ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

well basically I don't think it's possible as a human being to purge yourself of superstitious thought because that just seems to be the way our brains operate, so an unseen mover is always going to be there lurking in your cognition.

I wish there were something between the first two. I'm agnostic but I have reached conclusions about the place of religion in my life, plus I'm only agnostic about the existence of God/gods in a very broad sense (I'm convinced Christianity is false and that the all powerful/all good God of classical theism doesn't exist). I'm functionally an atheist: I'm agnostic but I'm not searching and the possibility that there is a god or gods doesn't normally figure into my decision making.

(at a very quick glance over the thread I guess I'm kind of like Noodle Vague)

I decided to go with the first choice.

it's not like i've done extensive reading on this, but lately i'm really stuck on the idea of capital-I Ideas as "animal spirits" that have a life of their own, have their own conflicts, and "use" people to enact those conflicts. i guess you could call this "ideology".

we think that people, as individuals, have ideas, and some of those ideas they hold in common with other people. i wonder if it's backwards; i sometimes think that its ideas that "have" people, masses of people, sometimes in common with other ideas. religious systems are sets of ideas, overlapping with and contesting with other sets, and carrying people with them through history.

this probably comes from some ted talk i watched once or something.

well basically I don't think it's possible as a human being to purge yourself of superstitious thought because that just seems to be the way our brains operate, so an unseen mover is always going to be there lurking in your cognition.

I still don't see what that has to do with god. Atheism means that you don't believe in any gods. I personally don't believe that any gods exist, therefore I'm an atheist. My brain still may or may not be drawn to certain superstitious thoughts (I'm not really convinced that that's scientifically true, but whatever) but that doesn't have anything to do with a god. You're saying that since our brain chemistry is an "unseen mover" we have to call it god?

i mean that heuristics that form the basis of cognition commit you to believing in magic on some level -- it's a shortcut -- you'd be forever examining causal chains otherwise. Purely rational thought is computationally expensive. Whether you personify the source of this magic as a bearded dude or an amorphous cloud is a cosmetic detail.

It's basically "there's no atheists in foxholes" but everywhere is a foxhole, which is why I feel a commitment to skepticism ought to be the defining characteristic, not degrees of belief or non-belief.

so there's literally no in between from behaving like a computer to believeing in magic

huh.

well... computers are binary, so it makes some amount of sense until you realize that it's totally wrong

*please wait while darraghmac computes the most rational answer out of all possible combinations*

most of the advanced tasks we set computers to do rely on hand-waving heuristics, too, so it's not like they're off the hook either.

do androids dream of theistic sheeple

no offense but yer argument kinda seems a little like saying that since we haven't gotten this whole metaphysics thing nailed down and solved we cant deny the existence of god really which i do not agree with at all

i mean the intrusion of unanswerables into our daily life does not presuppose magic as long as you accept the limits of human understanding and deny absolutism

ok that was imprecise.

i think that part of this is the assumption that since we have "failed" thus far in the epistemological project to explain the nature of knowledge and metaphysical attempts to describe reality, we have to turn to an unknowable force, consciously or otherwise. but the problem there is to say that force is pre se spiritual or magical or religious or whatever. peeps upthread according that magic to brain chemicals are finding an equally valid source for that sort of stuff, and one that is rooted in internal biology, not any external force or power.

but what you are missing is that internal biology is actually magic

well mine certainly is

I mean, I am convinced that if you chopped off my head a rabbit would spring out of my neck, depending on how you define "rabbit"

i have no problem with that theory

Whether you personify the source of this magic as a bearded dude or an amorphous cloud is a cosmetic detail.

So you're just dealing with atheism by redefining god. I have to go with Dawkins on this one and define god as an omniscient being who created the universe and everything in it, listens to our prayers and actively intervenes in the world, etc. rather than some vague "the energy within all of us man" kind of spirituality. Because that's what at least the top two religions are claiming. But I guess this gets into that Dawkins thread where Shakey was claiming that most religious people don't in fact believe in that sort of god.

hahahahahahahaha you bastard, I was seconds away from changing my screenname to "rabbit (n): a fountain of blood"

well tbh where i stand with dawkins is in the 'god of the gaps' problem, which is kind of related to the 'magic' question. if you leave 'god' (or what have you) as being the king of the realm of everything we don't know yet, well, we're finding out stuff pretty fast.

god is dead

and no one cares
if there is a Hell
I'll see you there

Ok cool let's do drinks!

You can intellectually ascribe this feeling to whatever you want after the fact but I don't think there's much of a phenomenological difference between hardcore Xians and captial-A Athiests when watching David Blaine do a card trick, at least for the initial 30-80ms or however long it takes to go "Whoa"
It's pure god-reflex and no amount of conditioning or realization that Blaine is a hacky magician can obliterate it.
Basically, knowing how magnets work doesn't prevent the "Magnets, how do they work" moments that constitute your day. We're all juggaloes, now.

Jeez, talk about a god of the gaps. "my god is the god of that moment when a juggalo's mind is temporarily thrown into confusion by a shitty magic trick."

ha!

But I guess this gets into that Dawkins thread where Shakey was claiming that most religious people don't in fact believe in that sort of god.

ah now there was a "fun" thread... whatever happened to A. Nairn anyway

It is much more sensible to come to an intimate understanding of your mind's wayward tendencies, and to appreciate your inescapable weakness and ignorance, than to feed an unwarranted belief that, because your (intermittent) rationality has declared god and ghosts to be imaginary, therefore you have achieved some kind of ascendency over your own foolishness. That's just another trap fools happily fall into.

Meditation is one good way to figure out what a hapless fool you are and will always be.

ugh atheistic proselytizing is just the worst

eh as bad as any other type of proselytizing really?

we need more fresh-faced kids in collared shirts bicycling in 103 degree weather. clearly we're at a disadvantage.

nah i actually hate it more. lots of religions have a bent on spreading the gospel, but atheists that decide to go pound sand about it are basically heeding the inner need to be right, smart, and assholes xpost

i have never encountered a proselytizing atheist. i've encountered very very few proselytizing christians of any kind, too, but i usually cross the street if see mormons.

more simply, religious peeps want to convert me so i can go to heaven, atheist peeps want to convert people so they can give each other high fives

xpost wow goole yer college experience was v v different than mine

hmm maybe. though maybe they just think religion's a problem! (most self-identified atheists on this thread don't appear to be dawking though, which is ood)

i do think religion is a problem, but going out to "convert" the religious is equally problematic

but jjj u mad if you think religious ppl aren't self-interested in your conversion

well yeah some of them certainly are, and obv if it is one of the teachings of whatever, they are earning their own reward, but if we get into the role of self-interest in altruistic acts were going to need to pony up to buy ilx a bigger server so

the only college experience i can think of like this was a poetry class. someone wrote a bad poem that ref'd adam and eve and i suggested that like the modernists maybe the writer could play around with the text of genesis. and a very radical person in the class spat out "UGH why does everything have to be about the BIBLE". and i was like, adam and eve?

in general Jews are not interested in converting anybody FYI (we're "chosen" not "converted" dontchaknow)

What if god was one of us?

i'd imagine that proselytizing atheists are also trying to improve your future happiness in the same way as Christians

i think maybe college in the early 90's was just a time of great dumbness and darkness tbh wrt militant atheism and all sorts of stuff

eh idk about that sarahel - what real unhappiness arises because of someone having faith really?

(please to not pull the suicide bomber/victim of spousal abuse hitler card anyone thx)

maybe it depended on where you went to college and what you studied? atheism/religion wasn't the most salient topic of militantism where i was

i think a lot of unhappiness could arise from feeling trapped in/beholden to a faith

MOD GOD CENSORSHIP

well, presumably the militant atheist thinks that those with faith are delusional, like people who thought the earth was flat, or women who think their abusive boyfriends are just "misunderstood"