Origins of life

[Chevette Girl]

You've lost me here. Belief in God requires a leap of faith. Unbelief in God also requires a leap of faith. Neither stance can be "proven."

I'm not sure that a disbelief in god/God/whatever requires a leap of faith. No personal proof = no god, seems straightforward enough to me, empirical, no faith required... I'm just not in that camp because I've seen too many weird things to discount the notion entirely.

 

[Loadnabox]

I'm not sure that a disbelief in god/God/whatever requires a leap of faith. No personal proof = no god, seems straightforward enough to me, empirical, no faith required... I'm just not in that camp because I've seen too many weird things to discount the notion entirely.

This is actually the basis for agnostics, that God cannot be proven or disproven therefore you cannot make a good statement either way without a leap of faith.

 

[Loadnabox]

A question for the atheists:

What of the Buechner quote? If modified for the absence of God, is there meaning in this for you?

The place to which you are called
is the place where
your deep gladness
and
the world’s deep hunger
meet.

Does an atheist experience a sense of "calling?" And if so, are you in that "place?" What is the source, by whom or what are your called?

As a former atheist During those times I felt plenty fulfilled, that I knew where I was going, what I wanted and actually kind of resented religious types that thought I couldn't have those without God. It seemed judgmental and arrogant.

My Mother-in-Law's reaction (DEVOUT catholic) to the concept of my brother's (Brother atheist SIL neo-pagan) children having never been to church or taught christian beliefs is a good example of the arrogance you want to smack out of them, "They what?!?! Oh my those poor children!" *grrrr*

 

[TheAlchemist]

As a former atheist During those times I felt plenty fulfilled, that I knew where I was going, what I wanted and actually kind of resented religious types that thought I couldn't have those without God. It seemed judgmental and arrogant.

But you haven't answered my question.
Did you have a sense of "calling?"

 

[Medsen Fey]

Another word of caution

When we try to take a conversation like this to personal, what-do-you-feel questions, the risk of inflammatory and hurtful things goes up and we don't want to go there. Nor do any of us wish to be insulting toward any groups (Catholics for example). So let's continue to be mindful as we tread this minefield.


And for TheAlchemist, I'm no expert on noetics, but I think that Shamanism would certainly contain elements of similar nature. Expectation may create outcomes. Even in scientific study we have to go to great lengths to try to eliminate noise in the experiments. This is why they need to keep studies blinded and placebo controlled when testing medicines. If a person gets a jelly-pill and takes it thinking it will heal him/her, there is a fairly high rate of healing and that is compared with the group that gets the study medicine to try to determine what is the effect of the medicine compared to the background noise. Perhaps that background noise isn't really random (we know there are lots of patterns we have difficulty identifying). How much of that background "noise" might be produced simply by the belief that one is going to be healed is a question I'd like to know the answer to - I'm going to check to see if I can find any literature.

 

[AToE]

This would not be Agnosticism then as Agnosticism actually says there is no way to know if there is or isn't a God. This precludes someone who proclaims there is a God. Rather, belief in a God but proclaiming most religions are wrong/hold a piece of the truth is closer to Deism or Syncretism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_belief#Syncretism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

Absolutely, you're correct, I should have pointed out that I was more referring to those who call themselves agnostics. The term is indeed wildly missused, it often (in common speech) refers to those that I described, who believe strongly in "something higher" but refuse to put labels on it.

If we could get the proper terminology into common speech that would certainly aid conversations!

 

[AToE]

And yet such thoughts, whether sent out as a prayer or not, may be capable of having an impact on physical matter. Those that study noetic science* would probably say that thoughts have energy (and particles?) and can impact the material world. This isn't so far off from beliefs and reported experience with some Eastern practices such as Qigong where thought energy (or energy channeled and directed by thought) is capable of moving objects or healing. I have had conversations with some folks who believe they were healed of their ailments by Qigong masters without them even laying a hand on them. If such things are possible, then it might be that prayers really can be "answered" and that our consciousness is more than the sum of our biochemistry.


* Yes, I've been reading Dan Brown books - so sue me!
There's even some good science fiction in some of them.

I'm not necessarily saying that atheists will flat out reject telepathy, telekinesis, etc, just that it's considered unproven and the vast vast majority of atheists won't be expecting it to occur.

My post really was only in direct response to the question of the difference between praying for someone to help them out, and what was mistaken as atheists expecting telepathy/etc to fix something, but is in fact atheists just sympathizing.

 

[AToE]

A question for the atheists:

What of the Buechner quote? If modified for the absence of God, is there meaning in this for you?

The place to which you are called
is the place where
your deep gladness
and
the world’s deep hunger
meet.

Does an atheist experience a sense of "calling?" And if so, are you in that "place?" What is the source, by whom or what are your called?

Absolutely! Not every atheist does I'm sure, some do feel unsatisfied, without purpose, etc. These are generally the people who will eventually move to some kind of faith.

That's sort of the difference between two groups of atheists. Some people are "logically" atheist, they cannot support the idea of a god scientifically, or even rationalize the idea, so they force themselves to be atheist, but emotionally they simply never are ok with this. So they're sorta half-athiest, or a believer in denial (not to insult them in any way, I respect their struggle very much).

Then we have people like me, full-blooded atheists. Not one single inch of my being yearns for something higher, or feels dissatisfied without it. I absolutely feel deep meaning in life, and that calling you describe is there for sure, very strong.

And no, I'm not quite where the calling is calling me to. That's (in my opinion) a common mistake in life. People tend to think in terms of destinations, rather than journeys. No matter what I do, I will allways have a yearning for deeper understanding, more compassion, more passion, more love, more charity, more everything-positive. The idea of reaching "full capacity" doesn't cross my mind, it's just a constant journey, and at some point during the journey I'll die. (And since in my belief death will be a true end for my consciousness, the only imortality I can gain is by passing on as many of my good characteristics to other people as possible, trying to be a positive influence in their lives)

Where does the calling come from? Myself. Not my conscious mind though, this is a deep within myself thing.

Hope that helps explain the mind of a person who is not just rationally atheist, but also emotionally atheist.

 

[AToE]

I'm really sorry for all the posts! I just wanted to toss my hat in the ring for this "both creationism and atheism require faith" discussion.

This isn't an argument either side will ever convince the other of, here's why.

To an atheist, it does not require ANY faith to not believe in a creator, because no-creator is the default belief for us. To us there is no need for one, adding a creator to the equation is just that, an addition.

A believer (in my opinion, feel free to dissagree if I get this wrong) sees the opposite, instead of seeing an atheist as not believing in a creator, they see the atheist as believing in the ability of the universe to exist without one. This is because for a believer, a creator is not a stretch, not an addition, it is the default belief.

I don't think this is a discussion that can be resolved without becoming very heated (and even then will just remain unresolved anyways!).

 

[Smarrikåka]

Important update: In version Life 2.051 and later your default faith will be set to no creator. If you want the deafault faith to be set to creator, install an older version, and then run all the new updates ontop of that.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Important update: In version Life 2.051 and later your default faith will be set to no creator. If you want the deafault faith to be set to creator, install an older version, and then run all the new updates ontop of that.

I believe you can save yourself the trouble by installing the "Born-Again" app...

 

[Chevette Girl]

I'm really sorry for all the posts! I just wanted to toss my hat in the ring for this "both creationism and atheism require faith" discussion.

This isn't an argument either side will ever convince the other of, here's why.

To an atheist, it does not require ANY faith to not believe in a creator, because no-creator is the default belief for us. To us there is no need for one, adding a creator to the equation is just that, an addition.

Don't sweat it, I'm really enjoying this thread!

And I think you said better (in bold) what I was trying to say earlier.

 

[TheAlchemist]

I'm not necessarily saying that atheists will flat out reject telepathy, telekinesis, etc, just that it's considered unproven and the vast vast majority of atheists won't be expecting it to occur.

Not too into The Collective Unconscious/UncleCarl/Dreamtime, etc?

 

[TheAlchemist]

Important update: In version Life 2.051 and later your default faith will be set to no creator. If you want the deafault faith to be set to creator, install an older version, and then run all the new updates ontop of that.

Ha!

(my post is too short, I know, but all I want to say is:

Ha!)

 

[jackdub]

This is the one true religion.

 

[chams]

I know I said I would keep out of this, but I have to counter one assertion that was made.
Atheism requires no faith. It's right there in the word. "Not" a theist. A theist makes claims, which usually can't be examined, since they tend to the supernatural.
An atheist simply ignores the theist's claims since there is no empirical evidence to examine.
It's the default position for any logical stance.

I can't remember who said it, but the old saw; Atheism is a faith like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Health is a disease caused by lack of pathogen. ie. not by choice.
Faith is a choice. Atheism is the default position while not knowing.

 

[Chevette Girl]

I know I said I would keep out of this, but I have to counter one assertion that was made.
Atheism requires no faith. It's right there in the word. "Not" a theist. A theist makes claims, which usually can't be examined, since they tend to the supernatural.
An atheist simply ignores the theist's claims since there is no empirical evidence to examine.
It's the default position for any logical stance.

I can't remember who said it, but the old saw; Atheism is a faith like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Health is a disease caused by lack of pathogen. ie. not by choice.
Faith is a choice. Atheism is the default position while not knowing.

Thanks... again, said better than I could...

 

[AToE]

Not too into The Collective Unconscious/UncleCarl/Dreamtime, etc?

Since those are all capitalized I'm guessing they refer to very specific ideas, I'll have to look them up later (never heard of them). When it comes to any kind of mind to mind or mind over matter I will say this:

2 times in my life I have experienced situations where it almost does seem like the simpler more logical explanation is telepathy (telekinesis I've seen attempted many many times, never successful), and I'm a person who used to hang out with a lot of people who were really into that stuff. However one situation myself and the other person were on the phone, and the other myself and the other person had visual contact (neither had said anything for a while). In one case another person guessed exactly what was in my mind (something really complex and unlikely) and the other I guessed the truth of a situation on the phone (and this was no mere guess, I picked the most unlikely insane situation to be true and nailed it, first attempt). Both situations however, the person "guessing/receiving" had some amount of prior knowledge of what they guessed, and one had visual cues to tip off the subconscious, the other had vocal.

To this day I am unsure which is more likely. It makes more sense as to why these to me seem to be almost more likely to be telepathy than deep-subconscious computation if I explained the whole scenarios (it probably sounds pretty clearly not-telepathy right now!).

 

[AToE]

I know I said I would keep out of this, but I have to counter one assertion that was made.
Atheism requires no faith. It's right there in the word. "Not" a theist. A theist makes claims, which usually can't be examined, since they tend to the supernatural.
An atheist simply ignores the theist's claims since there is no empirical evidence to examine.
It's the default position for any logical stance.

I can't remember who said it, but the old saw; Atheism is a faith like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Health is a disease caused by lack of pathogen. ie. not by choice.
Faith is a choice. Atheism is the default position while not knowing.

This is my stance exactly, however I understand the other side of trying to understand this (or I think I do). Because for those of faith the universe, life, etc, seem so impossible that they think something more is needed to explain it. When an atheist says something like what you say here, their issue (I think) is that we seem to be making giant leaps of faith concerning what is possible in the first place. (How the universe coming to be and life arising is less likely than a creator (likely the most complex being possible) coming first is frankly something I do not grasp though. I try to grasp it, because I want to understand better, but I cannot).

 

[Loadnabox]

This is my stance exactly, however I understand the other side of trying to understand this (or I think I do). Because for those of faith the universe, life, etc, seem so impossible that they think something more is needed to explain it. When an atheist says something like what you say here, their issue (I think) is that we seem to be making giant leaps of faith concerning what is possible in the first place. (How the universe coming to be and life arising is less likely than a creator (likely the most complex being possible) coming first is frankly something I do not grasp though. I try to grasp it, because I want to understand better, but I cannot).

From my stance I would say you are partially right and partially wrong.

I understand from the aspect of an atheist saying that "no deity" is the default. I understand the frustration in it being argued otherwise too. I will go on to say this is what moved me to agnosticism though. With that preface to my next statement; I began to realize that if I was being scientific and intellectually honest, you couldn't assume a default, there wasn't enough evidence either way to make a verdict either way and assuming a default was intellectually as faulty logic. Following up with the caveat again this is what moved me to agnosticism.

Most people born into a religion have it so ingrained into their ethos by adulthood that it is very true that they see atheism as a religion into itself. I don't think they can begin to understand where an atheist comes from.

For the moderator(s), sorry if I offended anyone, I was hoping to illustrate a point, if it seemed to target a group I apologize. Consider it more targeting my mother-in-law whom I tend to...to put it mildly(politely) have issues with. Not her religion, just her, our relationship (again mildly put) is strained