Hi! I'm an #atheist #humanist and #skeptic looking to respectfully engage online here with people I disagree with. And maybe people who agree with me too!
I don't believe in #god , and in fact I'm pretty sure no such thing exists, but I'm willing to consider the alternatives and change my mind.
Are you a #christian who believes in #jesus , or any other #religion , and want to explore whether or not you have good reasons to think that it's true? I'm happy to have that conversation!
I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong. Are you?
@lack picking up the gauntlet: I am a pantheistic agnostic. I unironically believe that hard atheism is a heretical branch of Christianity.
@b_chocolatey I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I usually associate the phrase "hard atheism" to mean "the positive belief that there is no God or gods". Do you mean something different?
@lack if you ignore the improbability of literalist young-earth creationism and the miraculous described in the #Bible, you will find that it’s actually quite difficult to really rule out the existence of both a creator God and lesser “gods”, souls, ghosts, spirit ancestors. You are left both with the origins-of-the-Big-Bang problem (why is there something rather than nothing?) and the consciousness problem (why can I feel sensation, memory, reasoning, desire, fear, hate, love? Mechanical contraptions can’t have any of this)
@b_chocolatey
I'm curious why you rule them in!
I agree that there are interesting questions that we don't fully understand, and some that maybe we will never actually understand. But I think it's okay to just say "we don't know" when we don't know.
Why do you think God or gods or souls are good answers to these questions?
@lack “it’s god unless you can prove it’s not” because, well, how would you define god - except as an intelligence, a personality, that exists before and independent of the natural world? Before there was a God, there were gods. I live in my body, I move it around like a vehicle, grandma used to live in her body, grandma’s vehicle broke down, she no longer sits in her vehicle. This is the default way of seeing the world.
@lack it seems that I have more in common with a squirrel or a lizard than I do with the Charles Babbage mechanical adding machine. The squirrel has Life in it, which it received from its lineage and ancestors, just like I have life from my ancestors. And Life has existed in an un-interrupted chain, since, well, the dawn of time! Before that, even! Who knows! Maybe this elder sage knows, he seems to have something witty to say, every time he sniffs that flower
@lack It’s easy to imagine oneself as an invisible, airy force-field looking out of one’s eyes and moving one’s legs. It is very difficult to imagine one’s self as the sum total of electrified eye-cells and brain-cells and leg-cells. Otherwise I would be no different than an alarm clock, or an internal combustion engine - and I am a person. I have feelings.
I think I see what you mean.
But if something is hard to imagine, does that make it false? If it leads to a conclusion we don't like, does that make it false?
Are these good reasons for concluding that the "self" is not or cannot be a physical thing?
> Why does an atheist need to do any of that?
Everyone needs to justify their positions.
I totally agree, and I'm happy to do so!
But in the thread above, @b_chocolatey is requiring any atheist to give justifications for positions they may not hold.
I think the definition of "atheist" being implied above isn't what I mean when I use the word, and I think it's being set up as an irrational position by definition, which feels a bit like a straw-man attack.
> and I think it's being set up as an irrational position by definition, which feels a bit like a straw-man attack.
Given how ubiquitously atheists do this I consider it God's divine justice for it to happen to you.
I'm happy to have a conversation with you about this if you're willing to leave your preconceptions, stereotypes, and caricatures at the door.
I don't think we've spoken before, have we?
@book @b_chocolatey Okay!
Well the best I can do here is to offer a friendly and honest conversation in the future if you would like one.
@b_chocolatey Why does an atheist need to do any of that? Why is the default position "It's God unless you can prove it is not"?
I approach it differently. I take all these questions and start with "I don't know what the cause is until I learn more". Maybe I'll learn that the cause is a God. Maybe I'll learn the cause is physical. Maybe something else. Maybe I will never know. But the fact that I don't know doesn't mean you are right to claim that gods are the answers, does it?