So, just what are we talking about?

[WarLocke]

Well, I saw the movie. It was okay.

I came away with the impression though, that if I tried to judge the movie objectively (forgetting that it's about Jesus and all), that it really wasn't a very good movie. I mean, really, do we need 30 minutes of him being caned and scourged, and then 40 minutes of him carrying a couple logs and falling over every 3 minutes?

(I half expect to be hit by lightning from on high after typing that...)

Also, about the whipping/scourge scene: I've never witnessed anything like it personally, but judging by the look of the 'tools' they were using, and the length of time the scene lasted (as well as how much the soldiers seemed to get into it), I expected much more bone to show. It was still gruesome, but after all that I'd expect to see more than a little peek at three ribs.

Also, you learn something every day: Jesus invented tables. :lol:

[whereagles]

Allright.. I'm very busy with a calculation, but I'm gonna take some of my time to make some things clear :D

First of all, one thing I want you all to know: I'm an atheist as well, lol.

Second, the thought that all humans have some level spirituality isn't mine. It's from last century's philosopher, Weber. I just happen to agree with him. Quark obviously doesn't, and, like his teacher, I respect that.

Third, I argue that religion is natural in the sense that it gives your life a meaning. Quite likely, it's a ficticious/illusory meaning, but it does give you some confort and will to keep on living. What would human life be without spirituality? Well, living a life that is aimless except for reproduction would probably lead to more depressions, suicides and therefore possible species extinction. I believe Nature put spirituality into humans as a counter the anguish of death. Religion is, in my point of view, simply a life-preserving instinct. It is possible to rationalize the fear of death, and some of us certainly did that. However, statistics show that 95%+ of the world's population do not do it. They just believe in a Deity and that's it. In a sense, they may be living a lie, but it sure is very tranquilizing. And who knows... maybe they're even right!

Fourth, while I definitely do not believe in a Deity, I still have the hope that death would not be the end to my existance. This hope is what I think all of us have, deep, deep inside. It's not a belief, it's just hope. Having hope is not offensive. It's a beautiful thing :)

[eppie]

So Occhi you say that you want those christians you talk about as your neighbours. My question is: do you want them because they are christians or because they are good people ?.
I'm not a christian but have my set of values which probably are almost the same as most christians have (or should have) them. They don't have anything to do with faith but just with being a social person.

eppie

[Occhidiangela]

So Occhi you say that you want those christians you talk about as your neighbours. My question is: do you want them because they are christians good people or because they are good people ?.

Both. It is not an either or.

Occhi

EDIT: PS, a colleague of mine practices the B'Hai faith. He too is a great guy to have as a neighbor.

[kandrathe]

I've been all around the world. I've heard about, and seen all kinds of wierdness in this world that is not readily explained by science. I'm not so much a tourist, or vacationer, as I am an adventurer. When I travel somewhere I find it much more interesting to stay in the haunted manor, than the holiday inn with a pool. I am always the skeptic when it comes to the paranormal and the supernatural, but some evidence is too well collected and coroborated to pass off as delusions or a hoax.

Here is one;
The case of Charlotta Moran -- the inspiration for the movie "The Entity".

Or, consider;
The case of "Robbie" of Mt. Ranier, MD 1949 -- the inspiration for the movie "The Exorcist".

I think the Atheist needs to resolve that all paranormal and supernatural phenomena are fiction, before they can also dismiss multiculturally held beliefs in something beyond observable nature (eg. a spirit, a soul, or a deity).

[Occhidiangela]

But Atheism is somewhat similar to religion insofar as it is a Statement of (non) belief.

One who practices a Faith believes that "X" is true, based on (Fill in your core tenets of a belief here.) Add such evidence as the Faith provides.

The Atheist states or believes, typically after using reasoning, that "X" is untrue, or that "X" (no God and no gods) are true based on (fill in the logic here.) Add such evidence and reasoning as applies to the case in question.

The Agnostic, which I think I am closest to, can state "I don't know, yet. I do not accpet that I have to take a stand, and believe that "it" may be a "third thing" that is neither God nor the absence thereof."

Neither face of this two sided coin has convinced me, yet and I am willing to learn, to wait for other evidence. I can live with that idea that the evidence may not arrive in my lifetime. So be it, humanly generated electricity did not arrive in time for the Plymouth Colony either, (all old Egyptian Batteries notwithstanding) but it showed up eventually in New England and made Thomas Edison famous, then later allowed the on-off switch to be refined into the computer upon which I type this missive.

--Occhi

[kandrathe]

:) What I look at is how people explain the unexplainable. Gods of thunder, gods of lightning now debunked and explained by science. But, still somethings defy easy scientific explanation, and at that point us skeptics put their faith in that science will eventually be able to crack that nut as well. As I like to think of it, the religion of modernity. We have accomplished so much with our new "science" that we believe that it is all logical, all rational, all explainable, or at least most of what we can sense.

My curiousity though leads to beyond that, to those things that may be beyond human comprehension, beyond human senses. So, I wonder if we have perhaps anthropomorphized the universe. It might just be much, much more complicated than we think it is. While our increase in knowledge over the past centuries has been astounding, I think perhaps, maybe it is only an inch of a mile. It would not be the first time in history that we have been guilty of human arrogance, and sometimes I suspect unless we check our egos and quit playing "god" with this planet, it will be the death of us all. Or, perhaps, we are heedless of the impact of our massed individuality, and that unless we wake up and start to play god with the planet, we are doomed.

Either way, we are doomed. :)

[--Pete]

Hi,

I think the Atheist needs to resolve that all paranormal and supernatural phenomena are fiction

The proof, as always, is on the one making the claim. Thus, "ghosts exist" requires proof. Now "I believe ghosts exist" does not require proof, since it is a statement of belief and not of fact.

Since every paranormal claim that has been tested for existence has failed to pass the test, it is reasonable to assume that they all will. That is an assumption, but a more valid one than "no one has debunked this (yet) so it must be true." There are many more ignorant poor observers than there are trained good observers (ask any cop who's taken eye witness statements). This leads to many more paranormal claims than people able to debunk them. And, frankly, why should anyone with a good brain waste the time proving superstition wrong when they could actually be doing something that advances humanity.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Since every paranormal claim that has been tested for existence has failed to pass the test, it is reasonable to assume that they all will.

Every one? How do you know this? The general point I'm trying to make is that throughout human history, there have been phenomena that people have observed or reported on. Some of these have been debunked as hoaxes, some of them have been debunked as the raving of lunatics, others through scientific explanation. I chose the two links carefully as examples of phenomena, linked to historical incidents, that occured over a long period of time (as opposed to a one time sighting), have been studied by "experts", and still are not easily explained away by a scientific understanding of the natural world. I wouldn't claim they are true, but they leave some room for doubt. Doubt in that everything fits into a nice and tidy explainable box.

And, frankly, why should anyone with a good brain waste the time proving superstition wrong when they could actually be doing something that advances humanity.

There is plently of wasted good brains watching reality TV, and any other such nonsense. Not many human endeavors actually advance humanity, and most I see as harmful to it. Beyond that, how can one adequately prove something supernatural to be true? By it's definition it is beyond explanation by "nature". I think the best anyone could come up with is that it is either explained, or unexplainable at the current time.

[Leah_heartsword]

But Atheism is somewhat similar to religion insofar as it is a Statement of (non) belief.  

One who practices a Faith believes that "X" is true, based on (Fill in your core tenets of a belief here.)  Add such evidence as the Faith provides.

The Atheist states or believes, typically after using reasoning, that "X" is untrue, or that "X" (no God and no gods) are true based on (fill in the logic here.)   Add such evidence and reasoning as applies to the case in question.

The Agnostic, which I think I am closest to, can state "I don't know, yet.  I do not accpet that I have to take a stand, and believe that "it" may be a "third thing" that is neither God nor the absence thereof." 

Neither face of this two sided coin has convinced me, yet and I am willing to learn, to wait for other evidence.  I can live with that idea that the evidence may not arrive in my lifetime.  So be it, humanly generated electricity did not arrive in time for the Plymouth Colony either, (all old Egyptian Batteries notwithstanding) but it showed up eventually in New England and made Thomas Edison famous, then later allowed the on-off switch to be refined into the computer upon which I type this missive.

--Occhi

Here! Here!

But really, I'm am atheist and i do not, and I quote, "dismiss multiculturally held beliefs in something beyond observable nature (eg. a spirit, a soul, or a deity) {Kandrathe}," instead I believe that there might have been a person born in a manger whose name was Jesus and died on a cross, but I do not believe that he "walked on water" or any of the sort that is stated in The Bible. But, there is always a but, remember I am not even fifteen. If the Rapture, the return of Mahammad, Budda's revivel, or the coming of any diety, does come, then I will accept the spirit part of the religion.

On another note, who in the Nine Hells of the realms wants to see there god tortured and killed?!? :blink:
Not me for certain. If it were up to me, and if I was religious, I would of left the whole story in the bible for reading and not on a screen for seeing. In the human brain the most sensitive sense of emotion is the sense of sight. So to see the sight of the thing that was god in your image, up on a 30 foot screen, getting his guts removed, would be so revolting and so emotionly diswrought that I would live in a world of depression and paranoia afterwards.

Please excuse my ranting :unsure:

Best words,
Leah

EDIT: Oh yeah I almost forgot. Here are some famous words from a Famous Atheist turned Christian, "How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different the saints."- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, writer of the most glorious Chronicals of Narnia.

[Drasca]

Doubt in that everything fits into a nice and tidy explainable box.

Not everything is currently explained, or analyze-able given the current observers and tools of observation. The witnesses being simply unreliable, information carried through many layers of erroneous transmission (telephone game anyone?),

So there is the idea among the general populace that everything is explainable by science---currently. That is completely wrong. There is the chance to explain the natural world and universe, and science may explain everything eventually---but that's a long road ahead lined with limitations that may or may not be broken.

Does everything have to be explained? No. Is everything explained? No. Is _____ worth pursuing? Going to contribute something back to the human world. . . useful? Sometimes debatable, but paranormal phenomena usually fails this.

Asking to prove every paranormal fantasy to be false is proving a negative---the geis, as Pete said, lies with the one making the claim to be true. Proving a negative is really a wasted futile effort. "Oh but ____ hasn't been proven wrong, so ____ must be true!" pfft. Proven false enough for decent betting and gambling odds is good enough for me. How do I know invisible flying monkeys in neon hot blue pants won't come out from under my closet and underneath my bed and abduct me into their secret world of Rho? Can't really disprove a negative, but I'm betting it won't happen.

Still, I'm sure we could scrounge of multiple examples of paranormal being disproved, and you've probably seen plenty of that already. Need we? So there are limitations on what we can currently observe, prove, and explain, is that so unreasonable?

Plus, if some phenomena is beyond all means of repeatable and verify-able instruments of observation, it really has no place in science. There may be unique events, but they tend to be flukes, or statistical anomalies. Not really worth pursuing if it can only happen once. (Minor thought on Big bang study, since it only happened once---there's always attempts to recreate it, make it happen again, though on a much smaller scale)

[kandrathe]

So there are limitations on what we can currently observe, prove, and explain, is that so unreasonable?

I think when you are asking about or debunking "Is there such a thing as spirituality, or spirit? " Then the existence of credible examined unexplained cases of "spirits" or "possession" are appropriate examples. I think it is profound if anyone could deduce convincingly that such a non-corporeal essence did exist. Why? Because it then indicates that there may be such a thing as a spirit. It has only been recently (last 50 years) that the existence of spirit has been broadly questioned by science. And, of course as you note, there are so many crack pots and charlatans out to make a buck that it strains the credibility of any paranormal investigations. Take UFO sightings. 99.99% of them may be entirely bogus and fabricated, but even if one is true then the implications are staggering. Its not incredulous to think that we are not alone in the universe, that other solar systems may have evolved such as ours did. What we consider incredulous is that any other extraterrestrials may be advanced enough to travel through space and want to come here (without completly destroying us).

Just to be fair, there are also many cases when "science" is proven to be fabricated, or just plain wrong (not many credible cases of Mad Scientists these days though). Scientists then develop a new theory to replace the one debunked. Beliefs (even scientific ones) are generally held, until some new belief comes along that is better than the old one. Even then, it is sometimes very hard to get people to move to the new belief. So why shouldn't there be spirits? It's not disproved. It's a belief as old as history, and still widely held.

[Drasca]

Beliefs are not "what happens." Beliefs are independent of "what happens." They may or may not be right. Interesting enough, in the site lemming linked on "Logical fallacies" was a book that mentioned in the History of Science section various scientists that did not believe in their own hypothesis but none-the-less found them to be true and work within the world. There is no belief involved in proving and using whether something is true or not.

As for unexplained cases of spirits or possession, no person's witness accounts ever matched. No 'professional mediums' either.

Also, the question of existence of spirit/soul, etc has been around since rational thought was developed. "Modern Science" as it is now hasn't been around that long. Just because its broadcasted to the mass media since television doesn't mean the 'existence of spirit' hasn't been questioned. There've also been massive hoaxes and charlatan false leads, photographic 'auras', supposed mass displacement between living and death (for material existence of soul leaving body), and other pseudoscience involved. Flocks of emotional sheep have clung onto such hoaxes. Quoting Arthur C. Clark: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic."

I say its a bad move to go fishing for evidence off a pre-supposed belief, and ignore all the glaring evidence against that belief. Might as well go fishing in the desert and ignore the lack of water.

[Nystul]

If it were up to me, and if I was religious, I would of left the whole story in the bible for reading and not on a screen for seeing. In the human brain the most sensitive sense of emotion is the sense of sight. So to see the sight of the thing that was god in your image, up on a 30 foot screen, getting his guts removed, would be so revolting and so emotionly diswrought that I would live in a world of depression and paranoia afterwards.

To see something like that is quite disturbing, but it is also oddly reassuring. Being Christ, he could have made it stop at any time. He could have killed them all, or performed some wondrous miracle that would have sent everyone running in terror. As Christians, sometimes we try to help bear the cross (metaphorically speaking), but a lot of the time we behave more like the Roman soldiers or the Jewish leaders. So it's very disturbing to see a brutal depiction of him going through that, but it's also reassuring to know he was willing to go through it all, and pray for their forgiveness as his dying wish.

Needless to say, the Good Friday story is also a pretty strong statement by example on how to live a Christian life: to seek out God's plan above your own ambitions, to endure suffering for the greater good, and to forgive those who may cause you harm. Those who are able to follow the example in their daily lives make the kind of good neighbors Occhi was talking about. Of course, non-Christians can have essentially the same moral principles, and some make even better neighbors, but there is a relationship between those principles and some of the "other baggage" that I think is very hard to approach in the realm of philosophy, and impossible in the realm of logic.

[kandrathe]

As for unexplained cases of spirits or possession, no person's witness accounts ever matched. No 'professional mediums' either.

None? Never? How are you sure of this?

Just so we are not introducing any fallacies;

* FALSIFIABILITY
Also known as the Appeal to Ignorance.   Karl Popper: A conjecture or hypothesis must be accepted as true until such time as it is proven to be false. Popper maintains that scientists approach the truth through what he calls "conjecture and refutation." In actuality, scientists approach the truth not through conjecture and refutation, but through conjecture and CONFIRMATION - the demonstration, by means of careful experiment, that a hypothesis corresponds to the facts of reality.  This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized by the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Until the phenomenon is proven TRUE there is no obligation to base your attitude toward it on the assumption that it MIGHT be true. If there were such an obligation, then you would be obliged to give serious consideration to every crackpot notion that has ever been put forward.  Falsifiability can be a valuable intellectual tool: it can help you to disprove ideas which are incorrect. But it does not enable you to prove ideas which are correct. 

Science forms hypothesis, and then acts through experimentation to verify the hypothesis correct. This does not prove the hypothesis is true, but verifies the hypothesis within the limits of the experiment. Hardly anything can be proved to be true. Science can help us to find what is untrue, and hint at what might be true.

There is no belief involved in proving and using whether something is true or not.

Are we talking about truth, or perceived truth. If we are talking about the truth that is proveable truth, then I only know of one realm where that is beyond doubt. Simple math and simple logic(and then even Gödel might disagree). I can believe that 3<>4, because that is readily proved. The real world quickly moves beyond the realm of where humans can delve, and quickly beyond what we can prove. Nature as far as I can tell is more in the realm of complex non-linear systems of chaos where only measurment and statistics provides models of aggregate behavior. We can hold some beliefs as intuitively obvious, even though they are unproveable (e.g. two parallel lines never intersect). Even the Big Bang theory is really a theory, and while some detect or "sense" phenomena that suggest the theory is true. It's not a problem that can be easily replicated in a laboratory. Will we ever know it is true? Is it intuitively obvious? At least it seems right until something disproves it, or a better theory comes along.

On the other hand, the scientist (or anyone) who dismisses religion because the idea of an omnipotent God is logically inconsistent is guilty of intellectual hypocrisy. Does he or she think that science is free from inconsistencies? Perhaps he or she is not aware of the existence of Russell's paradox or Goedel's Theorem. Actually, aside from obvious methodological differences, science and theology have much in common. Each is an attempt to model reality, founded on unprovable articles of faith. If the existence of a benign supreme being is the fundamental assumption at the heart of religion, certainly the practice of science is founded on the unprovable hypothesis that the universe is rational that its behavior is subject to human understanding. Through science we construct highly useful models which permit us to understand the universe, in the sense of predicting its behavior. Let us not commit the elementary epistemological mistake of confusing the model with reality. Surely scientists, as well as religious leaders, should possess sufficient maturity to realize that whatever ultimate reality there may be is not directly accessible to mortal humans. -- Prof. Harry W. Ellis, a Professor of Physics at Eckerd College

I say its a bad move to go fishing for evidence off a pre-supposed belief, and ignore all the glaring evidence against that belief.

What glaring evidence?

[--Pete]

Hi,

Karl Popper: A conjecture or hypothesis must be accepted as true until such time as it is proven to be false.

Yes. But you need to go one step further. You need to look at what Popper meant by a conjecture or hypothesis. He didn't mean just any old hogwash gushing forth from the ignorant superstitious mind. He meant a statement that described a natural phenomena and that could be disproven (falsified). A statement like "paranormal phenomena exists" falls outside of Popper's dictum because (1) it has nothing to do with science (that's the basic meaning of "paranormal") and (2) it is not falsifiable (to falsify it, one must catalog every possible type of paranormal phenomena that could possibly exist and show that each of them separately does not exist).

The collective "paranormal phenomena exists" can be demonstrated by showing in a controlled and reproducible fashion that any one of those phenomena exist. If has been any such demonstration, then it has not come to my attention in spite of many years of interest in the subject. Every attempt at demonstrating paranormal phenomena to date has either failed (the practitioner or demonstrator could not, often with repeated attempts, bring the phenomenon about) or it turned out to have a simple scientific explanation.

The uninformed cannot understand how a stage magician performs his stunts, yet only the most naive amongst them believe that it is *real* magic. Simple observation is not sufficient for understanding -- even the simple observation of a first class genius like Aristotle who, for all his mental powers, was wrong in every particular about the natural world. Thus, a demonstration in a much more controlled environment is required to determine if something is true, a mass hallucination, or a clever trick.

Now, just like the statement "there is no Loch Ness monster" can never be proven by any number of failed attempts to sight it, so it is with "paranormal phenomena". And, just as with Nelly, whose existence can only be doubted after so many filed attempts, so too with the paranormal.

What glaring evidence?

You are willing to accept a tie between al Qaeda and Iraq on the basis of a few doubtful self serving statements by professional liars but you don't care to accept the evidence of years of study by reputable scientists. I envy you your selective BS detector. But, if you want to start somewhere, try The Skeptical Inquirer. http://www.csicop.org/

--Pete

[kandrathe]

You are willing to accept a tie between al Qaeda and Iraq on the basis of a few doubtful self serving statements by professional liars ...

I am unwilling to dismiss everything I might find against my beliefs as self serving statements of professional liars. If corroborated by other sources, the unlikely can sometimes be the truth.

...you don't care to accept the evidence of years of study by reputable scientists.

I would hardly call the professional scoffing of "The Skeptical Inquirer" as reputable scientists. One I saw was a professor of psychology, others are writers. I notice they stay clear of any mention of the hard to debunk stuff. Actually, I was uncertain exactly what "glaring evidence" was referring to, though. Paranormal phenomena, then. Well, certainly quite a few charlatans, profiteering psychics, and snake oil salesmen unmasked. But, just because there are all these tricksters trying to get rich off scams and the superstitious, does not mean I'm ready to dismiss everything.

The collective "paranormal phenomena exists" can be demonstrated by showing in a controlled and reproducible fashion that any one of those phenomena exist. If has been any such demonstration, then it has not come to my attention in spite of many years of interest in the subject. Every attempt at demonstrating paranormal phenomena to date has either failed (the practitioner or demonstrator could not, often with repeated attempts, bring the phenomenon about) or it turned out to have a simple scientific explanation.

Yes. I agree that the bulk of psychic, spoon bending, ESP, astral projecting paranormal crap is nonsense. I'm not sure I can buy the mass hallucination explanation though. How would that work? If Nessy had been observed by multiple credible persons over many months, well, then I'd have to revise my thoughts on it. It seems to me though that tricks of light on waves explains it pretty well.

The selective BS detector as you call it, is what I call leaving room for doubt. When "The Amazing Randi" claims to be bending spoons with his mind, I'm right with you on the skeptical -- let's get some controls on this and see if it's a hoax.

[whyBish]

And the two of them sat there in the 19th hole, eyes starting to harden and glisten, as they disagreed on point after point.&nbsp; I was appalled.&nbsp; *DOH*&nbsp; Stupid, Stupid,

Rogue

, for having brought it up.

'twas fitting for your appelation though? :P

[whyBish]

If we are talking about the truth that is proveable truth, then I only know of one realm where that is beyond doubt.&nbsp; Simple math and simple logic(and then even Gödel might disagree).&nbsp; I can believe that 3<>4, because that is readily proved.

No, even mathematics is based on assumptions that certain things are true.

Take geometry for example, if you remove the assumption that internal angles sum to 180 degrees you are lead to a number of geometries, one of which is the standard euclidean geometry.

Even 'simple logic' is just a set of rules. These are not 'true' in any sense, but to define something as logical means that these rules must have been followed.

[kandrathe]

No, even mathematics is based on assumptions that certain things are true.

I would say most of mathematics... Some is actually provable, but as you say when you get to even basic geometry, axioms become assumptions. Generally, I think we agree though.