DHS/ICE seizes domain names of torrent sites

[Kidlicious]

Why? The various divine entities that may or may not exist have no observable effect on my life, so why should I believe anything about them?



Of course I have biases and gut feelings. I'm human, not Vulcan. But I try as much as possible simply to treat my biases and gut feelings as information to be processed. If a particular thing makes me angry for no obvious reason, I examine why that is so. If another thing makes me happy, I try to figure out why that is as well.



Of course my feelings go into my decisionmaking, but that doesn't mean they are the entirety of my decisionmaking. For example, there are times when I think that people are watching me through bathroom mirrors. It's a feeling I get sometimes, a little bit of absurd paranoia. Now, were I to simply go with my gut feeling, I would assume that there were, in fact, people watching me through bathroom mirrors. Instead I take that one piece of data and put it into a bigger picture, where that would involve an elaborate conspiracy directed solely at me, and given that evidence, I discard that particular notion.



I will not claim that my decisions are solely rational - far from it. If they were, I probably wouldn't be a college dropout working some crappy data entry job. But being aware of my own cognitive biases can help me to overcome them and to make more rational - or less irrational - decisions. Simply giving in to my gut feelings, however, would ensure that I was only ever right by chance.

The absurdity that you expect people to believe is that you have no feelings about God, that you only have rational ideas about whether or not God exists. If you were talking about a subject that didn't affect you personally, like math, then I would expect you to only think rationally. When it comes to subjects like religion, politics etc.. everyone has subjective biases. It's not human to not have a subjective bias about whether or not God exists.

So all this talk about claiming to not know whether or not God exists because you have no feelings about it is nonsense. It's an absurdity. And all that you and Asher have been on about is how wrong it is to believe in absurdities. The irony.

[Kidlicious]

What?

gut feelings are what life's all about. You're all gut feeling this, gut feeling that...then when someone else has a gut feeling, it's suddenly a bad thing?

Why is that? Because my gut feelings don't match yours? At least mine match anecdotal evidence.

You don't get it of course. Just like you would be unfit for jury duty because of your bias you are unfit to sit there and tell me that I'm wrong because you are capable of making a rational decision about the existence of God. Clearly you are not.

[Asher]

No, I get it. You don't.

Gut feelings are bias. See Lori's talk of cognitive biases as well.

[Kidlicious]

Gut feelings are bias.

No duh! I have no idea what you are on about, once again telling everyone something that they already know. My point is that no one weighs the evidence and then decides whether or not they believe in God. You decided whether you believe in God or not and then you look for evidence to support your belief. So, people say, I'm an agnostic because I don't let my bias get in the way simply for purposes of making an argument.

But that's beyond what I'm arguing with you about, because you are more biased than the average person. You believe that Christians are child molesters. So even if one believes that it's humanly possible for people to make a decision about whether or not God exists solely on a rational basis, it would still be absurd to believe that a person like youself, with your extremely biased opinions, could do so.

[giblets]

Kidicious, your argument for Christianity boils down to "I'm biased in favor of Christianity." I don't find it very persuasive, but if it makes you happy that's great.

[SlowwHand]

Wait a minute. I don't think that's necessarily so, Kid. Especially as concerns grown ups who come into faith later in life. By then, they've surely weighed the evidence.
I hope Imran sees this and responds, because he came into it as an adult.
I think children do, too. It's just that some people, by whatever method, are pushed away from faith. Their parents. Situations maybe in their life that jaded them. I have no idea.

[Elok]

I've heard before that, in spite of any and all intellectual arguments against God, the main reason atheists become atheists is that they don't like the believers they've met. Don't know how true that is.

[Asher]

It certainly doesn't help their case.

[SlowwHand]

You like me OK, don't you? I accept you for how you are. I don't hold judgment over you, just as you don't over me. Believe it or not, the majority of Christians that I associate with are better than me.
I have a lot of work to do on me. Why should I focus on your "shortcomings" when I don't have my house in order? The only thing that I would ask of you is that you don't make all-inclusive remarks about Christians. Don't deal in absolutes. Generalities are fine. There are many "Christians" that embarrass the Hell out of me, from my perspective.

[KrazyHorse]

I've heard before that, in spite of any and all intellectual arguments against God, the main reason atheists become atheists is that they don't like the believers they've met. Don't know how true that is.

I've heard that Christians become Christians because they crave scoutleader/priest wang

[KrazyHorse]

Also, how did a boring thread about DMCA become a boring thread about religion?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Good question, KH

Wait a minute. I don't think that's necessarily so, Kid. Especially as concerns grown ups who come into faith later in life. By then, they've surely weighed the evidence.
I hope Imran sees this and responds, because he came into it as an adult.
I think children do, too. It's just that some people, by whatever method, are pushed away from faith. Their parents. Situations maybe in their life that jaded them. I have no idea.

To be fair, Kid came into as an adult as well. I think in some context, Kid is correct that coming to God is not a rational decision making process. It's a feeling and irresistible pull (if you want to say it "gut feeling"), but something calls to you to just be open. And once the door is open a crack, God kicks the door fully open. So there is a choice involved, but it involves more of the emotion and instinctive pulls within ourselves.

Makes some sense, as believing in God (especially the Christian God) is about letting go of yourself and living for God, (killing yourself so that a new you may be born). It's about realizing you don't know all the answers and that reason can't answer every little question you have about everything and trusting in something else and humbling yourself. It's not rational, but it seems to make perfect sense after the fact.

I realize it may sound like gobbledygook to the atheists and agnostics among us, but frankly, that doesn't bother me (aside from the fact that I wish they accept Jesus so they can feel God's overwhelming love for themselves).

[KrazyHorse]

Is this the same as the theist argument towards atheists?

JM

This appears to be the post at fault.

[SlowwHand]

The last sentence is how I think. They're just missing out on so much. It's a shame. It's there, offered to us all. The only thing required is that you accept it. It's just hard for me to accept the inability to have faith. It doesn't make me angry. It just makes me sad. It's just a crying shame. I'm certainly not going to judge those of no faith. That's wrong. I won't hate them, I just feel so badly for them.
I don't consider feeling badly for them to be anything but compassionate. If someone wants to hate me for being a person of faith, I don't know, I just don't understand it.
I'm sure that early Christians that were being thrown into the lion's den didn't understand it either though.

[giblets]

I'm sure that early Christians that were being thrown into the lion's den didn't understand it either though.

I didn't know Daniel was a Christian.