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InvisibleXibalba
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Registered: 05/13/00
Posts: 2,114
Re: Is atheism a form of spiritual retardation? [Re: whiterasta]
    #972139 - 10/18/02 11:44 AM (21 years, 3 months ago)

In reply to:

Faith in the laws of physics and biology,Faith in ones own capabilities......do you see where this leads?



Of course not, I'm spiritually retarded.

But I seem to understand the concept of faith much better than you do. No, I do not have faith in the laws of physics or biology, or my own capabilities.
The laws of physics and biology do not NEED me to have faith in them to operate [like your God does]. I don't have to take the Mendelian inheritance charts in my high school Life Science test book as infallible gospel Truth, I can grow my own pea plants and demonstrate it myself. If I question the acceleration of gravity, I can get a strobe and a stopwatch and start dropping weights. Nothing is sacred in science. It is doubt that drives its advance. The laws you're thinking of are not laws- they are just ideas that have not once been disproven after test after test.

As a rule I don't believe in anything that requires belief.

And as for my own capabilities- Not sure what capabilities you're talking about, but no- I do not have faith that I will succeed in life, that everything will be ok. Maybe just low self esteem. But I guess some people need to believe that- I don't. Right now launching a successful career in my chosen field and ever finding true love both seem to have a probability less than 50%. From past experience, I know I'm not *that* capable, and my future success depends on factors beyond my control. And I certainly don't have faith God's going to see to it that things work out. So should I drop out of school and kill myself? No, I keep going- not because I have faith, but because it is all I am able to do.
To have faith in myself- "I trust myself, I can do anything," yes, as you said that's a form of monotheism. I have no pretensions of being a God.

I see faith as a security blanket for the spiritually infantile; a motorized wheelchair for the intellectually lazy.

In reply to:

A-theism is impossible without losing the abilities which allow us to compensate for the vast uncertainties of existance



By "us" you must mean believers, not all humanity.
You admit you need faith to "compensate". It's a coping mechanism.
If someone can "confront the challenges of existence" without resorting to faith, doesn't that make them a stronger, more mature person? Have you even read any existentialism? Nietzsche?

You say there's never been a lasting atheistic society. And your point? There's also never been a society with no murder. But it's a goal worth working toward, isn't it?



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InvisibleXibalba
Stranger
Registered: 05/13/00
Posts: 2,114
Re: Is atheism a form of spiritual retardation? [Re: whiterasta]
    #972253 - 10/18/02 12:48 PM (21 years, 3 months ago)

In reply to:

empty concepts which cannot be successfully integrated into a cohesive society (and Nietchze was such a happy man!)




I see, you are calling for spiritual belief on the grounds that it is useful not that it is correct. No one can argue with that. I actually wish I could believe: ignorance is bliss. Don't think I don't believe in God because the idea threatens me. I believe things based on how probable they are of being true, not on how happy that belief makes me feel. A universe overseen by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being would probably be a great place to live in, but I have seen -absolutely nothing- to convince me that I inhabit such a universe.

Don't give me this "faith the sun will rise the next day" silliness.
If I could conclusively demonstrate a divine presence and influence every day at will, sure I'd believe. But I have a feeling that if the test for God were as simple as flicking a lightswitch, there would be a lot more atheists...

So what is the test, I ask you? What can God do? Really. I want to know.

Take prayer. I pray to God. What happens? Well, maybe something, maybe nothing- depends on what God wants to happen. Of course God works in mysterious ways- so mysterious, in fact, that his influence looks just like random chance.

Who made everything? God did, of course. He just took great care to make it in such as way as to be indistingishable from the effects of gravity and natural selection.

What happens when you die? You go to a better place. No, not your body, your soul. What's a soul? Ok, it's this... thing people have, that has no mass, no charge, but contains information. What does it do? It functions in exactly the same way a living human brain would be expected to. Except it can't die. It leaves your body when you die, but there's no way to tell when it has left. But we know it goes somewhere, because people who 'almost' died report going temporarily to heaven, which just -happens- to look like the effects of a combination of oxygen deprivation and endogenous DMT release filtered through one's cultural preconceptions.

See what I'm getting at? I think God, if God exists, is irrelevant, because he intervenes only in these vague untestable ways that look identical to the non-God explanation of the same thing. Like someone altering a sequence of random coin flips by flipping their own coin.

So, I can't disprove their God, but that's not faith to me, it's schizophrenia. Have you ever read a really good paranoid schizophrenic rant? It's airtight, bulletproof.



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