Asking what life means is like asking what is the shape of fear, or what time is yellow. It is not a sensible question. You began your last post by saying "It is not possible to know what preceded the big bang...". I agree with you up to that point. Where science and religion differ is whereas science is open about not knowing the answers but is working towards them, religion claims to already have it all sewn up. On the basis of an old book. Written by humans, thousands of years ago. Science or faith? Now, are you absolutely sure you're atheist?
Hehe, yea, that's another good one. Like the rock is exactly the same shape as the puddle it holds. It must have been designed!
Do you consider your life meaningless? Yeah, that's why it's called a belief. Not 'knowing'. Religion seeks to preserve its beliefs; science continuously challenges what it thinks it knows. Does that answer your question?
Immeasurable, unquantifiable, therefore infallible and unquestionable authority. The lord, like Zimbardo, works in mysterious ways.
Ah, but didn't Zimbardo prove, quite scientifically, that such absolute and unquestionable authority was not unique to religion, but simply a group dynamic? Ask Kim-Yong Un.
He showed a predisposition to defer decision making to authority figures, however the experiment was abandoned after less than half it's planned duration - Why?
No, not at all. My life has enough meaning without believing in the highly unprobable for no good reason. Lol, way to play on words. They're called believers because they believe their religion gives them answers, not because they're open to alternative theories. That sounds like a "yes" but wow, it seems to fly completely in the face of the arguments you've posed. Edit: Beer time, no more God talk for me tonight.
It all got pretty nasty pretty quickly. One of the research assistants recruited into the experiment late on challenged the ethics of letting it continue, and Zimbardo sort of woke up and called it a day, Point is: your life has meaning. What is the scientific proof for that? Science is open to alternative theories. Beliefs not necessarily so. It really annoys me when religious folk assume that my atheist position is one of ignorance; that if I only read the Bible or whatever, that the blinkers would fall from my eyes and I would see the obvious miracle of God's creation etc. My atheist position was thought about. Explored. Considered carefully. Examined and tested. It was not something I came to casually, or out of ignorance. This is the correct scientific process: to posit a hypothesis, and then attempt to disprove it (falsifiability, remember?). Only if it resists all attempts to challenge it can you assume (for the time being) that the hypothesis is proved. So I am challenging your atheism. If it stands up to the challenge, we can assume it to be valid. If people start to squirm and get uncomfortable and start questioning me rather than my challenges, then their atheism is weak. They are trying to preserve their atheism rather than put it to the test. They are acting religiously. This is because their atheism is a matter of faith rather than an objective, logical rationale. They are just believing in one god less. And in that case, they haven't earned the right to look down their noses at other theisms. Science, like love, judges not. I am also challenging that science is the only meaningful framework from which we can approach life, the universe and anything. It is a powerful tool, but it is not our raison d'etre.
Exactly. The buck stopped with him and his would-be wife talked him out of it. One cannot argue with the non-present, which is what sets religion apart - Infallible authority. Certainly, one can argue with the idea of God, but one cannot argue directly with God, which is why atrocities committed in the name of religion have the potential to persist for millennia. It is that level of abstraction that makes religion unique in it's capacity for evil.
Zimbardo was a fairly liberal academic scientist who for carried away with an experiment for six days. Of course he could be talked around --although his to-be wife was the first of a dozen of colleagues who witnessed the experiment up-close to actually do it. Now, can you argue with Kim Jong-Un's regime? You may find that one a bit more entrenched.
Lol. Who made you the judge of my atheism? O yea, you did. If you're trying to say I may somehow be unknowingly religious because I failed your "challenge", I'm sure many theists would disagree with you, Nexxo.
We're closer than we were however. I've watched talks from Lawrence Krauss about the fact that we now have a mathematically rigorous model that explains how we get particles from nothing, due to a combination of our understanding of quantum mechanics and of gravity.
I questioned whether you were atheist because instead of supporting atheism, your arguments opposed it. You can't blame me for that. As an atheist, instead of arguing against religion, you chose to argue against the atheist standpoint to test other atheists? Are you a self-appointed "atheist examiner"? Do you give appraisals? Pass/fail, "Your counter-creationism argument is quite weak, I'm afraid your non-belief is not strong enough..."? I hope I don't have to tell you how utterly ridiculous that idea is.
So if it doesn't make you fearful/insecure, why can't you tolerate it? In your OP you stated: My guess is these things threaten your preferred reality, either directly or indirectly. You say you hate religion for its use as a defence for hatred. What's your defence for hating it? You sure you hadn't already started on the beers when you posted these, seem like you've contradicted yourself. I was with you until you started saying your life had meaning.
I don't think the underlying concept is entirely ridiculous. Frankly, deciding you are an atheist for no good reason is no better than deciding you believe in God for no good reason. That doesn't mean I think one needs to be able to answer questions on "why creationism is wrong" for example, as one can arrive at a well considered opinion from a purely philosophical standpoint for example, but I think it's always healthy to be properly aware of one's own position.
If there is an omnipotent creator then they're playing the biggest, dullest, real-life version of The Sims, when they already know how everything will turn out. Boring *******.
