h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do not believe anything
because it is said by an authority,
or if it is said to come from angels,
or from Gods,
or from an inspired source.

Believe it only if you have explored it
in your own heart
and mind and body
and found it to be true.

Work out your own path,
through diligence.

Gautama Buddha


alji

Hi everyone!

Personally, I think if you have a belief (including atheism), then the burden of proof is with you. I don’t see how you can shift it to the opposing view.

This is one of the problems I have with atheism. That someone with an opposing belief can’t prove you wrong isn’t in itself a sound basis for belief.

BTW, this isn’t aimed at you personally Echo - I don’t know if you’re an atheist or agnostic.

I suppose I'm atheist in that I don't believe in a god, but I'm not entirely areligious in that I believe there is a fundamental order to the universe, whatever that means.

But I regard atheism as an absence of belief. It's not, to me, a belief in itself. Therefore, if you're an atheist you haven't got to prove anything. But if you believe in a god or many gods, it's rather up to you to prove the existence of your god, something that I fail to see that anyone has conclusively succeeded in.

So I think we only disagree in the matter of definition of the term 'atheist' - whether it is a belief in itself or simply an absence of belief.

Your right, we’re just defining atheism differently. I would think of “the absence of belief” as being an agnostic characteristic, but then some people would class agnosticism as a type of atheism, so it’s all a bit confusing!.

As the existence of God hasn’t been proven (not to my knowledge, anyway!), to actively disbelieve requires an act of faith, which is why I see atheism as a belief.

It's difficult to see yourself as partizan, when you know you are right.

The ability to step into someone elses world, and see things through their eyes and share their beliefs, is this abhorent - or pointless?

Perhaps the absence of one belief makes room for another.

'to actively disbelieve requires an act of faith'

No! It is based on logic. If rhere is a god, then what does this god do?

alji

Yes, an “absence of belief” is idealistic rather than realistic, and it would be foolish to think you have enough self knowledge to make such a claim. However, as an ideal, it *can* open you to others beliefs although it often doesn’t. At its worse, it places you above others beliefs and I think you are quite right to see this as partisan. At least, I think that’s what your getting at...

Hello Astro! If you can explain it’s basis in logic to me, it’ll help me to answer your question properly.

>>What bothers me is when the religious claim that they have evidence on the level of scientific proof to suggest that God exists. Which are you going to seriously believe? A story in the Bible or the fossil record? It seems to me that one is a lot more reliable than the other, and there's no points for guessing which is which.<<

Still making the monotheist assumption that the only sort of god is a 'triple-o' one? I thought we had left thatt one behind a few thousand posts ago.

Well, the 'triple-o' thing is the god that is least able to be refuted, IMO, as, being omni-thingy, it can always be assumed to have rigged the evidence.

So belief is all that is left, if you are a monotheist.

But the polytheist gods, who are likely to be simply an entire order of wight (creature with consciousness) who have not yet been officially 'discovered' because they cannot be detected by current science - rather like electromagnetism two hundred years ago - are entirely possible

Jez

Pigeon, pigeon, cat, pigeon, pigeon

Regarding the need for athiests to prove there *isn't* a god - -

1. It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative.
2. Common sense has to weigh in here. Which is more likely?
3. Athiesm is an absense of religion, not a religious belief that there is no god, hence, a*thiesm - a: without or no; theos: gods or religion; whereas agnostism means "without knowledge".
A lack of religion does *not* mean that athiests have to disprove every religion in order to have a valid point. Do Christians have to actively disprove other conflicting religions in order to justify their beliefs?

It is not logical or fair to say that there is an omnipotent, all-powerful being in existence that you cannot see or hear or touch or feel, and then expect others to prove otherwise.

We are back to my original point. It is *always* left to the non-believers to prove their claims, while the religious can say, well science can't prove everything, therefore there must be a god/gods.

However although 'wights' may exist that cannot be explained by our current science and that were once widely worshipped as gods, creatures such as you discribe would be natural, not supernatural and not gods

You know tthere's another thing too, that might be brought up. Who said that religion and spirituality necessarily had to always be co-dependent? I mean, yes I know, they usually aren't exactly held to be mutually exclusive, but...
I don't exactly know what I am driving at, but, sometimes there are like still healers and diviners and stuff running around and people getting into trances and stuff and curses and things...I know much of a scientific argument against it would be that most of them are simply probably big fakers or something, but what of scientific anomallies, that have really been documented to have occured?
Here's some right here. The Dogon people, I forget exactly where this tribe is from (but you could probably look something up about them online), claim that their ancestors had been taught astronomy and all kinds of useful stuff for developing an early civilization by strange amphibian like being(s) that I also forgot the name of, it was nomni, no it wasn't, um, something kind of like that. And anyway the clincher is that, the tribe could accurately predict the placement in the sky of the statr Sirius B. you can't see it without a powerful telescope, say in an observatory. They had no telescope. Or what of human combustion. People in history have claimed on various occasion for it to have happened, enought times in different countries that...and also there is the matter of live toads and even links of chain being produced out of coal, surprising the out of people who had been digging the stuff out of the ground.

<>

Or, in other words, the postulation of a triple-O god undermines the notion of any sort of proof for anything.

If such a God exists it is not possible to prove it.
If proof is possible, then such a God cannot exist.

<>

Well, it wasn't me

Noggin

Hi Wile.E

"Personally, I think if you have a belief (including atheism), then the burden of proof is with you. I don’t see how you can shift it to the opposing view."

Personally I have no need to prove myself right in my beliefs, nor do I require atheists to prove a negative. From my experience here and elsewhere it always seems to be the atheists who are desperate to prove that there are no gods, as if even the thought of it is offensive.

My suggestion is that they chill out and remember that there is more on heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\

>>However although 'wights' may exist that cannot be explained by our current science and that were once widely worshipped as gods, creatures such as you discribe would be natural, not supernatural and not gods<<

Finally, we are getting somewhere! Well, nearly - you still make the assumption, which is not part of the belief system I am explaining, that the definition of deity has to be outside some arbitrary line that defines 'nature' or 'natural'.

The gods are natural. In pagan beliefs, nothing is 'super' or 'sub' natural. all wights, all matter, all 'stuff' is completely natural, including deity

It is only when humans start doing the monotheist 'Triple-O' thing that deity starts being defined as outside the universe.

Hoorah!!! At last, someone gets the point!

Jez

Hi Math! Fancy running into you here!



If you don’t feel the need, then that’s fair enough. It’s just when someone (be they atheist of theist) pushes the burden of proof to the other side, I don’t see why they get let off the hook. I certainly don’t think it can be used as a basis for your own belief!

Also, I’m yet to be persuaded that making a statement such as ‘There are no God/s’ doesn’t have an element of belief in it.

Hi Jez and Math

Firstly, I apologise for not taking the broader view and thinking about non-monotheistic religion. I have been raised by two atheists - one who was a Catholic, another a Jew - and so the religions I tend to think about on a daily basis are monotheistic. I do make an effort to broaden my thought processes, but sometimes I lapse and I do apologise if I in anyway inadvertently appear intolerant.

Secondly, I am quite sure that there are more things in heaven and earth then are dreamt of in my philosophy. (And by the way, that's one of my favourite lines in the Shakespearean canon.) But since they haven't come forth to 'prove' it to me, I'm inclined to think that they don't exist. That's just the way my belief system works; I have to see or feel or experience the evidence to prove that something does exist. And as I have not done so to this time, I do not believe in any gods or forces or supernatural beings. (And yes, I recognise that not all gods are supernatural. Notice that I included 'gods' as a separate category.) I believe that, for example, dinosaurs existed, because we have the fossils that can prove it. I believe that Mongolia exists, because I can just take off on the web now and find articles about Mongolia and maps of Mongolia and the testaments of people who live in Mongolia or who have visited Mongolia to prove that the country exists. And yes, I could go on the web and find the testaments of people who say that gods exist. But no eyewitness testimony is complete without unbiased, verifiable evidence. And though the visitors to Mongolia may have many important things to say, their claims mean nothing without a good satellite map of Mongolia.

Yes, and yet...
Maybe some atheists are hard pressed to disprove god(s) because it would make them feel quite, to be proven otherwise.

Jez
yes I think we are close to agreeing
our differences seem to be about semantics now
doubtless my definition is influenced by my Christian and 'rationalist' upbringing
certainly if something exists and is worshipped/revered by someone as a god then its their god even if it isn't mine

> Let's say your neighbor's house has a few wasp nests in it's attic, and once in a while you get stung. Often you're killing wasps from those nests in your yard, but they keep showing up. What happens when your kids get stung? Do you simply go on killing only those that stray into your yard, or do you stand on the fence with a tennis racket and whack them as they approach? Neither approach will stop the stinging, so do you build a fence around your house? You'd be safe as long as the netting remained sealed, but once you open the net, even if it's to let some worker you've hired or someone friendly in, you risk letting in a wasp and getting stung. You have to go after the nests - all of the nests - and especially the queens, if you kill the queens and destroy the nest the workers will leave.

Personally I'd negotiate with the neighbour for him to get the wasps nests destroyed. If however he was prepared to allow his own children to be stung just so that mine might be as well, I might rethink how I had behaved to the guy.