Hey Steve, how you been brother? Comments below --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote :
Probably not what you are looking for, but what I've observed from the atheists, at least on this forum is that they are more comfortable keeping the discussion on highly abstract issues. Issues that can't really be resolved one way or the other, or at least kept on a bit of solid ground. C: This surprised me. I wonder who you mean here. I consider myself and atheist and have talked about a wide rage of topics in my time here. Do you consider talking about higher states a discussion on solid ground? My guess is that the line of reasoning some atheists follow in discussing things isn't your groove so it seems more abstract than a discussion about god or enlightenment which you are more familiar with so it seems more solid to you. Just a guess. But this is a pretty philosophically oriented forum by design with a propensity for personal attack so it doesn't surprise me that most people keep things less personally vulnerable atheist or spiritual. S: For example, does the belief in atheism necessitate the tabla rasa theory that we are born with a "blank slate"? C: Genetics has refuted this pretty thoroughly, as has neuroscience. It was Locke who proposed this idea but it hasn't really held up. S: Do the atheists believe that when we die, it all goes to black. C: I didn't get any official memo on this so I'll have to give you my best personal guess. For me I've noticed that it doesn't take much brain imbalance for me to go to black so I'm guessing that when the brain stops functioning it isn't gunna be positive for my conscious experience. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary including near death experiences which I prefer to call "not dead' experiences. S: You can always say, "we have no evidence.....', but I'd like to know if it's what they "believe". C: All of us believe things based on reasons that we value. Using the term evidence makes it sound more clinical but we all have an epistemological system with criteria whether conscious or not. No one believes everything we pick and choose according to our criteria. S:I ask that because there are many instances that would contradict these two assumptions. C: Plenty for the tabla rass idea, for life after death, not so much for me. S:And sometimes when pressed, you will hear the atheist reply with, "there is so much we don't know about genetics", or "there is so much we don't know about how the brain works", which sounds a lot like, "God works in mysterious way". Now , the "God works in mysterious ways" doesn't do it for me either, but neither does the genetics things, or the brain thing, at least as it is often used here. Often just a lame default, I think,. C: I see plenty of difference. When a person says that there is a lot we don't know about genetics it is in the context of a specific plan to find out using a method. The fringes of what we know and don't know are mapped out carefully and choices are made for where is the best area to put resources to find out. They are only the same as saying God works in mysterious ways out of the context those phrases are used. I don't think religious people use that as a catchphrase for all the things we don't know do they? I think they use it as a physiological balm when life circumstances serve up something inconsistent with a loving god watching over us. It is his get out of jail card for the random horrible shit that can happen to otherwise good people. The big difference is that the word god can usually be substituted with the word "magic" with no change in the meaning. That is not the case with the other fields of growing human knowledge you mentioned. S:So, that would be my take on the issue. C: It all seemed a bit abstract to me, like you might be uncomfortable talking about things that are on more solid ground...I wonder if all spiritually oriented people are like that? Just F'n with ya, nice to reconnect. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Sometimes I look at the way that believers react to the word "atheist" -- spitting it out as if it were an epithet -- and find it a curious reaction. I mean, with the exception of a vocal few who make their livings by poking theists just to watch them react, I don't see most everyday atheists (and I know quite a few, living where I live) reacting to believers in the same fashion. Unless the believers are trying to sell the atheists their beliefs, that is. Then all bets are off and the atheists can react to the proselytizing believers however they wish. Anyway, it's like the believers perceive the atheists as a *threat*, and as if by believing what they do and <spit> daring to say it aloud or write it somewhere they are trying to *take* something from them. I don't get this. *What*, after all, could an atheist "take" from a believer in God? They've got all they need by believing that there is someone/something IN CHARGE, and that there is a PLAN for all of this, right? So why are they so antagonistic towards a few vocal atheists speaking their minds and suggesting that no one is in charge and that there is no plan? To help me understand this, I'm asking the believers in God here to speak up and tell me what the BENEFITS of such a belief are. Such that you would miss them and feel something had been taken from you if you no longer believed? What would such BENEFITS be? Surely you can name a few.
