are you an atheist?

i would not, no

re: religion/science coupling, i'd chalk it up to which institutions historically had money to throw at research, the parallel to art being patronage.

science is a better method for discerning empirical "truth."

What makes you think science can access truth? Anyway, my problem with people arguing for atheism is that they never seem to be addressing me; just some other people who share a label.

your fault for choosing that label for yourself

:) yeah I guess so (though I never label myself, of course, I mean the label of 'theist')

Science gave us the human genome. That's a hell of a lot of truth.

boils down to theists making a claim, and other people not being convinced by it. it's just due to the nature of language and the human mind's yen for categorization that these people get labeled "atheists" (there's no equivalent term for those who deny the claims of moon conspiracy folks, anti-vaccine folks, etc). It's really difficult to "attack" a person or group solely on the basis of certain claims not convincing them, and yet...
The "argument for atheism" so far as one exists is "what makes you so sure?". Evidence so far presented in response has been very weak to those who value logic and reason.

Science gave us the human genome. That's a hell of a lot of truth.

I'm too drunk to get into a whole thing about this; but really? Always sucks having to quote Pilate :)

What makes you think science can access truth?

Says guy typing his thoughts out on a computer, nearly instantly able to be read by people all over the world in their own homes.

Evidence so far presented in response has been very weak to those who value logic and reason

see my problem with some atheists--not all and as I said I consider myself one at times--is that they don't value logic and reason enough!

Yeah...that doesn't tell me much. Which comes from the position of (somewhere near) radical skepticism.

x-post, but ryan otm

Airplanes are truth. Vaccines are truth. Atomic bombs are truth. Microprocessors are truth. Etc etc.

I'm not convinced you are entitled to say that. But as I mentioned 'is there truth/what is truth' is a complicated, annoying and tedious argument. But I think you're underestimating the problem there.

I'm entitled to say that. You don't have to accept that what is a truth for me matches what is a truth for you. Airplanes stay in the sky due to scientific knowledge (as opposed to praying for them to stay aloft), this is a fact, a true statement. Seems like your imbuing truth with a mysticism, holding it outside of the realm of science purposefully and then goin aha see, science can't access it!

you're imbuing

I don't think anyone said airplanes don't fly because of scientific knowledge.

ryan post blah blah blah blah

*flies buzzing*

whence this iconoclasm, matt

man you continue to amaze me at how badly you can miss a point, Adam

A literal reading of "truth" suggests something that is absolutely unfalsifiable and as far as we're aware no such thing exists.

Granny you are aware of the Coastline Paradox, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

Says guy typing his thoughts out on a computer...

The ability of science to describe accurately the measurable properties of matter and to predict its behavior when placed in controlled circumstances are indisputable. Whether this constitutes the whole of 'truth' is debatable.

I think some math axioms come pretty darn close xxp

no cigar

Whether this constitutes the whole of 'truth' is debatable.

Not saying "airplanes fly, vaccines protect from disease" etc constitute the whole of truth. But they are a form of truth. Not "ultimate truth", not origin-of-the-universe, why-are-we-here type truths. Truths, nonetheless, don't really care what tsorobodo is saying really.

Do you not think there is a reason why scientist do not refer to unfalsified hypotheses as truths?

Don't care

Granny you are aware of the Coastline Paradox, right?

haha wtffffffffffffffff are you on about now

So you're happy to leave it at "there are different kinds of truths"?
xp

I think science has revealed certain truths of the universe. Quibbling about what constitutes a truth isn't something I have any interest in discussing, sorry.

Then have a good day, sir!

there are like 3 different tiers of debate here, and the lowest tier is prevailing, as with most religious/atheistic discourse. and matt p is inexplicably rottweilering the voice of greatest sensitivity and sophistication. fucking ilx eh

am interested in what signifigance Coastline Paradox has for you here

can we get more people in here to give their meta analysis of the thread, that's always super fun and useful

about to respond to some of the writing upthread? just wanna make sure the thread isn't quite wasted by the time I've typed it up

no one cares

that you're a prick? probably not

I think I'm up to bat. What did I miss?

What makes you think science can access truth?

― The Whittrick and Puddock (dowd), Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:50 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think science is better equipped to try than anything else. There is a trajectory of successful scientific discoveries that have been replacing "god(s) were angry"-style explanations of the past. Probability seems to suggest that this will keep happening. We haven't detected a god force playing a part in a process, instead it has been a placeholder variable in equations many of which we've found out the element really at play. Not to seem like I'm pitting science vs. religion but it ends up looking like every great mystery is essentially "OK class: solve for 'god-did-it'"

right, anyway

The crisis-laden self-dissolution of the Middle Ages can be linked to the systematic relations in the metaphysical triangle: man, God, world. This presupposes an ambivalence in Christian theology. On the one hand, theology’s theme is anthropocentric: the biblical God’s concern, within history and beyond its eschatological invalidation, for man’s salvation is transformed with the help of the received Stoic idea of pronoia [providence] into an idea of world government and the coordination of nature, history, and man, which is fully unfolded in the Scholastic system of pure rationality. On the other hand, there is the theocentric motive: the dissolution of Scholastic rationality through the exaggeration of the transcendence, sovereignty, hiddenness, fearsomeness of its God. The first motive holds the metaphysical triangle of theology, anthropology, and cosmology together; the second tears it apart. The ability of the second motive to prevail shows at the same time that the systematic consistency of the structure constituted by the first motive is insufficient, that it is superficially harmonized heterogeneity.

a synthesis can be achieved between man, God and world imo, but this involves an embrace of transcendence - an understanding that man, God and world are the same endlessly-mirroring convocation of quantum uncertainty, adrift in a cosmos of asymptotically (un)approachable rationalisations but for a unifying principle which might be Gravity, might be God, but will never be fully known. it is when one begins to ascribe moral, or better Aesthetic, motivations to this principle that one encounters religion at its most essential - for rather than a despotic God, a figure of terror and dominion, it is a sublime and elegant being - the assigner of tasks, the conductor of meaningful human choice - which seems to emanate from within our own imagination but is the result of the aforementioned synthesis - it is not so much that we are God as that God is of Us, and I write Us as inclusive of every particle and photon in existence. it is justified through its acts, the beauty of its narrative, and the asymptotic approach it makes to an eternally-denied discovery of its identity. a crime against God is therefore an act or acts which violate Aesthetic flows of discovery, be they human slaughter, galactic collisions or anything which leads to the closing of any conscious mind

At least three responses to the primary dilemma of transcendence are conceivable. The first response is silence. The second response is to distinguish between ways in which the transcendent is beyond names and ways in which it is not…The third response begins with the refusal to solve the dilemma posed by the attempt to refer to the transcendent through a distinction between two kinds of name. The dilemma is accepted as a genuine aporia, that is, as unresolvable; but this acceptance, instead of leading to silence, leads to a new mode of discourse.

the fourth is what I said above - the acceptance that it will never have a name, followed by the expenditure of as much creative and collaborative energy as possible in working towards a name (if only, at first, by discounting possible names, before we even attempt to discern a few characters from the real one) - the joyous & self-correcting pursuit of futility - the celebration of nothing-as-everything that, as I have already said, is both a sign of an Aesthetic transcendent and a coherent undertaking of an infinitely-small fraction of its infinite demand (infinitely-small, but not unheard by this Divine, for it is able to integrate down past its own infinite limit to our cosmos, much as we cannot differentiate to its). this applies to science as well as religion, of course; it is high time we stopped pretending the two are any different.

I guess I really am an atheist because reading that is like reading heiroglyphs to me.

Not to be dismissive, but it just doesn't hold any meaning for me.

by name do you mean the tetragammaton?

This, however, is precisely what is meant by the concept of revelation, if it takes the inviolability of the word as the only and sufficient condition and characteristic of the divinity of the mental being that is expressed in it. The highest mental region of religion is (in the concept of revelation) at the same time the only one that does not know the inexpressible. For it is addressed in the name and expresses itself as revela­ tion. In this, however, notice is given that only the highest mental being, as it appears in religion, rests solely on man and on the language in him, whereas art as a whole, including poetry, rests not on the ultimate essence of the spirit of language but on the spirit of language in things, even in its consummate beauty. "Language, the mother of reason and revelation, its alpha and omega," says Hamann.

I'm said that I'm "a Theist"....not that I'm A-theist!

--Jay-Z

There is a well-known story about the famous 18th century Chassidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, who was well known for his empathy and non-judgmental character. One Rosh Hashanah he invited his neighbor to come with him to synagogue. The neighbor declined, saying, "Rebbe, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in G-d. It would be hypocritical of me to step foot in a synagogue." Rabbi Levi Yitzchak smiled and replied, "The G-d that you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either."

I think that thinking of or attempting to relate to "God" or theistic concepts can be a very helpful way of coming to terms with the truth, love, and beauty that backgrounds our own most intimate sense of existence and strongly-felt encounters with the world. Personifying God, whether as Saraswati or Christ or YHWH, helps (me at least)to remember that reality is manufactured out of unalloyed love, and that no matter what happens, we are all always okay. We all share in this experience of Being, and for a reason! To incarnate more love into the world.