Atheists: Why does theism still exist?

[Loudmouth]

Good question, Evolutionary religions persist because, nourished by the spirit of worship, primitive religions served as the scaffolding that prepared man for the reception of "revealed religion".

They prepared us for Hinduism?

 

[Colter]

They prepared us for Hinduism?

Sort of, revelations great and small occur throughout history. There have been 5 major revelations. Hinduism is a composite of many ages and traditions of seekers guided by the spirit of worship. Some in Hinduisms evolution did come in contact with the missionaries of the major epochal revelations and benefited from them.

God responds to the faintest flicker of faith by anyone anywhere at any time in any age around the globe in any evolved religion.

 

[Loudmouth]

God responds to the faintest flicker of faith by anyone anywhere at any time in any age around the globe in any evolved religion.

Anything to back up this assertion?

 

[Colter]

Anything to back up this assertion?

The people who have experienced reciprocal faith in God all down through the ages and the thousands of religions that they partake in.

 

[Tinker Grey]

True Believers,

Why do all the false faiths still exist?

Or,

Geologists, if wind erodes, why are there mountains?

 

[ThinkForYourself]

Or,

Geologists, if wind erodes, why are there mountains?

But grasshopper, is the wind all knowing?

(Sorry, couldn't help making the Kung Fu reference. )

 

[Davian]

The people who have experienced reciprocal faith in God all down through the ages and the thousands of religions that they partake in.

Can you name one that can demonstrate that this experience is not simply a product of their imagination?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Although I haven't read it yet, this looks like a fairly comprehensive post on the matter:

The Cognitive Science of Religion

Tl;dr? Here is a summary:

Rather than being an adaptation; most cognitive scientists prefer to describe religion as a byproduct of the evolution of several cognitive mechanisms. These include a HADD, an intrigue for MCI objects, a theory of mind, a distaste for uncertainty and anxiety, a fear of death, a propensity for ritual behavior, a use for moral and pro-social behavior, and a need to form cooperative groups. None of these cognitive biases and motivations require religious ideas, but each has found a place for them.

The mechanisms listed above have proper functions, such as detecting danger or understanding the intentions of other minds, but they've been co-opted or `hijacked' by the super-stimuli that copiously appear in religious narratives (gods and spirits). Whether this hijacking was driven by selection pressures, human motivation, or a cultural happenstance is unclear. At the very least, the evidence suggests that religion has come to fulfill a social and palliative role. For this reason, we could describe religion as an exaptation, because the cognitive mechanisms that define it appear to have acquired an additional, adaptive role to that which they were originally selected for.

 

[Received]

Unevidenced and unfalsifiable religious assertions are not solutions of any value.

How do you hold this for religious statements and not the one you just made and other secular philosophical stances?

 

[bhsmte]

How do you hold this for religious statements and not the one you just made and other secular philosophical stances?

I would agree, that religious faith can indeed have value for individual people, depending on how it is used by the individual. And, since there are so many different religious faiths, the value to an individual, is completely independent on whether the religious faith is true or not, but specifically on the impact it has on the person.

 

[Received]

I would agree, that religious faith can indeed have value for individual people, depending on how it is used by the individual. And, since there are so many different religious faiths, the value to an individual, is completely independent on whether the religious faith is true or not, but specifically on the impact it has on the person.

Totally. But what I'm trying to hit more is how people can 1) set down standards for determining truth and 2) not follow this standard by their own behavior or reasoning. E.g., unfalsifiable stuff is useless -- which is an unfalsifiable statement, rendering it useless.

 

[variant]

Totally. But what I'm trying to hit more is how people can 1) set down standards for determining truth and 2) not follow this standard by their own behavior or reasoning. E.g., unfalsifiable stuff is useless -- which is an unfalsifiable statement, rendering it useless.

This leads me to believe that you don't understand what unfalcifiable means...

You would just have to show the null hypothesis true to falceify that statement.

Unfalcefialbe statements can be valuable is the null hypothesis. A single valuable unfalcefiable statement would do.

His statement though was that unevidence and unfalcefiable religious assertions don't have any value.

So careful not to straw man.

His actual null hypothesis would be that unevidence unfalcifiable assertions lack value.

Do you have any unevidenced and unfalcefiable assertions that have value?

 

[Davian]

How do you hold this for religious statements and not the one you just made and other secular philosophical stances?

Totally. But what I'm trying to hit more is how people can 1) set down standards for determining truth and 2) not follow this standard by their own behavior or reasoning. E.g., unfalsifiable stuff is useless -- which is an unfalsifiable statement, rendering it useless.

My statement is falsifiable. You may counter it with "these religious statements give me comfort and assuages my fears of death and the unknown."

I would then revise my statement to read "Unevidenced and unfalsifiable religious assertions are not solutions of any value for the purposes of accurately describing reality."

Are we not in a philosophy forum?

 

[Received]

This leads me to believe that you don't understand what unfalcifiable means...

You would just have to show the null hypothesis true to falceify that statement.

Unfalcefialbe statements can be valuable is the null hypothesis. A single valuable unfalcefiable statement would do.

His statement though was that unevidence and unfalcefiable religious assertions don't have any value. So careful not to straw man.

I know what falsifiable means. There's no way to respond to "you don't know what it means" than to say just this. I'm a research coordinator. I have to.

And there's no straw man because I'm simply applying his own principle to his own statement. He's being arbitrary (or hasn't provided any justification at all) for why religious statements get special treatment; therefore it's all about argument in general, not just religious ones: something isn't of value if it isn't unfalsifiable -- which, again, would make that very argument (and therefore criteria) false, given that it's an unfalsifiable statement. So he either explains his reasoning as to how religion gets special treatment with truth value in this sense, or changes his criteria with regard to falsifiability.

He's not the only one doing it by far. It's all over the place in secular contexts. We call it scientism.

 

[variant]

I know what falsifiable means. There's no way to respond to "you don't know what it means" than to say just this. I'm a research coordinator. I have to.

It doesn't seem that you do.

Unfalsifiable in this context means you are saying it is objectively impossible to give an example of a valuable unevidenced unfalsifiable assertion.

Are you indeed claiming this?

Are you claiming that you don't have even the possibility of showing a single example of an unfalsifiable unevidenced assertion that has value?

And there's no straw man because I'm simply applying his own principle to his own statement. He's being arbitrary (or hasn't provided any justification at all) for why religious statements get special treatment; therefore it's all about argument in general, not just religious ones: something isn't of value if it isn't unfalsifiable -- which, again, would make that very argument (and therefore criteria) false, given that it's an unfalsifiable statement. So he either explains his reasoning as to how religion gets special treatment with truth value in this sense, or changes his criteria with regard to falsifiability.

He's not the only one doing it by far. It's all over the place in secular contexts. We call it scientism.

His principle was that there was wasn't value in an " unevidenced unfalsifiable assertion" you just edited it to say "unfalsifiable things have no value"

So it would be a straw man if you didn't actually articulate the same principle when criticizing him for being hypocritical.

 

[Received]

My statement is falsifiable. You may counter it with "these religious statements give me comfort and assuages my fears of death and the unknown."

I would then revise my statement to read "Unevidenced and unfalsifiable religious assertions are not solutions of any value for the purposes of accurately describing reality."

Are we not in a philosophy forum?

Falsifiable means you're capable of proving (narrowly through scientific evidence and broadly through reasoning) that something is false, whether or not you take seriously the null hypothesis (which would depend on how strict a defintion we have for falsifiable, e.g., scientifically or more broadly argumentatively). Saying "unfalsfiable things are useless" isn't falsifiable because you're not capable of proving it to be false, given that it's an arbitrarily selected statement, i.e., an intuitive statement without any rational or evidential justification. Your ability to revise your statement in no way necessarily indicates falsifiability.

So what this comes down to is:

1) If you make a statement without support (proof as argument or evidence), then this statement is by definition unfalsifiable, given that it carries no possibility to prove it's wrong.
2) You have made a statement without support.
3) :. You have made an unfalsifiable statement.

And yeah, variant, I have a lot of useful unfalsfiable things I believe, such as every single axiom and instinctive belief that underlies any philosophical system (e.g., rationalism, science, etc.) that you or I believe.

 

[Davian]

Falsifiable means you're capable of proving (narrowly through scientific evidence and broadly through reasoning) that something is false, whether or not you take seriously the null hypothesis (which would depend on how strict a defintion we have for falsifiable, e.g., scientifically or more broadly argumentatively). Saying "unfalsfiable things are useless" isn't falsifiable because you're not capable of proving it to be false, given that it's an arbitrarily selected statement, i.e., an intuitive statement without any rational or evidential justification. Your ability to revise your statement in no way necessarily indicates falsifiability.

No, but it does allow for the revised statement to be falsifiable.

So what this comes down to is:

1) If you make a statement without support (proof as argument or evidence), then this statement is by definition unfalsifiable, given that it carries no possibility to prove it's wrong.
2) You have made a statement without support.
3) :. You have made an unfalsifiable statement.

So what are we to do with Colter's unevidenced and unfalsifiable statements in post #329??

 

[Received]

No, but it does allow for the revised statement to be falsifiable.

Disagree. There are statements that are revisable, and there are falsifiable statements. They might overlap, but in your case they don't, because you made an unfalsifiable statement. Which is totally fine to make in any context, and is even epistemologically necessary when you get down to the nitty gritty with basic axioms underpinning our view of the world. But it needs criticism when it negates itself.

So what are we to do with Colter's unevidenced and unfalsifiable statements in post #329??

Ignore them because they're not of enough substance to be worth responding to. Unlike your responses in general, when you're not making loaded questions and other things that are offensive that you drop incredulity toward when people don't respond to them, of course. I respond to people who make points that are worth responding to. There is no team Christianity vs. team atheism going on here, because I don't see teams at all; only people who make points and the points themselves.

 

[Colter]

Everywhere around the earth, across all cultures great and small, we see the fruits of their respective religious belief systems, their faith.

But large scale Atheist regimes have been so few, short lived and devoid of any lasting contribution to truth, beauty or goodness, that comparisons aren't always a part of the average citizens experience. Complicating the discussion of comparisons, Atheist nations like North Korea, with it's overwhelming Juche philosophy of self sufficiency, are highly secretive due mainly to the failure of their ideology and attempts to conceal it. To me N. Korea as a state is emblematic of the mind of Atheism and it's philosophy; benign and dyeing but to invested to admit it.

"If the nonreligious approaches to cosmic reality presume to challenge the certainty of faith on the grounds of its unproved status, then the spirit experiencer can likewise resort to the dogmatic challenge of the facts of science and the beliefs of philosophy on the grounds that they are likewise unproved; they are likewise experiences in the consciousness of the scientist or the philosopher." UB 1955​

 

[quatona]

Everywhere around the earth, across all cultures great and small, we see the fruits of their respective religious belief systems, their faith.

But large scale Atheist regimes have been so few, short lived and devoid of any lasting contribution to truth, beauty or goodness, that comparisons aren't always a part of the average citizens experience.

Yes, that´s what they have in common with theist regimes. Presumably because they are regimes, in the first place.