are you an atheist?

I do, too.

your thoughts can produce actions and other thoughts, and those can etc etc. so?

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, February 11, 2014 5:36 PM (9 minutes ago)

i was talking about perception in a much more simple sense. if i look outside and see that it's raining, i'm probably gonna place faith in the wetness of things out there. i'm habituated to placing faith in my perceptions (with a grain of salt, of course), and have a fair amount of experience w precipitation.

similarly, if i were to look outside one day and see (with my cosmic third eye or w/e) that it was godding out, then it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to at least tentatively credit this perception with some validity. i mean, if it were me, i'd wanna check myself for signs of lost marbles, but if everything else seemed okay and the perceptions of goddishness were persistent, consistent and in some sense useful, then i might well go with them. unfortunately, the lord hides himself from my sight...

improbable things can still be true, and the probability that some improbable things will end up being shown as true is pretty high, so probability can't be the whole story.

your thoughts can produce actions and other thoughts, and those can etc etc. so?

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, February 11, 2014 5:36 PM (9 minutes ago)

no, absolutely not. but i don't categorically reject all beliefs i don't share - or all beliefs that can't be scientifically verified. some i scoff at, some i ignore, some i file for future study.

Which, those ^^^ two specific statements?

Yes. I thought that was clear.

― Aimless, Tuesday, February 11, 2014 8:51 PM (1 minute ago)

Well, that science is a better method for explaining nature.

like there's a cultural responsibility to affirm that global warming is real and people should get vaccinated not just because of probabilities.

Well, that science is a better method for explaining nature.

That seems like a fair conclusion and one I'd agree with.

yes, I'm sure if people came up to you telling you how aliens stole the brain of Prez Clinton and are using him to do their bidding, you'd just go "okay sure that's possible" and file them in the exact some slot you file people who say "I love my dog, he's cute". gimmme a break, dude.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, February 11, 2014 5:49 PM (7 minutes ago)

i'm not gonna tell you how to do your thing, but you might try being a little less cartoonishly reductive, a bit more open to subtleties. just a suggestion...

anyway, like i said, i don't hold all beliefs to be equal. some apparently crack-brained or dim-witted person comes up to me with some apparently crack-brained or dim-witted theory, then sure, i'll probably reject it out of hand. but i'm a little more open to the claim by some that they perceive the presence of the divine and/or supernatural in the world. i'm dubious by nature, but not automatically dismissive, especially if the person seems otherwise sensible. this is more a matter of taste than anything else.

similarly, if i were to look outside one day and see (with my cosmic third eye or w/e) that it was godding out, then it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to at least tentatively credit this perception with some validity. i mean, if it were me, i'd wanna check myself for signs of lost marbles, but if everything else seemed okay and the perceptions of goddishness were persistent, consistent and in some sense useful, then i might well go with them. unfortunately, the lord hides himself from my sight...

― CANONICAL artists, etc., etc. (contenderizer), Tuesday, February 11, 2014 8:54 PM (3 minutes ago)

It's still just an anecdote!

Science answers certain categories of objective questions better than theism -- "How likely is it that there will be snow tomorrow?" "How much fuel is needed to propel this rocket into space?" "How can we make sure that a human body does not reject a transplanted organ" etc. Theism isn't very good at answering these questions. Theism is better suited however to answer questions like "how can I find comfort when a loved one dies?" or "what's a good way to teach my children a system of morals?" (note: not saying it's the ONLY way to teach morals or comfort in grief). I think that in the modern world it's mainly the latter kind of questions that people turn to religion for, although there are certainly creationists and the like who use religion in lieu of science.

That seems like a fair conclusion and one I'd agree with.

― Aimless, Tuesday, February 11, 2014 6:02 PM (30 seconds ago)

cosine

And that latter category of question is something that just by its nature is not likely to be well-answered by science, much in the same way that it wouldn't be useful to answer someone's request for driving directions by giving them a series of coordinates

It's still just an anecdote!

― Evan, Tuesday, February 11, 2014 6:04 PM (2 minutes ago)

sure, but so's life. we all operate from w/in a single frame of reference, after all.

that wasn't the question. do YOU think all beliefs are equally valid?

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-u48QI5sL7os/T_MVjjtXHQI/AAAAAAAAdqM/MpmJC4nc4CQ/w500-h364-no/wile-e-coyote-business-card.png

What about a belief like "Cows are sacred." You can neither prove nor refute the scientific validity of that statement, yet it is objectively true in some sense within Hinduism. Cows are sacred because they are believed to be and treated as sacred. You could say it's "irrational" to believe that, but I'd say it's more a-rational, i.e. it's just a belief that exists outside the sphere of rational thought. FWIW, Americans won't eat dogs, and that seems equally irrational. Yet it probably seems gross and wrong to you to eat a dog.

what are the costs of these taboos vs costs of others?

What is the cost of a person believing in god?

your soul, if you believe the wrong one.

a reduced-headcount model (putting aside for the moment the question of whether or not god really exists):

two people exist.
person 1 perceives (what she takes to be) god with her cosmic wizard eye.
person 2, lacking such an eye, does not.
person 2 considers person 1 a fool or a liar.
person 1 considers person 2 a lost sheep.

they're both making rational, sensible use of their perceptions. only problem is that their perceptions differ. neither can be 100% sure that her perceptions are accurate & complete (no matter what they might like to pretend). nevertheless, even absent that certainty, each has reason to at least provisionally trust her own perceptions, especially if they seem generally reliable. what else, in the end, do any of us go on? even our sense that science is reliable and useful is ultimately just a conclusion drawn from within a single, potentially flawed frame of reference.

as i see it, both parties are "right" in their beliefs about the nature of reality. they're right in that they're drawing appropriate conclusions from what seems the best available evidence, even when they disagree.

this exercise takes no account of whether or not god does, in fact, exist, and it presumes that both parties are similarly rational and intelligent. it allows for the possibility of spiritual perception without necessarily endorsing it (which is my take on this whole thing). its not an argument that all beliefs are equally valid, or that disordered perceptions and cognition don't exist. it's simply an example of the limits of individual knowledge.

get out contenderizer

(jk)

what does this perception or non-perception gain either person?
the one who gains the most is the rational actor, and belief in this perception is somewhat unimportant, just as a bishop can accrue material benefits of his station whether be believes or not.

or maybe a better example is someone who doesn't believe in vaccination. this person benefits by everyone else getting vaccinated if enough of them do.

the one who gains the most is the rational actor

Perceptions of gain differ. Each actor will need to apply their own idea of "gain" to their actions. There's this famous quote about gaining the whole world, but losing one's soul. Not everyone views the wisdom of this quote in the same light, but they apply in according to their own view of it.

In which case, objectively determining who "gains the most" is not a slam dunk.

there's an implicit ceteris paribus assumption in that example, so their idea of gain is the same. in real world situations, you would average out the idea of gain, such as in the herbalife situation, where you measure the gain as perceived by those who have gained from herbalife to the gain (or loss avoidance really) of those from herbalife being abolished.

States of mind are difficult to measure, but I happen to find certain mental states to be extremely valuable and I try to maximize my chances of experiencing those states. For me, this is the most meaningful measurement of "gain" in the majority of life situations. I am not sure how herbalife fits into that reality, but I'll Ctl-F around and see what you're referencing.

herbalife is a company that sells nutritionally dubious products through a multi-level marketing scheme. I've once heard that the underlying principle behind law is to manage incentives/disincentives to optimize the welfare of the most people, and where the law tends to make the practices that embody herbalife illegal, I tend to agree that on balance, that principle is served, even if the minority of adherents who do perceive a gain from herbalife existing perceive it most profoundly.

In my own case, actual physical health is highly conducive to those mental states I spoke of. The anticipation of health, therefore, is also valuable. It would seem that herbalife was selling people the anticipation of health, without selling them the means to meet that expectation (apart from the marginal health benefits of lowered stress caused by the assurance of future health - a tricky bit there).

Going back to "whoever gains most" and averaging that gain among a group, I would also have to point out that such averaging must occur over time as well, in that short-term gains could quickly skew one's results in a direction that might not coincide with long term gains. So, you can't really arrive at a measurement until all the results are in.

(waits)

Nope. This could take a very long time. I guess we'll just have to settle for a heuristic approach at first and make mid-course corrections as new data arrive.

(knits brow)

This heuristic thing is good for actually getting on with living and getting some acceptable results, but it is a bear for arriving at Absolutely True Answers. Maybe there's a place for religion in the ongoing mess of just trying to get on with it.

don't categorically reject all beliefs i don't share - or all beliefs that can't be scientifically verified. some i scoff at, some i ignore, some i file for future study.

so your problem is the beliefs you scoff at isn't the exact same set of beliefs that I scoff at. And since you scoff at less beliefs than I do, you're ~open-minded~, while I'm condescending. Again, break, give me.

are you assuming I categorically reject all beliefs I don't share or can't be scientifically verified? cause I don't. spiritualism I scoff at to some degree. Not as much as alien-brained Clinton, but there's some scoff there. You don't. Goody for you! So open minded!

the scoffing is relative to how one was come to their belief in spirituality. "I feel like I've spoken to God"=snickers, "I'm not really sure, but I think there's probably some supernatural/spiritual forces in the universe"=no snickers.

i'm not gonna tell you how to do your thing, but you might try being a little less cartoonishly reductive, a bit more open to subtleties. just a suggestion...

good thing you're never condescending

H8 theists omg just, no, wow

so your problem is the beliefs you scoff at isn't the exact same set of beliefs that I scoff at. And since you scoff at less beliefs than I do, you're ~open-minded~, while I'm condescending. Again, break, give me.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, February 11, 2014 9:16 PM (Yesterday)

my problem is that you're kind of being a dick. and yes, it's a good thing that i'm never condescending. thank you for noticing, as it's not always easy.

if i look outside and see that it's raining, i'm probably gonna place faith in the wetness of things out there. i'm habituated to placing faith in my perceptions (with a grain of salt, of course), and have a fair amount of experience w precipitation.

That is not "faith," it's deductive reasoning. I mean, come on.

I would be fine with atheists making the claim that they find most religious beliefs to be improbable, if they stopped there.

It would, of course, help, if they showed much familiarity with those beliefs. In the western world, they mostly seem familiar with the most literalist of Christian fundamentalist beliefs and any attempt to shift the grounds of the discussion to other sets of beliefs falls into realms they would prefer not to explore, as it would require an effort they are not prepared to make.

In contrast to theists, well-known for their desire to investigate belief systems other than their own.

it's inductive reasoning btw

You're inductive reasoning.

:p

That is not "faith," it's deductive reasoning. I mean, come on.

― Ian from Etobicoke (Phil D.), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 3:14 AM (1 hour ago)

faith isn't some dirty word, nor is it exclusively religious. i have faith that gravity will keep my shoes stuck to the ground, but religion isn't involved. we could zoom in really close and hash out distinct, thread-specific definitions for "religion", "spirituality", "faith", "knowledge", "belief", "awareness" and "perception", but i don't see the point, tbh.

my point was that i have a fair amount of faith that my perceptions more-or-less accurately model the reality i inhabit. this faith is taken with a large grain of salt and contingent on many things, of course, but i find that it serves me fairly well. if a perception of the presence of the divine were an equally consistent and seemingly reliable part of those perceptions, i'd probably trust it, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iRFv-QBft0

faith isn't some dirty word, nor is it exclusively religious. i have faith that gravity will keep my shoes stuck to the ground, but religion isn't involved.

Again, not "faith," not as most people understand the word.

Like, even when you account for all of its non-religious meanings and implications, it's not "faith" to expect something to happen when you quite literally have absolutely no reasons to expect otherwise.

yeah, okay, i agree that "faith" does more accurately describe belief backed by strong conviction. mea culpa on the imprecise usage.

since that word wasn't essential to my point, pls to sub "believe". i believe that gravity will keep my shoes stuck to the ground. if i perceived god in some consistent and useful way (and felt myself to be otherwise free of debilitating manias), i would probably believe that god existed.

Why wouldn't you first look for corroboration for your hypothetical perception of god, even if it was internally consistent?

In contrast to theists, well-known for their desire to investigate belief systems other than their own.

This is merely an argument from prejudice combined with an obvious ad hominem against a group as a whole. Theists as a category are actually quite diverse and, if you were to notice, you'd see that some of them are intellectually curious and rationally disciplined. I should think you'd want to engage with that open-minded subset rather than simply stand apart and scorn them for what they are not.

If scientists engaged in their internal debates using the same undisciplined methods and rhetoric that atheists often use when they engage with religion, then science would quickly degenerate into a bar fight and accomplish nothing at all. A good example of this is the conflation of "faith" with "religion", "religion" with "theism", "theism" with "monotheism", "monotheism" with "Christianity", and "Christianity" with "fundamentalism", as if all these terms amounted to the same idea.

Intellectually, it is quite easy to separate these categories from one another, which leads me to think that, when they are consistently lumped together by otherwise capable thinkers, those thinkers are mistaking the sameness of their emotional reaction to all these things for a categorical sameness. iow, they've stopped thinking and are only reacting in a reflexive manner.

btw, I am not a theist in this argument, which subtlety seems lost on most of those who are fiercely arguing for what they take to be "atheism".

Kind of odd to take someone to task for making an ad hominem attack against a group as a whole and then talk broadly about how atheists make bad arguments.

If you reject the bad arguments (the badness of which I have pointed out), then the shoe does not fit and there is no need for you to wear it. If you read what I said once more, you'll see I did not categorically place all atheists into this group. Inclusion in the group making bad arguments was awarded only to those who use them.

in many contexts those terms are roughly interchangeable (and I would lump things like herbalife into the mix as well), but it would be interesting to introduce the punnett square of religion without faith, because I think that more accurately describes the larger body of "the enemy" -- people and institutions who accrue local, temporal benefits at the cost of the welfare of others, and ultimately themselves. For people and institutions who have strongly intertwined faith and religion, it is a simple matter of shaking that faith to cleave membership, but it seems to me these are not the important players, just as in herbalife, it is the large institutional players with the greatest accumulation of resources that matter.