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Legitimacy of believing

it's nonsense simply because they did not do those things. they were nothing like ancient egyptians or the emperors in the latter roman empire.
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You mean create a state religion?

And the emperors of the latter Roman empire from Constantine the Great onward were for the most part Christians so I fail to see your point. Unless you mean the Emperors from Augustus to Constantine which placed themselves head of the state religion. As for the Egyptians how is having giant pyramids built to house your mortal remains that much different from what the dictators of North Korea do everyday? I've met some North Korean refugees and they talk about how they're indoctrinated from birth to revere their "dear leader" as if he were a god. If anything Kim Jong Il and his family outdid the Roman emperors and Egyptians in creating a state religion.
 
Also Nazism instilled religious like faith and fervor in many true believers like Joseph Goebbels and his wife for example. Many Germans even toward the end of the war had complete faith in Hitler even when defeat seemed inevitable. The Hitler youth being some of the last defenders in the Battle of Berlin.
 
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it stands this way as it is the way you chose to look at it. others look at it differently.

therefore, do not provoke answers you are not actually willing to consider. that is an greater illegitimate pursuit than either belief or disbelief.
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you cannot blame me for building my understanding of the world around us based on logic and evidence. it is entirely rational. sure science doesnt have all the answers but at least its working on it.

i totally considered the answer of that person but whats to consider? they basically said they believe in god just because they feel it inside and they have attributed these feeling to god. their argument is something like 'wow look nature is amazing, therefore god exists'

i could just as easily say 'i can prove that no god exists just because i feel it inside'.

another thing is that almost every religious person has not chosen their own religion (or way of looking at things). rather they have been indoctrinated by their parents into having this kind of irrational closed minded mentality where they arent even willing to question their own beliefs.
 
^To be fair there are some religious people with open minds. I went to a Christian school for most of my life and it was a pretty interesting experience.

On the one hand there were some hardcore fundamentalists who thought evolution was an invention of the devil. On the other there were some biology and physics professors who saw Gods handiwork in the beauty of nature. However I did notice the former were the majority while the latter often had to fight for respect and recognition as true Christians which I found kind of ironic.

I mostly agree with you though.
 
To be fair there are some religious people with open minds.
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yeah youre right, i shouldnt generalise so much.

there are a few top scientists who are religious like robert winston but they are in the vast minority.

i find science and religion to be totally incompatible though. one bases its model of reality on faith and revelation and the other on logic, evidence and rationality.
 
^Agreed. For the most part. I think Pantheism is a way of believing in God without all the messiness of religion.

I hate it when people say science is another form of religion or that science has become the new religion. I often find that the people who say this don't even know what a scientific theory is, let alone how one is formed. Also they usually have no appreciation for the scientific method.

Contrary to what some people say on this thread I do not believe that science requires faith. I do not require faith to know that gravity exists or that when I drop something it will fall. Newton's law of universal gravitation is not something that I need to BELIEVE in. Its simply how it works end of story.
 
science does require faith, it sneaks in under the moniker 'induction'- you need faith that the past looks like the future and that there are laws of nature (namely newtons in your example) to know that a dropped item will fall.

the difference is, scientists can update their beliefs in the light of new evidence. our faith in the scientific method is justified by its astounding success, religious faith doesn't appear to me to be justified by anything concrete.

but yeah, it bugs me to death when people try to compare science and religion in that way too, but science is by no means 'faith free.'
 
^I respectfully disagree chinup.

Inductive reasoning is observation, analysis, inference, and confirmation in the form of testing. These are methods of thinking that religious faith often prohibits and lacks. I think it was Mark Twain who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

Other than that however I agree with the rest of your post.
 
^No point in debating with someone who agrees with me on pretty much everything I said so... :)
 
it doesnt mater if someone is a atheist or theist on a personal level, problems only arise when someone push their belief or "facts" unto others because from their point of view they are right and dont care to open up to the idea that they may be wrong from another angle because they cant understand the nature of the duality that what is to my right can be to your left and that that is not contradictory

reality doesnt have only 1 angle that we can all agree on
its a multidimensional thing with every possible angle
but if you cant let go of your ego on a mind level then you wont accept that others can be just as right as your are even tho they are saying something that contradicts what is true from your perspective
and thats when problems arises
thats what dictators do, they push their ego unto others as being the truth
making their truth (on a subjective level) the truth (on a objective level)
and thats what i see in some of the post in this thread,
people thinking or believing that they are right simply because from their perspective well.. they are right ! so then thats reality (from their egotistic perspective), their reality is reality ! they believe that their own subjective experience is representative of the whole of objective reality
so that if something is true for them then it most be true for everyone else !!!
 
Lazyscience said:
yeah youre right, i shouldnt generalise so much.

there are a few top scientists who are religious like robert winston but they are in the vast minority.

i find science and religion to be totally incompatible though. one bases its model of reality on faith and revelation and the other on logic, evidence and rationality.
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Michio Kaku just told me that there is a chance I'll wake up on mars tomorrow, you too. The earth might spontaneously pop out of existence at any given moment. Reality is hardly any different from faith.
 
people thinking or believing that they are right simply because from their perspective well.. they are right ! so then thats reality (from their egotistic perspective), their reality is reality ! they believe that their own subjective experience is representative of the whole of objective reality
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the fact is, there is only one reality so some people are right and some are wrong.

what youre saying is that people should stop caring about what is actully true and just make up whatever reality in their head that makes them happy.
 
chinup said:
^ he hopefully pointed out that the probability amplitudes associated with these transitions are so small that the chance of it happening at a given moment is so small, that we'd need to wait longer than the current age of the universe for there to be a significant probability of either of those events taking place. (and that the matter the earth is made from would still exist...)
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This conclusion rests on the assumption that since we have never observed any phenomenon spontaneously transport a person to Mars, nor will we ever see this happen. The implicit article of faith here is that what we've seen already is a good guide to what we can expect to see in the future. And indeed, this is generally a good rule of thumb that works in practice. But like all articles of faith, it can end up being misguided. Unprecedented and inexplicable events have been observed. Sometimes explanations surface that fit these phenomena into a clear picture of what we already know. But not always.

Once again, belief is quite a legitimate, even indispensable, mental action. The key thing to keep in mind, though, when evaluating any belief, is how helpful it is to hold it. Some people find it very helpful to believe, for example, that it's a cruel world out there, full of people looking to exploit you at every turn. I can see what experiences can bring someone to such a belief, and can appreciate that for some people, this is a very helpful belief to hold. But I have not found holding this belief to be at all helpful for me, and therefore I don't hold it.
 
^ my suspicion given the person named, who works within the paradigm of modern science and popularises scientific theories, is that he was talking in terms of the fact that in the absence of an infinite energy barrier, the probability to end up at an arbitrary position is always nonzero. his conclusion more likely rests on the assumption that quantum theory is correct, rather than any philosophical considerations. (though the philosophical considerations are another valid basis for such a conclusion, hence my post earlier re induction)
 
Lazyscience said:
the fact is, there is only one reality so some people are right and some are wrong.
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but how do you know what is right and what is wrong
no one is reality itself, we are all part of reality, everyone is as real as each other, but we are all experiencing reality from a different angle
so some people are wrong and some are right but thats only valid from one point of view and that point of view is relative

so when you say "the fact is" how did you came up with that fact ? does everybody agrees that its a fact ? why would some people disagree if it would be a fact ?

so are you saying that if you and a lot of other people have agreed that something is true then you can feel legitimate in doing arms to others who disagree because they are in a minority ?

thats what the western world has done with the crusade, killing muslim for their own good because they were wrong, or killing pagan witches because they didnt believe in the truth or pushing democracy unto nation that are not interested in democracy because thats the right way to do business, its for their own good right ! or putting druggies in jail because drugs are bad mmkay, drugs are illegal because they are bad for you right...
so if a majority of people believe in something then that makes it true and right for everyone right ?
if not then who decide what is right and wrong ? and again how did you came up with the idea that "the fact is" ?

Lazyscience said:
what youre saying is that people should stop caring about what is actully true and just make up whatever reality in their head that makes them happy.
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no im saying that truth is relative
and that people should get their head off their butt and accept that they arent the center of the world
and that if we want to move forward as a culture we need to accept others as part of ourself
so that it aint about winning the game its about playing the game, and you cant play it all by yourself, you need a opposite team, but that opposite team is complimentary, if you aint got a group of people going the other way around you aint got a game to play
but some people are self obsess and they cant understand that playing is more important then winning
so they end up shitting all over the other team and that makes for a shitty game
 
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chinup said:
^ my suspicion given the person named, who works within the paradigm of modern science and popularises scientific theories, is that he was talking in terms of the fact that in the absence of an infinite energy barrier, the probability to end up at an arbitrary position is always nonzero. his conclusion more likely rests on the assumption that quantum theory is correct, rather than any philosophical considerations. (though the philosophical considerations are another valid basis for such a conclusion, hence my post earlier re induction)
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Ah, I see. I guess I was thinking of something like intelligent lifeforms coming in and whisking people off to Mars for some project. If something like this were to happen, nothing we've so far witnessed or documented would prepare us for it. I use this just to illustrate how science's prediction-making power, while indeed mighty, isn't absolute.
 
Lazyscience said:
^^ what you just said is incorrect. if you read hitlers Mein Kampf, you will find that hitler was actually a devout catholic. as for stalin and mao, they were not really atheist but just wanted to remove religion to remove all forms of power that wasnt theirs.

anyway, even if they were atheist what does that even matter? does that mean all atheist are evil? hitler has a moustache, does that mean everyone with a moustache is evi?

what you did was make an 'appeal to emotion' argument that atheist are murderers that has no logic or evidence behind it.
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Atheists use the "religion leads to violence" argument all the time. If atheists accuse religions of violence, why is a thought crime to accuse atheism of violence?
 
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freddy47 said:
This is a blatantly false accusation. As Lazyscience has said already Hitler was a devout Catholic. As for Mao and Stalin the way they ran things was pretty much like a religion. They don't call it a CULT of personality for no reason. Kim Jong Il for example is another person who got his country to worship him like some people worship god.
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Hitler being a catholic is a myth. He was raised in a catholic home but then again Richard Dawkins was raised in an Anglican home. Does that mean that Dawkins is a Christian? Hitler was heavily influenced by Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche.
 
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