People would rather believe than know

[bilby]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

Persecution will do that.

Blackness isn't a belief either. Nor are femaleness, or homosexuality. Yet we observe people with little in common (other than persecution for these traits) forming communities all the time. It's a simple and common defensive mechanism in social species.

 

[rousseau]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

Persecution will do that.

Blackness isn't a belief either. Nor are femaleness, or homosexuality. Yet we observe people with little in common (other than persecution for these traits) forming communities all the time. It's a simple and common defensive mechanism in social species.

I'd say that if you experience a universe where a God doesn't exist, you definitely have a specific viewpoint about reality, and will likely seek out others like you. In the same way a Christian would seek out a Christian.

Your perspective may be more accurate, but it's still a major organizing principle in how you live your life.

 

[Learner]

When one defines the terms one uses, then one is always right by definition.

This should apply to both atheists and theists as according to your previous post, doing the same things.

That is what Christian theology does. Alondg with Nazi propaganda. Modern Russian, North Korean, and Chinese propaganda.

Saying these groups "go alongside" etc.. gives the false impression that all the groups mentioned in the above are somehow in agreement, as if "unified" by a common ideology or cause. Most of the above groups, if not all, would oppose doctrinal Christianity. The individual ideologies are in confliction with each other.

It is easier for the masses in those systems to believe without knowing.

It is easier for Trump followers to believe and feel good instead of thinking it all through. Same with political parties. It is easier and less demanding to simply echo political party phrases than understand in depth.

Politically, I could accept that.

Again there is no 'atheism'. Atheism is a Christian boogeyman, the enemy.There are atrheists who write about atheists vs theists. And again as I see it all soical groups are the same, Christians think there are unique.

Consider then my previous post was referring to the atheists not atheism. Social groups yes of course. Atheists say we are unique to them because of faith.

When wirting a fornal paper in college one defines terms explicitly and the particular meaning. Same in science or math or engineering where a term may have multiple meanings.

Sure, and I posted about being clear about context when using definitions or descriptions in case of misunderstandings, on the other thread we both engaged in.

Christian theology especially the RCC has a defined vaocabulary and all confclusions and menings work together without any ambiguity The trinity, heaven, soul, sin, a satte of grace are all definitions. Theology based on the defintions is always true and never ambiguous. That is what theologians do, invent theology,

I don't doubt there are some who may do, defeating the purpose when the bible says to 'test all things'etc. but your statement isn't true as a 'monolithic' whole. The trinity, the word itself not found in the bible isn't a real issue imo. although it is a new word added later, the concept isn't new ... the OT, for example shows there is the Spirit of the Lord, the Angel of the Lord who made covenants and lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and then there's the Lord God or the father who sent them.

Atheists add out-of-context confusion with anti-god inventions of their own.

I think all social groups are the same from teem peer groups to relgion and government. At the sate lvel i is impossible for all to understand all of it, it is natural to believe in a structure like a patry than understand politics.

Ok fair enough viewpoint.

That is the way, IMO, that Christianity works. Followers don't understand they learn the cliches and sayings and repeat them. They learn interlocking biblical quotes from other Christians who learned it from somebody else. Belief without understanding.

As you mention the various degrees of atheists aptly described in shades. I'd say goes for Christians - some understand more than others.

 

[Elixir]

I've known atheists who prefer belief over knowledge rejecting any facts presented to them that serves to falsify their belief(s).

Can you give an example of these beliefs, and the facts that those beliefs cause them to reject?
Not accusing you of mendacity, just curious about how that works in the eyes of a theist.

Two atheistic beliefs I've encountered that are clung to by atheists despite evidence to the contrary are these:

1. Suicide and euthanasia are rights and are good.

Whether or not those things are “good” is a context-dependent subjective judgment, not a fact by any measure, good or bad.

1. The faith of the religious has no logic or evidence to support it.

The belief that 2+2=5 has no evidence to support it, just like the existence of any Tri-Omni superbeing.
You are mistaking the assertion of that fact for the assertion that no aspect of any religion is consilient in any way with any fact. No atheist has made that assertion as far as I know.

 

[steve_bank]

Learer. all religion is a viewpoint. Science is a repeatable physcal exprteimnt not a perspecive

There are shades of Christians,Jews, and Muslims. A spectrum from liberal accepting gays to harsh conservatives suppressing women and gays. All based in the same scriptures.

Both atheist and christian are meaningless terms without a specific context.

Ths tread is a bout viewpoints and perpectives.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Science vs Faith

It's fairly easy to show that any kind of mind-body dualism is incompatible with some of the best tested and most useful scientific theories;

I'm sure it's not easy to show any such thing, even though there is probably research to debunk some forms of mind-body dualism. But those forms can easily be replaced by others which are more sophisticated and cannot be debunked by science.

If it really is easy, someone here will show it. But even if it's "easy" in some sense, it will require extensive "Walls of Text" in order to show it. The only arguments or science tests to address this are ones which show a time lapse between a physical (body) stimulus and the later mind response to it, in a single observed act at one moment. But that is no tested verified theory at all, because it is just as provable that the particular physical or body stimulus itself, observed in the test, had been caused by still earlier MIND impulses of some kind (way back there), and so it is not possible to disprove the division between the MIND and the BODY elements which were influenced by the prior MIND impulse.

Proving that the body impulse at the moment of action was prior to the mind impulse at that same moment is not enough to debunk the mind-body dualism idea which is popularly believed. Because there is more than only the immediate spontaneous body and mind impulses at the moment of the action. There are also the vast millions/billions of earlier impulses going back many years, and these too had an influence, i.e., on the future behavior or decisions or actions.

But if it's true that any such dualism has been disproved by some tested science research, someone here will provide the facts about it. Don't hold your breath. This is another example of something that will not be backed up with facts, because it's not science, but dogma. Those who insist on this (anti-dualism) dogma never give consideration to the EARLIER mind action which influenced the LATER body/physical action.

Either there's no afterlife, or Quantum Field Theory is not just wrong, but wildly and obviously wrong (it's not; we checked. Built a really huge hadron collider under Switzerland and everything).

This seems to come from https://www.higgypop.com/news/scientists-say-there-is-no-life-after-death/ , which concludes:

If Dr. Carroll and Professor Cox are right, then all this means that there is no "life force" within us with its own distinct energy that can leave the body to live on as a ghost or spirit after the body has died.

Assuming all experts agree with the above, the most it disproves is certain particular afterlife theories -- i.e., those about "life force . . . with its own distinct energy . . . as a ghost or spirit" etc., whatever that means, while leaving open hundreds of other afterlife theories different than the 1 or 2 "life force" and "ghost or spirit" theories debunked in the particular research cited here. To claim these particular scientists have debunked ALL "afterlife" theories is like claiming there can't ever be such a thing as flying machines because 2 or 3 planes crashed, and so all belief that there are airplanes is debunked.

That fact alone falsifies most religions.

Rather than the "most religions" -- How about the "no afterlife" -- let's have the evidence, or facts, based on scientific research, showing there can't be any kind of afterlife or resurrection after death.

Probably there's none, though if there is, someone here will present it, in a Wall of Text several pages long, which is OK -- whatever it takes to say the truth about it. But no one here really has any such evidence or facts.

Obviously the above outburst,

Either there's no afterlife, or Quantum Field Theory is . . . wildly and obviously wrong . . .

is no argument for or against anything. Just regurgitating the jargon ("Quantum Field Theory"), however impressive it sounds, doesn't explain what was proved or disproved or say what is the legitimate science research or its findings that arrived at this conclusion.

Similar falsification is fairly easy to . . .

"similar" to what? All you can use the previous NON-falsification for is to discredit the still further NON-falsifications now to be paraded before us and mislabeled as falsifications.

. . . easy to show that no gods are routinely and regularly interacting with humans; Prayer cannot possibly work unless almost all of our modern technology doesn't work the way its designers think it works at all - so the implication is that if prayers are heard by the gods, then the only reason that your mom can hear you when you call her on your cellphone, and your GPS doesn't get wildly lost, is that the developers of these devices stumbled across designs that work despite all of physics being completely different from what they think it is. And they not only succeeded despite being wildly wrong; They did so without noticing anything unusual, strange, or inconsistent in the way reality operates.

Where any of the above caricature of believers is accurate, so there really is a conflict with science, believers have adjusted to it, when it was really necessary, though of course the adjusting happens in varying degrees of gradualism, and there's the severe resistance in some cases. It's simplistic to expect all "believers" everywhere to suddenly be "enlightened" and abandon everything, dropping it all in lockstep with a "Sieg H . . ." salute to the new College of Scientist Cardinals you've appointed in place of their former Priests and Pundits.

Where there really is a conflict with authentic science, the appropriate changes in belief do happen gradually.

The odds that, given our experience with modern technology, gods also exist, are so astronomically low that only the most extreme of pedants would bother to note that they aren't zero. It makes more sense to believe that you are going to win the lottery every week for the next century, than to believe that there's an after[life], or a god that can hear and answer prayers.

No, the latter has a higher probability, though maybe it's still very low. It's reasonable to say it's low, but not 1 in 10 billion etc. -- no, the probability of afterlife or a god etc. is much higher than that. Maybe higher than 50% in some cases. Or maybe only 10% or 5%.

There's virtually no zero probability for anything empirical. Maybe 0.000000001 or some such. And since "gods" are so subjective, non-defined, and the beliefs so vague and adjustable, you cannot pretend to calculate the percentage down to near-zero, even if it's true that the number is very low.

All the beliefs that matter and have any meaning at all are those in % range of 1-99 (maybe .5 - 99.5), and likely some are true even if most are false. And zero is meaningless. Very high or very low probability is all anyone needs -- both believers and non-believers. Those claiming zero or 100% probability (certainty) are only the demagogues and fanatics and nutcases.

Now, it's true that some fringe religious beliefs can not be falsified in this way. The Deist creator god, who made the universe and then buggered off to leave it's inhabitants to get on with it, is much less easy to falsify. But then, if such a god existed billions of years ago, but will never be seen again, the question becomes not "does he exist?", but "why should we care whether or not he exists?".

Science doesn't do proof. But it does falsification very well indeed.

OK, but this doesn't mean the extremes of 100% disproof or calculated zero probability of such beliefs. It can only mean calculating a very low probability, or near 100% probability, like 99.9% etc. -- maybe. So in some extreme cases, yes, maybe it's falsified, but not in other cases.

So in such cases the belief is very probably false, or was "falsified" by the science. But not in most other cases. In most cases there is much to doubt, but very little that's "falsified."

Sorry, theists, psychics, astrologers, and other woo mongers, but while you were busy exalting in the fact that it's impossible to prove atheism, science was busy disproving all the theism.

Not "all." It's legitimate to say SOME religious beliefs are calculated to have very low probability (maybe a good number, but "all" is dogmatic fire-breathing fanaticism).

I can't prove that no gods exist; But I can prove that all the gods people have so far described to me, don't exist.

This latter can be partly correct (only partly), in that some particular claims about gods can be disproved. But even in those cases (which are not the norm) it's possible to adjust the belief slightly in order to accommodate the verified science, so that most of the beliefs can be salvaged. And where a particular belief cannot be salvaged it can very easily be disconnected and set aside from the rest which still remains. All beliefs get adjusted, even including good science theories, so there's nothing wrong if believers too make this or that adjustment in order to accommodate verified facts. And you could make a debunking argument that some of the beliefs should have been scrapped earlier as a result of new knowledge, or research, or discoveries.

E.g., Christians and Jews should by now have abandoned the ancient animal sacrifice blood atonement superstitions which they borrowed from paganism. They are abandoning this very slowly, dragging their feet, and not admitting the change taking place, and still trying to preach that an "angry God" has to be pacified (or once had to be) by blood sacrifice atonement rituals (and even enjoys sniffing the "sweet savour" from the burnt carcass).

And actually it can be shown that many of the popular Jewish and Christian beliefs have been adjusted, while not debunking the entire belief system, and admittedly there are some believers who remain stubborn and won't give up their earlier belief. This is also true of many disbelievers and skeptics and debunkers and researchers and scholars. Probably most of them, if not all, have been stubborn in some cases and unwilling to change according to the more updated findings.

This fact goes a long way toward explaining why it's so difficult to get believers to say anything concrete about their gods.

OK, but that's a good point IN FAVOR of those believers, who have learned from earlier changes that a previous belief had become dubious, no longer viable, and so they have become more careful about what to believe, and to make their beliefs more compatible with new facts. Maybe even their "hearts became hardened" to some beliefs that have become discredited.

For example, it's now a fact that most Christians or Christ-believers have yielded to evolution findings, and they reluctantly accept the natural selection and "old earth" theories, etc., or at least they don't want to argue about it any more, figuring maybe the facts don't help their belief. And the official doctrines of most mainline churches do make room for evolution, though still claiming that "God" is the source of it all in some way. But they no longer cling to the literal Genesis Creation tradition. And similar change has gradually happened in regard to other Christian and Jewish traditions held over many centuries.

Even the simplest claims render your god concepts falsifiable; And so far, that's been all that's been needed.

Some of those "god concepts" -- yes. Believers have been forced (reluctantly?) to give up some of it.

Again, there's tacit agreement with this, generally. Many religious beliefs have been scrapped, because of science, showing the unlikelihood or impossibility of some of the traditional beliefs. This really proves nothing, except that these religionists keep step with science, when they have to. It's true some of them are "dragged kicking and screaming," but not most. You're really beating a dead horse to say that some or most of the ancient beliefs have been discredited. Ho-hum, what else is new? You're putting most believers to sleep with such boring repetition of what they already know -- and again, it's true that many put up a fight at first, but mostly they have abandoned the unscientific parts you're so gleeful about while holding on to the major part of their belief which is not undermined by legitimate science.

Religion still exists because the sum of human knowledge regarding reality is a closed book to most humans - we know there are no gods, in the same way that we know how to put a man on the Moon - that is to say, most . . .

Maybe there are "no gods" -- in a sense, but not "in the same way" as the man on the Moon knowledge. Because some definite specific facts are known and verified about the Moon Landing, whereas the "gods" idea is too complicated to be compared to one single conspicuous event like this in science history. There have been too many "gods" of one kind or another to be able to generalize about "no gods" or "all gods" etc. Prehistoric humans had some experiences they knew, even if they did not understand them, and the experience was real -- those "gods" did exist in their experience, i.e., the real world, and just as later scientists know some of the modern experiences but don't totally understand them, so also the primitive humans knew their experiences but did not understand them.

So even saying "there are no gods" is incorrect. "Most of the gods were unreal" would be more correct.

Rather, the beliefs in those "gods" have to be revised, and even made compatible with science, without essentially being abandoned. Such revisionism has happened. Some legitimate ideas do undergo revisionism but still survive into the future.


What is the scientific disproof of afterlife?

But most importantly, what is the scientific evidence to disprove that there is any form of afterlife? No one here is going to answer this.

The only argument is that there's no evidence of humans living again after they died. (Or almost no evidence.) But all that proves is that we don't know. We have our one documented case of Resurrection after death 2000 years ago, which gives some hope that something after is possible. There's no evidence uncovered showing that in all previous universes which ever existed, there was never any afterlife, and so the same must be true in our universe. A true skeptic has to just say we don't know, rather than dogmatic pronouncements that "all gods" or all "afterlife" beliefs are debunked by science.

. . . that is to say, most people don't have a clue where to even begin, because most people don't know shit.

Ah! That explains everything.

Do they know the earth is round rather than flat?

There was a time, maybe 20,000 years ago, when the evidence was that the earth was flat. People believed the evidence, even based on science, you could say -- the science of that time -- straightforward observation of the terrain in front of them. But they changed gradually as more evidence emerged.

So most people want to know the facts, rather than their earlier "facts" or "science" based on the earlier limited evidence. So it's not true that they reject knowledge or science in favor of superstition and that they "don't know shit." What they do is change slowly, gradually over centuries perhaps, yielding to science, when it's authentic and verifiable and not just preached to them by dogmatists, or by an aggressive science Establishment Priesthood like another religion they must bow down to, which is trying to replace the earlier dogmatism with the New Dogmatism which is more healthy for them.

 

[Copernicus]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

You may or may not recall that I don't define atheism as mere lack of belief, but as rejection of belief. That is, I take atheism to be a belief that gods do not exist, and it is a belief about putative entities that have certain definable characteristics. Theism is basically the opposite--acceptance of belief in those kinds of entities. Although atheists may engage in debates or discussions and form friendships and clubs, there is no real doctrine or ritual associated with atheism. No community spirit. It may be true that some atheists band together and form such communities, or join communities such as Unitarian Universalists. It's just that atheism does not predispose people to form such communities, nor does it represent a moral authority demanding loyalty or obedience to the will of some kind of spiritual parent. Atheists don't necessarily derive any benefit from their rejection of god-belief except insofar as it eliminates the energy required to maintain evidence-free faith in a deity. Atheism certainly doesn't offer benefits such as belief in post-mortem immortality or that wrongs will ultimately be righted. It does not invite a sense of social community requiring self-sacrifice and devotion to a common cause. What religions do for people, is that they help them to cope with life's problems. They tend to clump people together with a common ideological perspective. The ideology (god-belief) is just the glue that holds them together. It is a maguffin of sorts that keeps life's "plot" moving.

 

[bilby]

I'm sure it's not easy to show any such thing, even though there is probably research to debunk some forms of mind-body dualism. But those forms can easily be replaced by others which are more sophisticated and cannot be debunked by science.

If it really is easy, someone here will show it.

Yeah, I have done so several times already on these fora.

For example:

https://iidb.org/threads/why-would-a-reasonable-person-believe-in-god.2657/post-1073071

 

[lostone]

As a monist, I see some hope in panpsychism and its other pan-cousins. Perhaps there is more to matter/energy than we have yet detected lying in the physics of particles we expect to find but have not yet found.

 

[rousseau]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

You may or may not recall that I don't define atheism as mere lack of belief, but as rejection of belief. That is, I take atheism to be a belief that gods do not exist, and it is a belief about putative entities that have certain definable characteristics. Theism is basically the opposite--acceptance of belief in those kinds of entities. Although atheists may engage in debates or discussions and form friendships and clubs, there is no real doctrine or ritual associated with atheism. No community spirit. It may be true that some atheists band together and form such communities, or join communities such as Unitarian Universalists. It's just that atheism does not predispose people to form such communities, nor does it represent a moral authority demanding loyalty or obedience to the will of some kind of spiritual parent. Atheists don't necessarily derive any benefit from their rejection of god-belief except insofar as it eliminates the energy required to maintain evidence-free faith in a deity. Atheism certainly doesn't offer benefits such as belief in post-mortem immortality or that wrongs will ultimately be righted. It does not invite a sense of social community requiring self-sacrifice and devotion to a common cause. What religions do for people, is that they help them to cope with life's problems. They tend to clump people together with a common ideological perspective. The ideology (god-belief) is just the glue that holds them together. It is a maguffin of sorts that keeps life's "plot" moving.

I read an interesting argument in Graeber/Wengrow's 'The Dawn of Everything'. They mentioned that some cultures will define themselves by what they are not or as not their neighbours. I've seen this play out first hand as I watch my relatives in the UK downplay everything that's 'American'.

So with atheism I don't think you're ever going to get a full analogy with various religions because it defines itself explicitly as not religion. In a similar vein as the religious atheists view the universe in a very particular way, but their framework is the antithesis of God belief and it's effects.

 

[lostone]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

You may or may not recall that I don't define atheism as mere lack of belief, but as rejection of belief. That is, I take atheism to be a belief that gods do not exist, and it is a belief about putative entities that have certain definable characteristics. Theism is basically the opposite--acceptance of belief in those kinds of entities. Although atheists may engage in debates or discussions and form friendships and clubs, there is no real doctrine or ritual associated with atheism. No community spirit. It may be true that some atheists band together and form such communities, or join communities such as Unitarian Universalists. It's just that atheism does not predispose people to form such communities, nor does it represent a moral authority demanding loyalty or obedience to the will of some kind of spiritual parent. Atheists don't necessarily derive any benefit from their rejection of god-belief except insofar as it eliminates the energy required to maintain evidence-free faith in a deity. Atheism certainly doesn't offer benefits such as belief in post-mortem immortality or that wrongs will ultimately be righted. It does not invite a sense of social community requiring self-sacrifice and devotion to a common cause. What religions do for people, is that they help them to cope with life's problems. They tend to clump people together with a common ideological perspective. The ideology (god-belief) is just the glue that holds them together. It is a maguffin of sorts that keeps life's "plot" moving.

I read an interesting argument in Graeber/Wengrow's 'The Dawn of Everything'. They mentioned that some cultures will define themselves by what they are not or as not their neighbours. I've seen this play out first hand as I watch my relatives in the UK downplay everything that's 'American'.

So with atheism I don't think you're ever going to get a full analogy with various religions because it defines itself explicitly as not religion. In a similar vein as the religious atheists view the universe in a very particular way, but their framework is the antithesis of God belief and it's effects.

As an atheist, even if there did turn out to be some God, I would believe that the existence of that God was due to entirely natural processes, and that that God could only do what those natural processes allowed, and also wonder if that God was an atheist itself.

 

[bilby]

Perhaps there is more to matter/energy than we have yet detected lying in the physics of particles we expect to find but have not yet found.

There almost certainly is.

But it's completely certain that none of it will be able to directly interact with living humans in detectable, but non-lethal ways. The only environments in which there's room for uncertainty are too extreme for humans to survive them - or even to not be atomised by them. At the energy densities necessary for any currently unknown particles to exist for long enough to interact with molecular structures (which are what humans are made of), there wouldn't even be a recognisably human corpse.

If such things existed at lower energy densities, we would see them all the time in particle accelerators, because E=mc², so enough E in one place will spontaneously make any particle. You just need at least c² times its m of E in one spot, and it can't not happen.

Unless all of modern physics is drastically and obviously wrong. (It's not; We checked).

 

[lostone]

I rather doubt much is wrong with modern physics. Perhaps the limits of the tools we have will never permit us to obtain final answers, a Theory of Everything, that is complete. So some mysteries will remain mysteries.

 

[Copernicus]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

You may or may not recall that I don't define atheism as mere lack of belief, but as rejection of belief. That is, I take atheism to be a belief that gods do not exist, and it is a belief about putative entities that have certain definable characteristics. Theism is basically the opposite--acceptance of belief in those kinds of entities. Although atheists may engage in debates or discussions and form friendships and clubs, there is no real doctrine or ritual associated with atheism. No community spirit. It may be true that some atheists band together and form such communities, or join communities such as Unitarian Universalists. It's just that atheism does not predispose people to form such communities, nor does it represent a moral authority demanding loyalty or obedience to the will of some kind of spiritual parent. Atheists don't necessarily derive any benefit from their rejection of god-belief except insofar as it eliminates the energy required to maintain evidence-free faith in a deity. Atheism certainly doesn't offer benefits such as belief in post-mortem immortality or that wrongs will ultimately be righted. It does not invite a sense of social community requiring self-sacrifice and devotion to a common cause. What religions do for people, is that they help them to cope with life's problems. They tend to clump people together with a common ideological perspective. The ideology (god-belief) is just the glue that holds them together. It is a maguffin of sorts that keeps life's "plot" moving.

I read an interesting argument in Graeber/Wengrow's 'The Dawn of Everything'. They mentioned that some cultures will define themselves by what they are not or as not their neighbours. I've seen this play out first hand as I watch my relatives in the UK downplay everything that's 'American'.

So with atheism I don't think you're ever going to get a full analogy with various religions because it defines itself explicitly as not religion. In a similar vein as the religious atheists view the universe in a very particular way, but their framework is the antithesis of God belief and it's effects.

People have a general idea of what gods are and how atheists feel about them, and that is good enough to give those terms a much narrower range of interpretations than perhaps most atheists would like. In the end, it is common usage that determines what words mean. My point was that religion isn't really driven by what people believe as it is by what benefits they think they derive from religion. Atheism offers very little in the way of tangible benefits, but religious communities offer a number of them that people feel they need. That doesn't justify the belief, but it motivates the desire to maintain it.

 

[rousseau]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

You may or may not recall that I don't define atheism as mere lack of belief, but as rejection of belief. That is, I take atheism to be a belief that gods do not exist, and it is a belief about putative entities that have certain definable characteristics. Theism is basically the opposite--acceptance of belief in those kinds of entities. Although atheists may engage in debates or discussions and form friendships and clubs, there is no real doctrine or ritual associated with atheism. No community spirit. It may be true that some atheists band together and form such communities, or join communities such as Unitarian Universalists. It's just that atheism does not predispose people to form such communities, nor does it represent a moral authority demanding loyalty or obedience to the will of some kind of spiritual parent. Atheists don't necessarily derive any benefit from their rejection of god-belief except insofar as it eliminates the energy required to maintain evidence-free faith in a deity. Atheism certainly doesn't offer benefits such as belief in post-mortem immortality or that wrongs will ultimately be righted. It does not invite a sense of social community requiring self-sacrifice and devotion to a common cause. What religions do for people, is that they help them to cope with life's problems. They tend to clump people together with a common ideological perspective. The ideology (god-belief) is just the glue that holds them together. It is a maguffin of sorts that keeps life's "plot" moving.

I read an interesting argument in Graeber/Wengrow's 'The Dawn of Everything'. They mentioned that some cultures will define themselves by what they are not or as not their neighbours. I've seen this play out first hand as I watch my relatives in the UK downplay everything that's 'American'.

So with atheism I don't think you're ever going to get a full analogy with various religions because it defines itself explicitly as not religion. In a similar vein as the religious atheists view the universe in a very particular way, but their framework is the antithesis of God belief and it's effects.

People have a general idea of what gods are and how atheists feel about them, and that is good enough to give those terms a much narrower range of interpretations than perhaps most atheists would like. In the end, it is common usage that determines what words mean. My point was that religion isn't really driven by what people believe as it is by what benefits they think they derive from religion. Atheism offers very little in the way of tangible benefits, but religious communities offer a number of them that people feel they need. That doesn't justify the belief, but it motivates the desire to maintain it.

It's interesting to consider the benefits one would get from identifying as an atheist. I'm generally on board with you that religion offers something that atheism, for the most part, doesn't. But it's an interesting exercise to consider why so many people at this forum describe their 'basic beliefs' as atheist.

If it's an arbitrary term with no relevance or payback, surely there'd be another, more interesting way to describe oneself. The sense I get is that many atheists (certainly not all) hold a kind of sympathy and disdain for the religious, so in that way 'atheist' might serve as a short-hand for 'enlightened'. So atheism may not be analogous with religion by any means, but it's definitely not an arbitrary label.

 

[Copernicus]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

You may or may not recall that I don't define atheism as mere lack of belief, but as rejection of belief. That is, I take atheism to be a belief that gods do not exist, and it is a belief about putative entities that have certain definable characteristics. Theism is basically the opposite--acceptance of belief in those kinds of entities. Although atheists may engage in debates or discussions and form friendships and clubs, there is no real doctrine or ritual associated with atheism. No community spirit. It may be true that some atheists band together and form such communities, or join communities such as Unitarian Universalists. It's just that atheism does not predispose people to form such communities, nor does it represent a moral authority demanding loyalty or obedience to the will of some kind of spiritual parent. Atheists don't necessarily derive any benefit from their rejection of god-belief except insofar as it eliminates the energy required to maintain evidence-free faith in a deity. Atheism certainly doesn't offer benefits such as belief in post-mortem immortality or that wrongs will ultimately be righted. It does not invite a sense of social community requiring self-sacrifice and devotion to a common cause. What religions do for people, is that they help them to cope with life's problems. They tend to clump people together with a common ideological perspective. The ideology (god-belief) is just the glue that holds them together. It is a maguffin of sorts that keeps life's "plot" moving.

I read an interesting argument in Graeber/Wengrow's 'The Dawn of Everything'. They mentioned that some cultures will define themselves by what they are not or as not their neighbours. I've seen this play out first hand as I watch my relatives in the UK downplay everything that's 'American'.

So with atheism I don't think you're ever going to get a full analogy with various religions because it defines itself explicitly as not religion. In a similar vein as the religious atheists view the universe in a very particular way, but their framework is the antithesis of God belief and it's effects.

People have a general idea of what gods are and how atheists feel about them, and that is good enough to give those terms a much narrower range of interpretations than perhaps most atheists would like. In the end, it is common usage that determines what words mean. My point was that religion isn't really driven by what people believe as it is by what benefits they think they derive from religion. Atheism offers very little in the way of tangible benefits, but religious communities offer a number of them that people feel they need. That doesn't justify the belief, but it motivates the desire to maintain it.

It's interesting to consider the benefits one would get from identifying as an atheist. I'm generally on board with you that religion offers something that atheism, for the most part, doesn't. But it's an interesting exercise to consider why so many people at this forum describe their 'basic beliefs' as atheist.

If it's an arbitrary term with no relevance or payback, surely there'd be another, more interesting way to describe oneself. The sense I get is that many atheists (certainly not all) hold a kind of sympathy and disdain for the religious, so in that way 'atheist' might serve as a short-hand for 'enlightened'. So atheism may not be analogous with religion by any means, but it's definitely not an arbitrary label.

That's a really interesting question. God-belief does come with benefits. Chief among them are social acceptance and support with life-changing events such as birth, coming of age, marriage, and coping with poverty, disability, illness and mortality. Atheism brings with it the baggage of opprobrium, especially in the US these days. Different people just face different challenges in life, I suppose, and there is the cost of maintaining faith in a belief that seems contradicted by so many of life's actual experiences. As one atheist put it to me once, there is nothing that fails quite as often or spectacularly as prayer. Science has solved a lot of life's puzzles that used to be explained in terms of religious belief. So I don't think it is surprising that a minority of the population would openly reject belief in religious doctrine, especially the very anthropomorphic gods. Religion is being perceived as less and less useful as time goes on. I expect that trend to change along with climate change, as people become more and more stressed by the lack of resources to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

 

[bilby]

I rather doubt much is wrong with modern physics. Perhaps the limits of the tools we have will never permit us to obtain final answers, a Theory of Everything, that is complete. So some mysteries will remain mysteries.

Probably. But the stuff we know (such as that there cannot possibly be an afterlife) will remain known.

 

[rousseau]

Dawkins' book is about belief in gods, not community, although Dawkins himself devotes a considerable portion of his life to a social movement that promotes atheist lifestyles. Belief and community aren't mutually exclusive, but the purpose of a religious community is to provide support other than belief maintenance. Belief (or rejection of a popular belief) is the glue that holds the community together, but the religion itself functions primarily as a coping mechanism. People use it to get genuine relief from suffering. Atheist communities don't usually work as well at helping people to cope with suffering, so it doesn't surprise me that people are more reluctant to make big sacrifices to keep them going. In fact, atheism tends to carry a social stigma, whereas conventional religions are considered socially acceptable and even admirable belief systems. Hence, atheist communities are harder to form and maintain. Many of my atheist friends belong to Universalist Unitarian communities for that reason. Those communities tend to provide community support to atheists without promoting belief in atheism.

It seems that you're saying that people would rather know than believe. In other words they want to know they have friends in a community who can help them. The attendant beliefs are optional.

Not quite. What I really said was that community seems to be a greater motivating factor than either belief or knowledge when it comes to religion. Religious communities function as coping mechanisms more than a plausible explanations of how reality works. Shared religious convictions are the social glue that hold the community together.

There's a lot of talk about atheism not being a belief, but here we are, sharing in community over our common lack of belief.

You may or may not recall that I don't define atheism as mere lack of belief, but as rejection of belief. That is, I take atheism to be a belief that gods do not exist, and it is a belief about putative entities that have certain definable characteristics. Theism is basically the opposite--acceptance of belief in those kinds of entities. Although atheists may engage in debates or discussions and form friendships and clubs, there is no real doctrine or ritual associated with atheism. No community spirit. It may be true that some atheists band together and form such communities, or join communities such as Unitarian Universalists. It's just that atheism does not predispose people to form such communities, nor does it represent a moral authority demanding loyalty or obedience to the will of some kind of spiritual parent. Atheists don't necessarily derive any benefit from their rejection of god-belief except insofar as it eliminates the energy required to maintain evidence-free faith in a deity. Atheism certainly doesn't offer benefits such as belief in post-mortem immortality or that wrongs will ultimately be righted. It does not invite a sense of social community requiring self-sacrifice and devotion to a common cause. What religions do for people, is that they help them to cope with life's problems. They tend to clump people together with a common ideological perspective. The ideology (god-belief) is just the glue that holds them together. It is a maguffin of sorts that keeps life's "plot" moving.

I read an interesting argument in Graeber/Wengrow's 'The Dawn of Everything'. They mentioned that some cultures will define themselves by what they are not or as not their neighbours. I've seen this play out first hand as I watch my relatives in the UK downplay everything that's 'American'.

So with atheism I don't think you're ever going to get a full analogy with various religions because it defines itself explicitly as not religion. In a similar vein as the religious atheists view the universe in a very particular way, but their framework is the antithesis of God belief and it's effects.

People have a general idea of what gods are and how atheists feel about them, and that is good enough to give those terms a much narrower range of interpretations than perhaps most atheists would like. In the end, it is common usage that determines what words mean. My point was that religion isn't really driven by what people believe as it is by what benefits they think they derive from religion. Atheism offers very little in the way of tangible benefits, but religious communities offer a number of them that people feel they need. That doesn't justify the belief, but it motivates the desire to maintain it.

It's interesting to consider the benefits one would get from identifying as an atheist. I'm generally on board with you that religion offers something that atheism, for the most part, doesn't. But it's an interesting exercise to consider why so many people at this forum describe their 'basic beliefs' as atheist.

If it's an arbitrary term with no relevance or payback, surely there'd be another, more interesting way to describe oneself. The sense I get is that many atheists (certainly not all) hold a kind of sympathy and disdain for the religious, so in that way 'atheist' might serve as a short-hand for 'enlightened'. So atheism may not be analogous with religion by any means, but it's definitely not an arbitrary label.

That's a really interesting question. God-belief does come with benefits. Chief among them are social acceptance and support with life-changing events such as birth, coming of age, marriage, and coping with poverty, disability, illness and mortality. Atheism brings with it the baggage of opprobrium, especially in the US these days. Different people just face different challenges in life, I suppose, and there is the cost of maintaining faith in a belief that seems contradicted by so many of life's actual experiences. As one atheist put it to me once, there is nothing that fails quite as often or spectacularly as prayer. Science has solved a lot of life's puzzles that used to be explained in terms of religious belief. So I don't think it is surprising that a minority of the population would openly reject belief in religious doctrine, especially the very anthropomorphic gods. Religion is being perceived as less and less useful as time goes on. I expect that trend to change along with climate change, as people become more and more stressed by the lack of resources to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

It does seem to be more local to the U.S.. In Ontario I couldn't tell you what most of the people I know believe, because nobody talks about or openly displays it. The closest I get to that are immigrants who my wife works with. Oddly enough, I find myself drawn to these people, even the ardent Christians, because they're so passionate. Many of the native Canadians I know only seem to care about money and status.

In the U.S. you'd likely want to identify yourself where appropriate so you know who your friends are. Where I'm from it's just not necessary, and in some cases problematic because we don't want to be seen as anti-religious (usually we're not).

I heard a statistic a few years ago that, in sheer numbers, religious belief is actually growing worldwide, due to disproportionate population growth in places like Africa. I think it was from Pew.

 

[Politesse]

In the U.S. you'd likely want to identify yourself where appropriate so you know who your friends are.

Ooh, not in California, that would be super rude. Growing up, Christianity in a very general sort of way was definitely the "assumed faith", but denomination was too touchy a subject to go near with a ten foot pole. Even my little town had four Baptist churches, all of them at odds, a Witness Hall, a Mormon church, a Catholic church and two non-denominationals segregated strictly by race. Everyone took solace in the peace possible only through purposeful vagueness on godly matters.

Course, now I've moved to the big city, and having a religion at all is treated like a straight up mental illness!

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Why entertain belief when one can have the truth that knowledge brings? I think that's the point. Obviously it is because belief becomes necessary because truth is absent, meaning knowledge is absent. Belief contains doubt and denies that the doubt is there. If not then one would simply know the truth. Belief itself becomes truth simply because truth is absent. That's how I read it anyway.