizek

I think I might be closer to Zizek than anyone else I can recall on cultural criticism. For people who prefer idealism, Badiou would be the closest analogue.

but this reminds me that one of the reasons I usually found it difficult to get fully on board with any religion, or, for that matter, political ideology, might have been their insistence on certainty.

For Zizek, a political movement is not a fundamentalism. It is a union of groups containing many disparate ideologies coming together to achieve something greater than the sum of their parts. This is the highest calling of a human being.

Zizek is a more nihilistic Badiou, and Badiou thinks that humans come into contact with the absolute through four primary activities: science, politics, art and love. (Religion is prominently absent from the list because despite being an idealist, Badiou is a radical leftist.)

[keenir]

Ie, can see that titles carried over very very easily into Islamic empires, such as "king of kings".

Wasn't that a pre-islamic Persian title?

I believe so...Darius had the title, if i recall, when he besieged the Greeks.

So is literature; so is science; so is atheism.

I completely agree. And they will each matter equally when our species is gone.

So...gods can't exist, because whether they do or not, there will be a time when humans are no longer around?

The best Assyrian scholarship was that the gods spoke by creating malformed animal intestines. That's ridiculous to us, but not because we have better knowledge about what gods do. We just believe they don't do that.

Which gods? Which animals?

I suspect that you're asking about which gods, so that you can falsify the claim on the basis of those gods not being worshipped anymore, and therefore somehow not gods simply by virtue of no longer being worshipped.

You brought up the religious life of animals.

As an absurd corollary to the notion that humans have some unique insight into the inner workings of the universe.

As zompist pointed out - unique compared to...what? As SETI phrased it, "hydrogen isn't cultural", so we can't chat about our grasp of subatomic physics and math with elephants, but we might with civilizations on other worlds who have also an understanding of math and subatomic physics.

To me the way I'd see it, if I were a Deist, is that God is like a human creating a cellular automata system, except on a vastly larger scale. Unless there is a bug in the cellular automata system that allows the cellular automata to "escape" and "see" their creator somehow, or said creator put an "easter egg" in the cellular automata system for the cellular automata to observe, there is no way the cellular automata can reason as to the existence or non-existence of such a creator. However, as we humans can create our own cellular automata, we can posit that the cosmos are simply a cellular automata system on a great scale in which we are cellular automata ourselves.

Relevant to my confusion: A cellular automaton is an idea. I don't understand the implementation part.

?
You don't understand the concept of letting a program run and do things?

Relevant to theism vs. atheism: For God to be an explanation, God has to be simple.

What? Why does god/God have to be simple? I've seen lots of explanations for all sorts of things (such as syntax) which are complex.

[keenir]

basically, your argument boils down to - or appears to boil down to - saying "dolphins can't have beliefs, for the reason that we've never seen a human perform any dolphinic religious practices."

Not really...but let's go with your interpretation...Have you? Ever seen a human conduct any dolphinic religious practices?
My "argument" (it's really more of an assertion) is that no religion, spirituality, or notions of divinity seem to reside outside the imagination of humanity. All known belief-systems are by human design.

as SETI used to say, "How do we know dolphins don't have a civilization? Do theirs have to look like ours?"

And given that our ability to communicate with nonhumans is, thus far, essentially "look. kitten. kitten. play." ...how exactly are we supposed to be learning if other species have the same religion as us (those cross-signing wolves, or menorah-lighting alligators of yours) or a different faiths?

you may be interested in the short story Samaritan by Connie Willis, for a look at the other side of the coin - the primate convert turning out to be an older part of the flock than they'd thought.

Shockingly, I'm not, though I do appreciate you offering me a work of fiction to somehow help support other works that I very clearly find to be just as fictional.

No, I was offering you a fictional work to enjoy a bit of relaxation and a bit of thought provoking.

[masako]

So...gods can't exist, because whether they do or not, there will be a time when humans are no longer around?

If that's what you got from what I said, then you should read it more carefully.

as SETI used to say, "How do we know dolphins don't have a civilization? Do theirs have to look like ours?"

Words mean things. What we call "civilization" is generally a set of circumstances that are observable and defined. Dolphins (read, any non-human animal) do not display all of those circumstances in the same way we do, hence, it ain't a thing, no matter what SETI says.

how exactly are we supposed to be learning if other species have the same religion as us

Kinda not sure what you mean by "us"...we (humans) don't even have one homogenous set of beliefs.

You can wrap it up any old way you like, but religion (like ""civilization"") is a human concept, practiced/believed/known only by/to humans. To ascribe those traits to non-human animals isn't much different than to ascribe them to water molecules on Mars. If that's your thing, then great, but it ain't mine.

No, I was offering you a fictional work to enjoy a bit of relaxation and a bit of thought provoking.

I appreciate you taking the opportunity, but I haven't read fiction in decades and I see no reason to break that streak based on that particular recommendation.

[keenir]

So...gods can't exist, because whether they do or not, there will be a time when humans are no longer around?

If that's what you got from what I said, then you should read it more carefully.

I tried, but it was confusing and in places even vague.

as SETI used to say, "How do we know dolphins don't have a civilization? Do theirs have to look like ours?"

Words mean things. What we call "civilization" is generally a set of circumstances that are observable and defined. Dolphins (read, any non-human animal) do not display all of those circumstances in the same way we do, hence, it ain't a thing,

ah, so on one hand, they don't do all the things humans do, therefore they don't have civilization, and thus no religion.

but if they did do all the things humans do, thats still limited by being a set of human-defined traits, and thus still not proof of religion either.

how exactly are we supposed to be learning if other species have the same religion as us

Kinda not sure what you mean by "us"...we (humans) don't even have one homogenous set of beliefs.

You can wrap it up any old way you like, but religion (like ""civilization"") is a human concept, practiced/believed/known only by/to humans. To ascribe those traits to non-human animals isn't much different than to ascribe them to water molecules on Mars. If that's your thing, then great, but it ain't mine.

therefore, there cannot be non-human religions, because religion is only done by humans, according to your logic; which means that, because only humans do religion, it can't be real.

well that neatly makes itself unfalsifiable.

[masako]

because only humans do religion, it can't be real

You got it! Finally. Thank you for listening.

[keenir]

because only humans do religion, it can't be real

You got it! Finally. Thank you for listening.

Except for one problem: only humans use the internet, abide by the guidelines of communities secular or otherwise, and have written languages...yet you seem to have no problem with civil discussion while typing in a forum, all of which was built on upon the vast knowledge that humans acquired and humans wrote down for other humans to learn.

[masako]

Except for one problem: only humans use the internet, abide by the guidelines of communities secular or otherwise, and have written languages...yet you seem to have no problem with civil discussion while typing in a forum, all of which was built on upon the vast knowledge that humans acquired and humans wrote down for other humans to learn.

My initial assertion was: "No religion, spirituality, or notions of divinity seem to reside outside the imagination of humanity. All known belief-systems are by human design."

Do you see how that's different than "haha I goT yOu cUz yoU doEs oThEr hUmaN StufFs!"

[Raphael]

My initial assertion was: "No religion, spirituality, or notions of divinity seem to reside outside the imagination of humanity. All known belief-systems are by human design."

Do you see how that's different than "haha I goT yOu cUz yoU doEs oThEr hUmaN StufFs!"

I can only speak for myself, but I'm quite sure that science, by now, got most of the things it makes claims about right, and science doesn't seem to reside outside the imagination of humanity, either, and is by human design, too.

[masako]

"Science" is a much broader term than "religion", don't you think?

[Raphael]

"Science" is a much broader term than "religion", don't you think?

Not really. More like the opposite: there is basically one general scientific view of how the world works and where it came from and where it might be going (though, of course, with a lot of disagreements about details), while there are a lot of religions.

[masako]

Oh, you don't mean "science science", you mean "view of how the world works and where it came". Gotcha.

Science, as I understand it, is a set of empirical measurements and/or calculations that are used to explain and/or understand the natural world. Not "a view".

[Raphael]

Science, as I understand it, is a set of empirical measurements and/or calculations that are used to explain and/or understand the natural world. Not "a view".

I don't see a contradiction there.

[masako]

Science, as I understand it, is a set of empirical measurements and/or calculations that are used to explain and/or understand the natural world. Not "a view".

I don't see a contradiction there.

So, you either don't know what "a view" is, or you aren't sure what "science" is...I'm not sure which.

[keenir]

My initial assertion was: "No religion, spirituality, or notions of divinity seem to reside outside the imagination of humanity. All known belief-systems are by human design."

Do you see how that's different than "haha I goT yOu cUz yoU doEs oThEr hUmaN StufFs!"

I've been trying to get a handle on your perspective...and the thanks I get is that rudeness and what seems to be a presumption that I am the embodiment of everything you hate about religion.

I'm starting to wonder if I should ask you to pass the hemlock.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm quite sure that science, by now, got most of the things it makes claims about right, and science doesn't seem to reside outside the imagination of humanity, either, and is by human design, too.

Science itself, as in atoms and magnetism and all the other parts of the cosmos, exists outside of humanity, and will outlast humanity., I fully agree; but the same would be true of gods: they exist outside of humanity, and will outlast us. But humans write down their experiences in encountering and interacting with the sciences both hard and soft -- just as humans do with religious matters.

Have there been false gods? Yes. Have there been false sciences? Also yes. If the former is reason enough to get stop having a relationship with gods, why is the latter not enough to stop our relationship with science?

[masako]

I've been trying to get a handle on your perspective

I'm dubious.

the thanks I get is that rudeness

I sincerely did not intend for my response to be thought of as rude.

My perspective is pretty clear, or at least it should be.

[Travis B.]

All of this reminds me of the kind of atheist I am not...

[masako]

All of this reminds me of the kind of atheist I am not...

Oh, Travis, I don't think anyone would have made that comparison, you're good.

[Zju]

Have there been false sciences? Also yes.

Science doesn't mean what you think it means.
Before the scientific method there have just been "natural philosophies".

but the same would be true of gods: they exist outside of humanity, and will outlast us.

Burden of proof is on the claimant. For all we know there are only false gods.

[zompist]

Have there been false sciences? Also yes.

Science doesn't mean what you think it means.
Before the scientific method there have just been "natural philosophies".

Perhaps you need to look at the history of science more. It's gone down plenty of false paths. Some were just mistakes, others less so. Scientists can be bigoted too, and yes, that produces bad science.