The Divine Anthropologist

[Ben Kenobi]

Elok:

That's why you confront that assumption with the direct question, if she says she believes religious people are inferior if she doesn't know your stance.

I had a similar assumption, in a vague sort of way before I had to confront a smart Christian who I just couldn't dismiss.

He challenged me to think about WHY I had all these presuppositions about religion.

[Berzerker]

Oh that's right, it was Einstein, one of the most brilliant and religious scientists of our time.

It appears his wife was the one who did alot of the work for which he took credit too... Einstein was actually rather disgusting as a person... Kind of like Edison...

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Oh that's right, it was Einstein, one of the most brilliant and religious scientists of our time.

Most religious? Come on, he was a Deist at best. If you want religious grab someone like Newton.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by MrFun
So non-heterosexuals should neglect their own self-esteem and sense of worth by denying part of who they are??

No wonder so many non-heterosexuals have so much negative stress in this society.

How is not having sex neglecting your 'self-esteem and sense of worth'? Most of the posters here never have sex.

I personally don't care what you do in your spare time. But I must admit, the thing that pisses me off most about gay men is how they often think that they are 'special' because of their sexuality. I do not feel that my hetrosexuality defines who I am. Why does your homosexuality define you?

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Berzerker


It appears his wife was the one who did alot of the work for which he took credit too... Einstein was actually rather disgusting as a person... Kind of like Edison...

Okay, that's a new one.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Really, it was only those that didn't believe in God that held to deterministic views?

I will completely ignore your inability to get the joke, and assume you are serious.

You can't believe in free-will if the universe is deterministic. Therefore any scientist who believes in God while believing everything is deterministic is in error.

And obviously it could have only been Christians that discovered Quantum Mechanics... right?

Well, they didn't have to be - they just happened to be (on the main), although that is partly due to the time period at which QM was discovered. Many modern scientists are Christians.

[Berzerker]

Mad Monk, Einstein's wife was a physicist and collaborator but since she was...ahem...a woman, Einstein got credit for her work and Einstein dumped her for a young hottie once he hit the big time... I find that behavior rather reprehensible... And Edison was just downright slimey, he slandered Fermi (I believe) when he came up with AC/DC and grabbed the spotlight (and business) from Edison...

[Jon Miller]

that sort of thing happened back than (I am not sure that it happened in this particular case)

one thing about the papers that are suspected (those written in 1905), is that whlie they were all big, they were big in that they hooked together some ideas that had been floating about

neither the photoelectric effect, nor SR would take a lot of work, they just needed a couple of ideas

now, it does seem fairly suspicious (them being married, her being a physicist, him being so productive during 1905 in so many different areas, her being female)

I don't know anything about his personal life, so I don't know about him dumping her for the hottie (which I would regard as reprehensible whether she collaborated with him or not)

Jon Miller

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Mr Fun



Issues has an issue and she wants it to be everyone's issue. The discussion could be about fondue pots and Issue would rage about the multinational corporate conspiracy to exploit fondue pot workers. Of course, Issues is found among all ideological persuasions - anti-gun mothers, gun totin' mothers, bloodthirsty feminists, troglodyte misogynists, politically correct, politically incorrect, lefties, righties, vegetarians, carnivores, radical Rotarians - it doesn't matter. HINT: An effective tactic to employ against Issues is indifference.

fvck you -- you bet I have issues with living in a homophobic society

[Elok]

Well, MrFun, to put it more mildly and politely, not EVERYTHING has to be about homosexual rights. I'm an autistic, which means a great many people think of me as a sort of human defect; ****** 2.0. I still don't turn arguments that have nothing to do with autism into soapboxes for my rights or self-respect. Or at least I shouldn't. It's just courtesy. Please don't threadjack.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
I will completely ignore your inability to get the joke, and assume you are serious.

You can't believe in free-will if the universe is deterministic. Therefore any scientist who believes in God while believing everything is deterministic is in error.

I'm well aware that you were satirizing a previous post. But there was intent in your satire. You're trying to show that atheists hold to beliefs that are wrong. I'm trying to show you that atheists as a group don't really have shared beliefs. All of them, for one reason or another, do not believe in God, but nothing follows from this baseless assumption. There are even some atheists out there that do believe in a soul and free will.

Religion, on the other hand, does attempt to create beliefs from their baseless assumptions. This is the primary difference.

And if you were talking about free will the whole time and not Quantum Mechanics as I thought, then you're making the assumption that humans have free will. Because we are talking about atheists, this assumption is made without the premise that God exists, so it's pretty fallacious to make the argument that they are wrong for thinking there is no such thing as free will.

Yes I know I said that there are atheists out there that believe in free will, but I didn't say their beliefs were rational. I just said that their beliefs had nothing to do with the fact that they didn't believe in God.

You seem to think that there is a religion of Atheism. Sure there are definitely some die-hard atheists out there that won't even consider the possibility of the supernatural, but on the whole most are not like that. Atheists just think that there isn't a God up there. Nothing else follows from that.

And since you didn't really get my sarcasm, I'm not going to address it. It's not terribly important.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Lorizael
I'm well aware that you were satirizing a previous post. But there was intent in your satire. You're trying to show that atheists hold to beliefs that are wrong.

That is not entirely true - I was trying to show that atheists have a set of beliefs just like everyone else has. In my opinion some of these beliefs are wrong.

Originally posted by Lorizael
I'm trying to show you that atheists as a group don't really have shared beliefs. All of them, for one reason or another, do not believe in God, but nothing follows from this baseless assumption. There are even some atheists out there that do believe in a soul and free will.

I disagree with the first staement - indeed I think that the first and second sentences are incompatible. Atheists share a belief that there is no God. Most (though admitedly not all) atheists also believe that scientific method is applicable everywhere. This is an assumption.

Think of it this way. Is the statement 'There are no pink unicorns' (I know atheists like pink unicorns) a scientifically valid statement? No it isn't. One should say 'I see no evidence in my own observations and in the observation of those whom I trust, for the existence of pink unicorns'. That is quite a different thing. A planet billions of light years away may have evoled some life form which could very well be described as a 'pink unicorn'.

The only difference is really that I cannot perform predictive experiments to back up my believe in God (whereas if I found a pink unicorn on a distant planet I could go back and make a second predicted observation) but this is inevitable for any non-predictive phenomena (by definition).

Originally posted by Lorizael
Religion, on the other hand, does attempt to create beliefs from their baseless assumptions. This is the primary difference.

No it does not. In my observations the existence of God is as evident to me as your existence. Now you may feel that the evidence for God is poor (or non-existant) but how one interprets evidence of this nature is subjective. You (I presume) believe that I exist, but why is your evidence sufficient to promote this to 'belief'? To give a more striking example, when you drop an apple, how do you know it will fall down? Because it always has - the theory of gravity (both Newton's and Einstein's) has been very well tested and only found to fail in extreme conditions. But it has not been tested tomorrow, so your belief that the apple will still fall down tomorrow is an assumption that the laws of physics are not time dependent. They could be. You (and I and everyone) have personal subjective (and non-scientific!) criteria for deciding when to believe that something is true.

Originally posted by Lorizael
And if you were talking about free will the whole time and not Quantum Mechanics as I thought, then you're making the assumption that humans have free will. Because we are talking about atheists, this assumption is made without the premise that God exists, so it's pretty fallacious to make the argument that they are wrong for thinking there is no such thing as free will.

I actually said it the other way round. A Christian (who by definition must believe that there is free will) is inconsistent if they believe the universe is deterministic (even in a QM statistical sense) since determinism precludes free-will. On the other hand, and atheist can believe what they want since the non-extistence of God would not have any physics consequences (since physics makes no attempt to describe Him).

Originally posted by Lorizael
You seem to think that there is a religion of Atheism. Sure there are definitely some die-hard atheists out there that won't even consider the possibility of the supernatural, but on the whole most are not like that. Atheists just think that there isn't a God up there. Nothing else follows from that.

Hmmmm.... most atheists I have spoken to would deny the existence of anything 'supernatural'. In other words they believe everything cn be explained by science if we are clever enough. Do you not believe this? I don't understand on what basis someone would deny the existence of God but believe in the existence of the supernatural....

[Theben]

ELok- I never knew you were autistic. Maybe she was dissing you along those lines (if at all; maybe you had pre-formed an opinion and cut and parceled clues to fit the image?)?

Berz- AFAIK the jury is still out on Einstein and wife.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
That is not entirely true - I was trying to show that atheists have a set of beliefs just like everyone else has. In my opinion some of these beliefs are wrong.

I disagree with the first staement - indeed I think that the first and second sentences are incompatible. Atheists share a belief that there is no God. Most (though admitedly not all) atheists also believe that scientific method is applicable everywhere. This is an assumption.

Okay, I'm making a distinction here that I haven't made clear. Everyone makes assumptions. From the greatest philosophers to the most zealous believers to the person that just lives life for life, everyone has, at least unconsciously, some sort of initial premise or two upon which everything else in their life is founded.

Christians, for example, start out with the initial premise that God exists. Now, for the best of Christians, this is the only assumption they make. Everything else about them stems from this assumption. Their beliefs come from the premise that God is.

For the atheist, this is different. The atheist has the assumption that God does not exist. They might also have an assumption that science is predictive and that all things are deterministic, but none of these things have to do with God's nonexistence. Odds are both assumptions have come about due to similar environmental factors, but they are not necessarily related in any way. The atheist's beliefs originate from a number of different assumptions.

I am not judging the theist or the atheist for either of these differences, merely pointing them out. I'm just trying to show that atheism is not a religion.

Think of it this way. Is the statement 'There are no pink unicorns' (I know atheists like pink unicorns) a scientifically valid statement? No it isn't. One should say 'I see no evidence in my own observations and in the observation of those whom I trust, for the existence of pink unicorns'. That is quite a different thing. A planet billions of light years away may have evoled some life form which could very well be described as a 'pink unicorn'.

The only difference is really that I cannot perform predictive experiments to back up my believe in God (whereas if I found a pink unicorn on a distant planet I could go back and make a second predicted observation) but this is inevitable for any non-predictive phenomena (by definition).

And for believers in the scientific method, this is a fatal difference. Non-falsifiable beliefs are not accepted as proof in the scientific community (except for the very basic one that things are still true tomorrow).

No it does not. In my observations the existence of God is as evident to me as your existence. Now you may feel that the evidence for God is poor (or non-existant) but how one interprets evidence of this nature is subjective. You (I presume) believe that I exist, but why is your evidence sufficient to promote this to 'belief'? To give a more striking example, when you drop an apple, how do you know it will fall down? Because it always has - the theory of gravity (both Newton's and Einstein's) has been very well tested and only found to fail in extreme conditions. But it has not been tested tomorrow, so your belief that the apple will still fall down tomorrow is an assumption that the laws of physics are not time dependent. They could be. You (and I and everyone) have personal subjective (and non-scientific!) criteria for deciding when to believe that something is true.

But it can be shown that the belief in the predictability of the universe has been tested in the past. After all, the present is just the future of the past. People have made predictions based upon the laws of physics, and they have been right in the past. Because of this, there is no reason to believe that they will not be right in the future.

When scientists are wrong, they figure out why they are wrong and build new theories to adjust. Then they attempt to verify these theories.

The entire process of the scientific method is trying to show that the universe is predictive, and that laws hold true. That's why experiments are constantly being conducted, and why tests are done over and over again to make sure that things still hold true at all points in time.

It's more a hope that the laws of physics are constant than it is a belief, I think.

I actually said it the other way round. A Christian (who by definition must believe that there is free will) is inconsistent if they believe the universe is deterministic (even in a QM statistical sense) since determinism precludes free-will. On the other hand, and atheist can believe what they want since the non-extistence of God would not have any physics consequences (since physics makes no attempt to describe Him).

Okay, yah, then I did misunderstand you for a moment. I agree with everything you say there.

Hmmmm.... most atheists I have spoken to would deny the existence of anything 'supernatural'. In other words they believe everything cn be explained by science if we are clever enough. Do you not believe this? I don't understand on what basis someone would deny the existence of God but believe in the existence of the supernatural....

Most, yah, but not all. As I said before, atheists have beliefs that spring from a number of different assumptions, as opposed to only one.

I think that there might indeed be a supernatural entity, and that it could, if it wanted to, impose itself upon this universe and **** up what we think we know about it. But I also think that there is only one way to know for sure that this being is there, and that until we achieve omniscience of the universe, we can't possibly know. So I try not to make assumptions. I'm not an atheist.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Oh that's right, it was Einstein, one of the most brilliant and religious scientists of our time.

Einstein was an atheist and a socialist.

As for taking credit for his wife's work, Berz, while it's very possible, I've only seen one scholar claim this.