Exposing Atheistic Myths

[skepticalbip]

This all seems rather arbitrary to me. For example, a deist certainly believes in god... his concept of god not the god of the Abrahamic religions. A deist's god is a creator god, not a prying, bossy, demanding, judgemental, and interfering god. The fact that a deist's god is unlike the Abrahamic god does not make it any less a god. A god that winds the clock then sits back and watches without judgement is still a god.

 

[Keith&Co.]

You can't really deny someone's belief based on their behavior if their belief also includes a mechanism for forgiveness.
I could honestly believe in a god who hates lying liars, who i honestly believe will forgive me because
A) my lies were not that bad
B) my lies were actually in the interest of good, such as saving someone's soul
C) i ritualistically repented my lies, or plan to on my death bed
D) i was told by an authority i trust that the only commandments that matter are love god and love my fellow man

Sure, i may score low on your Is You A Real Christain test, but your opinion doesn't make my faith atheism.

 

[Atheos]

Things existing without a cause is a theistic assumption that is part of the self-contradictory cosmological argument put forth by the idiot Aquinas who was laughed of serious philosophy many centuries ago.

It starts with the premise that everything is caused, then once it gets to God, it violates it's own premise by assuming that God was not caused (otherwise he wouldn't be much of a God). IOW, theists simultaneously claim that things need causes and things don't need causes, depending on when it's emotionally convenient for them.

Atheists don't need to make this patently absurd self contradictory argument. They could either assume that everything does not need a cause and therefore no God is needed to cause the known universe, or atheists could assume that everything does need a cause and therefore all things are an infinite chain and there cannot logically be a first-cause, a beginning, a God, etc..

You can probably get away with characterizing the causal principle as "everything has a cause" (and thus contradicts an uncaused God) on an atheist board like this, but if you presented that objection to an apologist you might get in trouble. The reason is that cosmological arguments tend to qualify the causal principle in some way. For example, they won't say everything needs a cause, they'll say that things that begin to exist need causes, or that things with unactualized potentialities need causes, or that contingent things need causes, etc.

The only thing I can say with certainty about this argument is that whatever word salads are used in order to exclude "god" from the causal chain can be used with equal efficacy to exclude "the universe" from the causal chain. If a universe that existed back into infinity can't ever begin to expand, a god who existed back into infinity can't ever get around to creating the universe. Any attempt to give god a pass for this problem can be applied to the universe. Word salads can provide convenient hiding places for the intellectual laziness to recognize this truth, but they're just lipstick on the pig.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't see how that is comparable. A belief is a mental state, it's not a bodily behavior.

Just describe what would qualify as establishing the belief.

How is a belief not a physical arrangement in the brain? How is anything "mental" not a physical arrangement in the brain? Behavior doesn't even need a brain to be behavior.

I'm nit picking I know but any "belief" is ultimately something physical, and with sufficient knowledge can be documented and quantified such. We're not there presently but there isn't anything non-physical involved.

My attitude has always been that the possibility of the existence of God is too serious a matter to believe in half heartedly, or to believe as the consequence of believing in what people I know say or the books they tell me contain the truth. The question is far more important than believing in, say, general relativity because I have trust in the scientists and teachers and some documentary I watched on TV. The issue is too important because it is such a major factor in human history as well as current events. There's too much at stake to simply say "I believe" and attend mass once a week. Belief in God has much more to do with one's personal integrity. Why else would so many of us atheists regularly visit the religion forums if it was only a trivial matter? Personally, it would be difficult for me to believe in a God that expected less.

I've always liked this line of reasoning and have used it in personal exchanges with "believers." Something claimed to be so ultimately important gets treated as if it isn't. Apparently a lot of other things are a lot more important judging on actual behavior. This is the basis of Gun nut's claim and it is a valid observation and criticism.

 

[ronburgundy]

This all seems rather arbitrary to me. For example, a deist certainly believes in god... his concept of god not the god of the Abrahamic religions. A deist's god is a creator god, not a prying, bossy, demanding, judgemental, and interfering god. The fact that a deist's god is unlike the Abrahamic god does not make it any less a god. A god that winds the clock then sits back and watches without judgement is still a god.

Yeah, but it's unlikely that hardly anyone believes/believed in a deist god, except as a retreating fallback position when science and reason made the prying, bossy, judgmental god(s) they or their culture believed in intellectual indefensible (such as the case with the desim of the Enlightenment and early post-Enlightenment era). Such a God doesn't serve any of the many psychological/political function for which gods were invented (comfort, sense of purpose/importance/justice, social control, etc.). The only thing a deist God does is provide a really terrible answer to "How did it start?" by replacing the "it" with "God", and answer that rests upon simultaneously presuming that every "it" needs a cause but then fallaciously contradicting that premise by accepting a god that is uncaused.

Basically, the deist god is just the shell of what's left of god after all the psychological substance has be voided by reason, but the believer still wants to cling to the word "god" b/c they lack the courage redefine themselves as a non-believer and deal with that social ramifications that come with that.

 

[Gun Nut]

But see, the smoking example I gave refutes your first example. People that believe smoking causes harm still smoke. They may be foolish, but they are still believers.

No, they don't. Smokers do not believe it will cause THEM harm. That said, analogies only go so far.. we are talking about belief in god, which many (most, all?) will agree is a "special case" in people's minds that is not fair to compare with others.

 

[Gun Nut]

If they claim to have belief in the existence of a god that has rules that they do not follow, and there are allegedly punishments for failure to follow the rules, that would be a pretty major disqualifier for the claim of belief.

Not if there's a mix of rules. If I were to say I believe in the God of the Bible, you could expect that I'd follow the rules about loving one's neighbor. Or could expect that I might stone gays. Then, because you're cherrypicking according to your personal values, you could say "Ah ha! You don't TRULY believe!" And not just because they're being inconsistent, but because you set up the rules and then pretended they are the believer's God's rules.

If they claim belief in a god that has no rules to follow, and there are no means to predict that god's interventions in the material universe.. then such a god is equivalent to not existing in the first place.. and I disqualify that from the scope of my statement.

If I made a claim, any claim, and you started arguing against it with "You don't believe the claim" rather than address the claim, then it's not "laws of the universe" you're breaking. It's the rules of logic you're defying.

This would be true if I were cherry picking rules that "mattered" and rules that did not. I am dong no such thing.

 

[Gun Nut]

This all seems rather arbitrary to me. For example, a deist certainly believes in god... his concept of god not the god of the Abrahamic religions. A deist's god is a creator god, not a prying, bossy, demanding, judgemental, and interfering god. The fact that a deist's god is unlike the Abrahamic god does not make it any less a god. A god that winds the clock then sits back and watches without judgement is still a god.

I disagree... Such a god is indistinguishable from a non-existent god, and therefore out of scope of my statements. It is too trivial to matter to me.

 

[Gun Nut]

You can't really deny someone's belief based on their behavior if their belief also includes a mechanism for forgiveness.
I could honestly believe in a god who hates lying liars, who i honestly believe will forgive me because
A) my lies were not that bad
B) my lies were actually in the interest of good, such as saving someone's soul
C) i ritualistically repented my lies, or plan to on my death bed
D) i was told by an authority i trust that the only commandments that matter are love god and love my fellow man

Sure, i may score low on your Is You A Real Christain test, but your opinion doesn't make my faith atheism.

I'm supposed to believe the belief claims from this "lying liar"? I'm having a hard time with that. A different kind of "rule breaker" might have been more persuasive.

 

[ronburgundy]

An intriguing observation. How are you defining 'atheist,' then?

One who does not believe in the existence of any god.
My observation is that almost no one I have ever met, or read, or heard about, believes in the existence of any god.
Many people say things or pantomime their way through rituals in such a way as to appear to be theist as a survival instinct... but none of them have ever demonstrated a belief in existence of a god.

I will stand corrected if provided sufficient evidence of someone's belief, though.

If they say they believe, they've demonstrated their belief. You stand corrected if you cannot show that people don't believe what they say they believe.

What people say demonstrates only that they uttered some words. To take that as clear evidence of what they actually believe requires you to make several highly questionable assumptions:
1. That people reliably share your conception of what their words refer to.
2. That people are reliable sincere and honest and try to convey that shared meaning, and do not lie or attempt to utter the words b/c they serves a social function regardless of their actual meaning.
3. That they are able to accurately and reliably ascertain the contents of their own mental states and report it to others.

We know that #1 is invalid and that people not only use the word "god" to mean just about anything but even the word "believe" is not used reliably. Only if they mean "believe" in the sense of "I think that X is an objectively real thing that exists independently of any human ideas, hopes, and wishes." does it imply they are conveying that they are a theist. But "belief" is often used as a substitute for "hope", "wish", or a subjective state of preference for they type of world one desires. Complicating that is the fact that many if not most people are not able to even recognize the difference between those meanings, which is the crux of the whole is/ought problem in which people confuse what they think ought to be for what is and thus treat morality as though "X is immoral" conveys some objective fact about X" rather than the subjective preference (even if it's God's preference) that is neccessary for that statement to contain any meaning.
And in the context of God, we know there are massive motives for people to desire for their God to exist and that the is/ought distinction is constantly blurred in this context. So, this issue especially undermines any interpretation of what the statement "I believe in God." actually implies about their actual psychological state regarding the god concept.


We know that #2 is invalid b/c people lie constantly to themselves and others, especially about everything related to religion, and more generally about things where there are strong social pressures and sanctions to say particular things, which is more true of theism than just about anything.


Finally, we know that premise #3 is invalid, b/c there is lot's of research showing that people are terrible at accurately evaluating their own state of mind (aka metacognition). People cannot even remember what their own state of mind was 30 seconds ago, if that state of mind has changed. For example, you give people a scenario and ask them how they feel about it and what they think is going to happen next they will tell you one thing. But then after new stuff happens, you ask them to report how they felt and thought prior to that new stuff they are incapable of doing it. Instead, they think they always felt and thought the way they do now in response to the new information (aka, the hindsight bias).

Given these conditions must be met and we know they often are not met, additional evidence is required to infer that a person who utters the phrase "I believe in God." actually believes in a particular entity meets the definition criteria of God. And if you want to argue that it can mean whatever the believer wants, then the statement "I believe in God" doesn't mean anything at all b/c it could mean anything, including the opposite of all those anythings.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

This conversation seems to have demonstrated - Thank-you Half-Life - that the actual myth is that persons actually believe in a god. A person may say as much but the reality based upon their behavior is that they clearly do not. I may as well tell someone I have a trillion dollars. Why should they believe me? What reason would they have based upon my behavior to assume that my belief is sincere even if they know I don't have the money? It's interesting how this thread has turned out.

I have known persons with mental conditions that allowed me to accept their sincerity when they made extraordinary claims, even if I knew their claims were not true. Should I extend that courtesy to people who say they have gods?

 

[ronburgundy]

Although, I disagree with Gun-Nut that virutally no one sincerely believes in God, I do agree that actions and behavior are a needed and stronger indicator of sincere belief, beyond uttering the words "I believe in God".

Most of the arguments discounting the role of behavior in reflecting belief are using invalid comparisons.

For example, take a smoker who does sincerely believe that smoking is bad for their health. The belief that smoking is bad is merely a belief that it makes a bad outcome more likely, but not certain. In fact, 84% of moderate lifetime smokers will not get lung cancer. So, smoking doesn't actually conflict with the belief that smoking is bad. However, a belief that and all knowing God punishes those who do X is not probabilistic, it is certain. In fact, the major motive to believe in such gods is that it makes outcomes certain and therefore reduces existential angst. There are no beating those odds. Thus, doing X is a stronger indicator that you don't believe in a God that punishes X, than is the case for smoking and beliefs that smoking is bad.

Sure, you could also add a belief that God will forgive you, if you ask nicely, but that just shows that one's actions do reflect one's theistic beliefs, so much so that people need to invent corollary beliefs to tack onto basic theism in order to allow themselves to engage in various behaviors.

If you sincerely believed that the God of the Bible existed and that the Bible was his word, you would read, think, and talk about the Bible constantly. That b/c such beliefs inherently would make understanding what is actually being meant in every Bible passage more pragmatically important than anything and have more assumed impact on your and societies' well being than all of science combined.
If such beliefs were sincere and held with confidence, then the consequences of failing to fully understand the Bible would be so certain, severe, and infinitely more long lasting, extreme, and certain than the consequence of anything else that people do. And those theists that don't give any special deference to the Bible or particular source of information would still spend most of their waking hours thinking and talking about what that God wanted and how to achieve it.

To claim that these behavior don't follow from sincere theistic belief is to claim that people's actions are not driven by the most basic desires to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

It would be analogous to the belief that a meteor was definitively going to strike Earth and end all life in 10 years from now, unless we could find a way to stop it. IOW, sincere belief in anything close to Abrahamic monotheism where eternal suffering can only be avoided by knowing and following God's will would psychologically and behaviorally look like the sincere belief of scientists who knew with scientific levels of certainty that a meteor was going to kill them and all life within a few year, unless we figured out how to stop it. Virtually every person who believed it and expected they or their loved one's will still be alive would be obsessed with it and constantly talking about it and wanting every social resource to be directed at figuring out how to prevent it. Nothing else would matter by relative importance. The only exception would be people who also sincerely believed in an afterlife and thought that the meteor was sent by God and therefore nothing could be done. And actually, that would mean they don't actually believe there is anything that could be done, which means their lack of action to stop it would be a reflection of their lack of belief that it could be stopped. With the God the most monotheists say they believe in, it isn't just material death at stake but (according to what they claim to believe) the eternal well being of their soul, the equivalent of potential suffering infinite painful material deaths over and over. So, actually this analogy undersells just how extreme and all consuming the thoughts, discussion, and action would be if most of society sincerely believed in the God of the Bible.

I anticipate responses like "But people who believe in climate change still don't act to act though they do." Like smoking and cancer, climate change is a highly uncertain probabilistic thing. The reason that few people are doing anything about it is that they don't hold at least one or more of the following beliefs: 1) That the effects will definitely be catastrophic for human civilization, 2)That it will happen within their or their kids' lifetime. 3) That there is anything they personally could do that would make a difference.

 

[Gun Nut]

I agree about the probabilistic factor... makes sense.

What is the ratio between an average human lifetime and eternity? It's infinity, right? As in, one's lifetime is infinitesimal as compared with eternity.. In the particular case of Christians, how foolish would it be to do anything but live the perfect Jesus's lifestyle?

"I'll give you 100 million dollars if you can hold your breath for 1 second"
"nah.. can't be bothered to do all that work.. not for 100 million"

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So when someone claims to believe in a god, goes to church, prays, invokes their god at funerals and weddings, teaches their children about their god, listens to experts who claim to know things about their god, gives money to these god experts, sings to their god, but spends most of their time doing mundane things that have nothing to do with their god, what can we know about this person? What does this person actually believe? What is their behavior telling us about their stated belief that they have a god?

It tells me that this person and their brain really enjoy their god fantasy, which for them may even be something healthy, but that it takes a back seat to getting on with life proper. Sounds a lot like Natural Selection to me.

 

[skepticalbip]

This all seems rather arbitrary to me. For example, a deist certainly believes in god... his concept of god not the god of the Abrahamic religions. A deist's god is a creator god, not a prying, bossy, demanding, judgemental, and interfering god. The fact that a deist's god is unlike the Abrahamic god does not make it any less a god. A god that winds the clock then sits back and watches without judgement is still a god.

Yeah, but it's unlikely that hardly anyone believes/believed in a deist god, except as a retreating fallback position when science and reason made the prying, bossy, judgmental god(s) they or their culture believed in intellectual indefensible (such as the case with the desim of the Enlightenment and early post-Enlightenment era). Such a God doesn't serve any of the many psychological/political function for which gods were invented (comfort, sense of purpose/importance/justice, social control, etc.). The only thing a deist God does is provide a really terrible answer to "How did it start?" by replacing the "it" with "God", and answer that rests upon simultaneously presuming that every "it" needs a cause but then fallaciously contradicting that premise by accepting a god that is uncaused.

Basically, the deist god is just the shell of what's left of god after all the psychological substance has be voided by reason, but the believer still wants to cling to the word "god" b/c they lack the courage redefine themselves as a non-believer and deal with that social ramifications that come with that.

Absolutely. I agree. But the question was about whether anyone believes in a god. I was just pointing out that the argument given that people don't is flawed. Rather than the argument showing that people don't, it only shows that the overwhelming majority of people don't believe in a specific god - that vengeful, demanding, prying, god. I know many who call themselves Christian who do believe in a god but not that one assumed in the argument.

 

[skepticalbip]

This all seems rather arbitrary to me. For example, a deist certainly believes in god... his concept of god not the god of the Abrahamic religions. A deist's god is a creator god, not a prying, bossy, demanding, judgemental, and interfering god. The fact that a deist's god is unlike the Abrahamic god does not make it any less a god. A god that winds the clock then sits back and watches without judgement is still a god.

I disagree... Such a god is indistinguishable from a non-existent god, and therefore out of scope of my statements. It is too trivial to matter to me.

Not at all. Such a god is indistinguishable from a non-existent god for you because you don't believe in it. Those who do believe in such a god believe in it (kinda a tautology). We are talking about beliefs, not reasoned understanding of a demonstrable reality.

 

[Atheos]

In a way though, Gun Nut has a point. I think that Christians who really believe in the god who saves people from the horror of the Hell described by Jesus in the story of the rich man and Lazarus are few and far between. The writer of that story would have us believe that there is a place where the vast majority of humanity is going to spend an eternity in torment. The story of salvation is the good news of an escape from that horrible fate through Jesus.

Such a fate would be far worse than drowning. If someone had fallen overboard a ship on the ocean and I had a nearby lifebuoy I'd toss it to him without a second thought. But few Christians act with the air of urgency true belief in the traditional afterlife options merit. Every effort of one's being should be dedicated to finding lost souls and saving them from this horrid outcome. Instead most Christians are content to show up at church on Sunday morning, do their rituals, toss their dollar in the collection plate and be content that they've paid their fire insurance premium. They don't really believe there's ever going to be a real fire.

Or as the Japanese saying goes, "The fire is on the other side of the river."

 

[Politesse]

In a way though, Gun Nut has a point. I think that Christians who really believe in the god who saves people from the horror of the Hell described by Jesus in the story of the rich man and Lazarus are few and far between. The writer of that story would have us believe that there is a place where the vast majority of humanity is going to spend an eternity in torment. The story of salvation is the good news of an escape from that horrible fate through Jesus.

Such a fate would be far worse than drowning. If someone had fallen overboard a ship on the ocean and I had a nearby lifebuoy I'd toss it to him without a second thought. But few Christians act with the air of urgency true belief in the traditional afterlife options merit. Every effort of one's being should be dedicated to finding lost souls and saving them from this horrid outcome. Instead most Christians are content to show up at church on Sunday morning, do their rituals, toss their dollar in the collection plate and be content that they've paid their fire insurance premium. They don't really believe there's ever going to be a real fire.

Or as the Japanese saying goes, "The fire is on the other side of the river."

I don't think you read that story very carefully. What is the sin for which the rich man was condemned?

He was damned for not caring. Not for failing to believe. He likely went to Temple every Sabbath day, much as do the Christians you describe. His doom was written in his cruelty and apathy towards the suffering that was literally laid at his feet. Hence Abraham's doubtfulness in the last line that it would matter in the slightest whether he came back from the dead to warn people. You cannot convince someone by fear alone to truly value the life of another. At best, you can talk them into pretending to care. Not the same thing, and condemnation of hypocrisy is the most consistent theme in Jesus' teachings as a whole.

I also don't think "most people" follows from "the richest people". Most people live their lives much more like Lazarus than the rich man in the story.

 

[Treedbear]

In a way though, Gun Nut has a point. I think that Christians who really believe in the god who saves people from the horror of the Hell described by Jesus in the story of the rich man and Lazarus are few and far between. The writer of that story would have us believe that there is a place where the vast majority of humanity is going to spend an eternity in torment. The story of salvation is the good news of an escape from that horrible fate through Jesus.
...

What I want to know is how Christians can rationalize the idea that humans evolved from non-humans while also believing that all humans descended from one man and one woman. The idea which is the basis for original sin and the sole purpose of Christ the redeemer. Seems to be a basic conflict there.

 

[ideologyhunter]

We're now going on to the 21st century of this Christian thing, so it's natural that the religion has become background noise and that "believers" can customize their level of engagement. Tons of the Christians I've known, worked with, or been related to, have been social Christians. It's their milieu, and it's not something they are motivated to analyze. Typically, they haven't read the Bible and their understanding is boxed in by the pastors they've heard. What atheists see as cognitive dissonance, i.e., voting for Trump; accepting divorce or cheerful fornicating in their family or social set; worrying about retirement accounts when JC says not to; opposing social welfare; all that is okay because they haven't really internalized the faith as a faith -- it's something else, it's their parlance or lifestyle. You'll still get kneejerk reactions to hot-button "faith issues", but that's not the same as a committed prayer regimen or a craving for transcendent contact with a deity.