Atheists should shut up!

Tab, here’s the problem for me.

You’re a scattered poster and you are shifting onus.
I point out problems with YOUR claim that no unfalsifiable claim has value (they are worthless according to you).

And in posts like this…

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=190138&p=2760673#p2760664
You are demanding that religious practices must be valuable to EVERYONE. That the methods must be foolproof for everyone, which modern medicine does not achieive,
but more importantly, it is an onus shift.

I am saying that your belief, that all unfalsiable beliefs are worthless is not something you could possibly know.

And then you go all over the place. Now I contributed to this by taking a number of angles on falsification and also by pursuing a number of angels or examples. So, I bear some responsibility.

But to me this kind of flailing, onus shifting is just not worth my time because you are evading actually supporting your own statement. And it can’t be defended. And no one follows it, though albeit many people with beliefs of less weight than that of a deity. An agnostic, who does not know if God exists, by his own assertion, cannot possibly then know if some theists are experiencing God and learning from God and getting benefits from that deity. This does not in any way represent an argument for why that agnostic should take up a religion or believe in God. It is not a proof of God. It just means

you
can’t
as
an
agnostic
rule out
these things
as
worthless.

And then your even broader claim that no unfalsifiable belief could be worth anything, is confused. Because all humans work on beliefs that they have not checked to see if they are falsifiable or if they will be falsified via testing.

Now if all you mean by ‘worthless’ is that other people do not get strong evidence from unfalsifiable beliefs, well, even that fails and it is a poor use of the word ‘worthless’. Because if someone meets someone who, for example, seems at peace and finds out this has to do with their belief in God and practices, and that person takes up said practices and comes to belief in God, they did not work from strong evidence, but nevertheless may, for all you know, have come in contact with a deity and received benefits, in even deeper practices, via the assertions of and experience the first theist. Of course Nature journal, given its epistemology, which is a very effective one for creating scientific knowledge, has not burden to publish such a story as a scientific paper. But that has nothing to do with your claim that such things are worthless. You need to be agnostic about that also. Or you are not an agnostic, you are a specific kind of atheist who is claiming to know a lot of things, including other minds and what is possible for a deity should one exist.

And the general assertion that unfalsifiable claims are worthless does not even hold in the history of science and has strong critics within both science and philosophy. It’s not what has happened, unfalsifiable claims have in fact helped advance science at times, and well, the other stuff in the articles earlier linked.

People throw falsifiablity around like it is one of the tend commandments, especially in philosophy forums, but it isn’t.

Agnosticism is not the middle ground between theist and atheist. Agnosticism dismisses both stances as equally futile. When it comes to god You can not know. And so I walk into a room where a theist and an atheist are trapped, bound to talk round and round for all eternity, and walk out. It’s that simple.

Everything else is up for grabs. I am free to ‘know’ other things in the way everyone else does.

So far, I have said this.

Theism involves belief. Atheism involves the opposite belief. They are however, both beliefs.

Both of these beliefs are based on pure theory and logic, because there is no observable, or testable empiric data that is consistent for all, or available to all. Even after 200,000 years of human exsitence. Please note here, I do not ask about value, or usefulness, both terms which you introduced, I only ask for consistency of experience, consistency of availability.

The realm of pure logic and theory falls under the jurisdiction of falsifiability. If a proposition cannot be proven false by any irrefutable, or even reasonable means, its claim to truth is moot.

Therefore, both beliefs are worthless. Hold either, hold neither, doesn’t matter. Unless of course, simply being seen in society to possess these type of beliefs has worth. But this is socially attributed worth, not worth implicit to the belief itself.

Unlike scientific principles, which even if unfalsifiable at the time of discovery, lead to directly derived applications in the physical world, which are observed to work, and possess consistence both in their generation and effects enabling further reseach and the hope of resolution in the foreseeable future, theistic and atheistic principles have no directly attributable applications in the real world, and thus are stuck. Forever. Barring deus ex machina of course, over which we can have no control, rendering any human effort expended on this topic of discourse, wasted. The bus comes when it comes.

And that’s it.

And, of course, everyone has and bases choices on beliefs that they cannot and/or have not bothered to falsify or see if they can. Beliefs about the opposite sex, about friendship, about realism, about politics, about what to do in relation to a bad boss, about how to prioritize activities and on and on and on. There are philosophical assumptions, including metaphysical ones, that everyone uses (though they vary individual to individual, that have not been tested and some cannot be tested. There are more navigating the world beliefs and assumptions also that have not been tested and some cannot be that people use. We rely on intuition for all sorts of things also, or rather this is another way of looking at it. We have to and many of them are useful and many are likely correct AND if one has an instrumental epistemology clearly are correct and many are problematic. But we have to do this, because we have only so much time. But for critiics of atheists it is AS IF this is not the case and a rule is produced. But no one follows that rule. No one.

Atheism is simply a skeptical position on the existence of deities that are non falsifiable
Agnostic atheists do not believe in God but also know that he cannot really be disproven

God either exists or does not exist and that is the only valid statement that I or anyone can truly make
I do not believe in him but that is because I do not regard belief as a reliable metric for objective truth

Tab -

“When it comes to god You can not know”

That’s a fundie position.

At best you might claim “I can not know” but that too is prescriptive. Pure non-assuming skepticism says only “I don’t know at this moment”. Except when the person does know.

Any truth claim requires evidence otherwise it cannot be demonstrated even if it is true
Arguments from emotion are logical fallacies and therefore cannot be accepted as valid

Because if the only place where your absolute truth exists is in your own mind then it cannot be objectively true only subjectively so
This can be demonstrated when two are convinced their respective truth is the real one even though they are mutually incompatible

Then I’m a fundie.

Karpel keeps using mundane examples insisting that they are comparable, so meh. I’ll go talk to a wall, or actually just stop talking. I don’t believe either of you have really really considered what a being claiming to be god would have to go through to prove irrefutably to a human existing in this universe that their claim was true, but tbh. it’s not worth the brain cells.

Gimme a scenario if you like, I’ll shoot it down.

Tab

Okay. lol Then you need to take me for coffee after having viewed that thing.

Hmmm. I am not so sure that I would word it in that way, Tab. Obviously, there can be no belief if there is not first some kind of knowledge. Right or wrong? Belief has to be based on “something”.
This is true in one sense but in another sense, you are putting the cart before the horse. Can there be a lack of “something” within “nothing”? I am probably not expressing myself clearly here.

Not really, Tab. My only belief would be that you are greatly delusional.
Would you not say that there are some things which require no thought at all?

I still am not seeing things your way here, Tab. I see no belief nor disbelief. The T simply has no existence for me at all. Perhaps I am missing something here.

Yes it is.

Hmmm… I am still not sure about this. Something seems to be missing from the equation here.
I can say that the way in which you have worded that statement might make it appear that "not believing’ is a belief. But… if a man says: “I do not believe in God” isn’t that actually denying the existence of belief?

I need help. lol

This I truly do know.

But Tab, you came into this thread, true?

Oh sure, turn up now all the dust has cleared.

Ok, so you believe in something. The number 1 say. Subtract 1 from that number. Do you believe in the result…? :-"

If you do, then you believe in the absence of something.

So knowledge is the foundation of belief ? Are you absolutely certain about this ?
Is it not possible to have belief that is just emotional reasoning and nothing else ?

You cannot have a thought that requires absolutely no thinking at all
As that is not physically possible and it also makes no sense logically

Innate ‘beliefs’ - evolved aversions to snakelike shapes in infant animals. However even this extreme example presupposes some form of ancestral contact - awareness of, knowledge of the existence of - with the target of the belief.

Instincts and reflexes. She didn’t specify thoughts.

Sorry Arc, thought I’d save you some time.

Your position is anyway.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

No idea why I would consider this. Why would a god want to prove that he exists? Can you prove that a god would want this? Utter shenanigans.

Not interested in that kind of thing.

Im not on anyones side here. Im just making the philosophical, skeptical observation that the phrase “you can’t know” is a fundie claim. (“I don’t know” is the non-fundie version of what is being tried to convey here) If you want Ill go and add my personal opinion. But only on request.

Oh yah well and if you ask me, does god exist?
I could refer you to Parodites’ writings on Gnosticism, which would get you somewhere in the vicinity of the kind of cosmos of concepts wherein the term “god” makes sense to me at all.

Or I can discuss it within the frame of the kabbalists, at which Im rather good.
Playlist of my talks
youtube.com/watch?v=06ZfESt … dgC8HGbZjk

I studied a huge book on the kabbalistic tarot back in the day when I was trying to pull gullible university girls so I have some aquaintance with the tree of life and the sephira, but never really bought into it. Studied Wiccan beliefs and magic too, there was no end to my efforts to bolster my chat-up lines. You seem to have Aleister Crowley in there too. All praise the hermetic order of the golden dawn.

I’m sure I should be making some kind of wierd gesture now. Cthulhu fhtagn.

Note that I disagree with Parodites, but at least we understand of each other at what we disagree.
But in short I can tell you that I am certain that whichever God does exist, he/she/it is dependent on the logic Ive divined as much as any entity.

– see your post

yeah Crowley is a great guy. Truly respect that dude.

But yo, these things are not propositions one needs to buy into, theyre rather tools, one may use to develop different modes of thinking. Lets say instruments enabling different kinds of progressions, as an analogy to music.

I dunno, I’m a bit too mundane, colloquial, Yorkshire-bred for that stuff. All we believe in is bread and butter and workin’ downt pit.

Crowley is easily one of the most misunderstood men who ever lived
There is far more to him than what the stereotypical image suggests

Thats fair.
I believe that.

And I don’t look down on that in the least.

I look down on people who believe in what some book tells them.

And he loves being misunderstood.
But there is a whole society built around him - Thelema.

They’ve got a rather interesting discord group of which Im member.
I can give you the link in a PM if you’re interested. You’d need to instal discord. Its a lovely interface with countless interesting servers.