Atheists should shut up!

Never claimed that. Never. So, straw man ad hom bs. Hope it’s comforting to sum up stuff you clearly did not understand and did not interact with.

And I never argued that. You didn’t understand what I wrote or never cared to. Strawman shit again. And in citation marks no less. What an ass you are.

Amazingly poor philosophical discussion partner, which was clear right off when you couldn’t really respond to points made or ask for clarification if something was unclear.

But you ‘know’ you’re right, so no need to actually interact with the ideas of people you disagree with.

A beautiful finish here on your part, insulting and strawmanning and smug after never having really interacted with a damn thing.

Thank you for making it clear you are someone everyone should ignore.

All thought involves predeterminism so the concept of no thinking is just not possible
For even automatic or instinctive thoughts are predetermined within the subconscious
They will involve the firing of neurons in exactly the same way that much deeper thoughts will
So you cannot experience any thought no matter how trivial without the firing of those neurons

You may perceive an automatic thought as something that requires zero effort but from the perspective of your brain this is not true
Just as you may think nothing of your breathing but your hypothalamus is making sure you dont stop breathing otherwise you will die
And equally you may think nothing of your pulse but your heart is making sure it doesnt stop otherwise you will die from that as well
So just because you are not consciously aware of something your body is doing does not mean it is not actually doing anything as such

Bye folks.

And this is why debating this stuff is pointless. Without a firm footing of what the object of contention is, god, and belief in this case, or how such objects may be approached and talked about in such a way that is accessable to people outside of one’s own personal ethos and experience…

The debate just becomes a competition of attention span and tolerance for tangents. Both of which frankly, when it comes to religious topics or topics which have components of them, I don’t have.

During these posts I’ve repeatedly said what I count as valid examples of “holding a belief”, and what I think the difference is between believeing and knowing is. I’ve also put forth what I think is a reasonable argument for why I say “we can not know” within the boundaries of my terms, and this is also important, I’ve tried to do so as clearly and accessably as I can.

Let me re-emphasize the word reasonable, as in practical, functional in wider society.

You guys haven’t. Simple as that. You have failed to engage me at my level, failed to convince me that you were ever really trying, especially on the part of you Fixed. Which is a pity. As a teacher, my instinct is to simplify things, to educate, yours just seemed to be to use your greater width of reading to bludgeon and dismiss. Neither of which is useful, unless your intent is simply to dominate. Which, this being a very sparsely populated internet forum is meh, silly, or symptomatic of, well, eh forget it.

Karpel, ok, so I’ve apparantly straw-manned you. Sorry. That was simply what I understood the gist of your posts was about. My bad. But also your bad. Perhaps you assumed I’m smarter than I am, perhaps you assumed we naturally share some parameters of what is acceptable as a basis for making decisions, behaviour etc. that we don’t. Whatever. Do you feel this was a successful ending to our interactions…?

I still believe what I believed at the beginning. But now I believe you and fixed are lesser than I thought at the outset.
You believe presumably exactly the same things that you began with, and that’s fine. And now think I’m a fool to boot, that’s also fine. I’m old, I’ll get over it lol. :smiley:

But in summary, we didn’t do very well. Which is sad, especially for three people who profess to be intelligent.

On the other hand, from a maintaining my English pov. still a win for me.

indubitably, but the nature to which you refer can be understood only as ‘natura naturata’, that which exists as a particular mode or attribute of the infinite substance, and therefore does not exist in and of itself. in this sense, ‘per its definition’ it does not exist, as it depends on and cannot be conceived of separate from this substance. ‘god’, on the other hand - which we understand as ‘substance’ (not to be thought of as physical material, as these are merely modes and attributes) - we call ‘natura naturans’, what is in itself and conceived through itself. that is to say, what necessarily exists and depends on nothing else through which to be conceived. natura naturans does, per its definition, exist, but those things which we observe and experience do not pertain to the essential nature of the infinite substance. they could very well not exist, and this would change nothing of natura naturans.

my dearest Henry Oldenburg,

as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken.

love, lens grinding and other indoor sports,

Spinoza

I watched the second one KETHER [ the volume was too low on the first one ] and so I will probably watch the others in the next few days
I dont believe in it as such but it is philosophical and religious so definitely interests me because it adds to my knowledge of human culture

Hey Tab, :evilfun:

Why can you not say that to you they are not real ~ just part of myth and folklore?
There are things which one can be certain do not exist. They are just nor logical.
Now, if we were speaking about “psychic phenomenon”, for example, you might say that you believe that PP is not real but there you cannot be certain if you have an open mind at least insofar as the “real” scientific investigation goes ~ not the fanciful movies and books.

I gather what you mean here by “belief” is that they are a part of myth and folklore and simply do not exist.
I still cannot stop seeing what you call belief here to be knowledge of

I am going to have to give this some more thought. It just seems that the way in which the word belief and believe here is being used is all wrong. :chores-mop:
I may be wrong of course but…

I am beginning to think that the proper usage of words is more important than this discussion of atheists shutting up.lol

Whoo, English lesson, feels like work.

Ok, ‘believe’ is a verb, as in “I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky.” A verb is a ‘doing’ word. As in “Hey Arc, what do you do in the mornings…?” “Well Tab, I - insert verb here, for example ‘wake up’ or ‘watch’ (the news).”

A noun is the name of something. Tab is a noun, so is Arcturus. Verbs also have noun forms. Usually they are just the verb+ing, like the names of activities such as ‘playing tennis’ which is handy. For example, I like ice-cream (noun), my wife (noun), and playing tennis (noun form of verb). Sure, I could just say “I like Tennis.” But maybe I don’t like Tennis much to watch, but I do like to play, so saying " I like playing Tennis." is closer to the truth for me. Sometimes nouns are different from the verbs though. Think-> (a) thought. Or know-> (some) knowledge. Or Believe-> (have/hold a) belief.

So ‘belief’ is a noun form of believe. As in Joe believes that 1) fairies exist. 2) fairies have wings. 3) Tinkerbell is a popular fairy name. So Joe has 3 beliefs about fairies. Think of them as 3 bits of paper with ‘wings’ ‘exist’ and ‘Tinkerbell’ written on them and Joe has them in his pocket. Except the pocket is in his brain. It’s a fairy brain pocket.

Joe however, is sceptical about Trolls. He doesn’t believe that 1) trolls exist in the wild. 2) or that bridges have trolls. 3) or that there used to be a troll under his bed that stole his socks even though his mum told him that once.

Joe’s Troll brain pocket has 3 pieces of paper with ‘don’t exist’ ‘not under bridges’ and ‘not under beds’ written on them. 3 beliefs about trolls.

Atheism is a very simple belief. People often describe god as omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.

However, the most important “Omni” is omnibenevolent.

Without the last one, none of the other three matter to people… omnibenevolent is the ONLY omnistate that means anything to anyone!

All you have to do to scientifically verify this state is to ask yourself “is my consent being violated in any way?”

If it is, an omnibenevolent being doesn’t exist.

Thus: atheism

Can an omnibenevolent being ever exist?

Perhaps. But we know that such a being has never previously existed.

Omnibenevolence is generally not included with the other three omnis and so cannot be the most important one
They are all however assumed values with no real awareness of the relationship that exists between them at all
Else it would be quickly realised that omnipotence and omnibenevolence for example are actually incompatible

Thank you for the lesson, Tab. It was very edifying.

What do You believe was Camus’ meaning by the below:

“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

Was he addressing the atheist here? Was he saying that, despite that, he could never be certain either way?
Was he addressing those who need to label everything?

:smiley: well, my first instinct was to say,

“Eh, he was a philosopher, he got paid to say weird paradoxical shit like that.”

But giving him the benefit of the doubt, if still no points for clarity, perhaps he was saying he’s like me, agnostic. I don’t believe in god, but I don’t go round making a big deal about it. It’s like mobile phones, I get why people have them, but I don’t like them, so I don’t have one. I’m not a rampant Aphoneist.

Was he anti-labelist. Is labelling everything bad…? Hard to make tea if you just throw random stuff in the pot and add a random boiling liquid. But I get what you mean, imposing labels on things that may not be comfortable with them is not always good.

Camus said other stuff in the same vein though.

Which sounds awfully like he took Pascal’s wager. Which is something I don’t agree with because of the hidden costs to abiding by a religion you don’t believe in. It’s not free, you do have something to lose.

I dunno. Depends what he meant by “living a life as if there was a god” if he meant a life of lip-service and hypocrisy where each virtuous act is done purely from a fear of punishment and/or the expectation of a reward at the end… then fuck that guy frankly. But if he meant a life that was ‘good’ and lived that way because you’ve decided living that way is a good thing in and of itself, with or without a god at the end - then yeah, I think that is probably the way I try to live also. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much.

God goes a long way to making ‘living a good life’ meaningful. Without a god, all lives are ultimately equally meaningless, and all ways of living equal. Saint or serial killer, doesn’t matter. Get born, do stuff, die. Same same. No scoreboard, no points, no rubric.

Without god, you have to do all the heavy existentialist lifting by yourself, and create your own meaning. It’s hard work to live a good life without a lil’ angel on your shoulder, especially when you get overtaken by complete bastards. And I’d like to be able to put my hand on my heart and say that it is this element of hard work that makes it an admirable choice, to live life on hard mode rather than regular, but again, get born do stuff die. Same same. Important to note here I mean actively choosing to be good, not simply being good by default because you are too cowardly to do bad. I mean being the good monster.

That’s a bit bleak. I think one of the major keys to happiness is finding enough good people to surround yourself with who will accept you because, by being good yourself, you’ve kinda paid the entrance fee. You have to be good first though, you don’t get into the good people club by being an arsehole at the door but promising the bouncer you’ll suddenly become good inside later. Good people are selfish that way. :smiley: But sensibly so.

Damn I forgot the question lol.

Ok. If I (gun to the head etc.) had to make a choice - no particular religious trappings required, just a yes or no on the god question - between being a theist, or an atheist, I’d choose theist. Because of the two, it’s the more hopeful choice. A theist on death, has the possibilty of being proven right, but an atheist only ever has the possibility of being proven wrong. That makes atheism the more stupid choice. So maybe Camus was just implying atheists are dumbasses.

Arc and Tab, can I weigh in on this? The cool thing about Camus is that he leaves you finding your own answers. I can agree or disagree with anything he ever said and he doesn’t give a shit. It’s that implied dunno that makes him his own giant.

Theists and atheists… They are all fucked in the head. Maybe it isn’t their fault but I’m sort of big on personal responsibility and I don’t cut them any slack. Both positions are based on fear - fear that there is a god and fear that there isn’t. It is the perfect solution to giving up freedom and accepting slavery. Hey, it’s not my fault cause God is - isn’t. The pile of excuses for absentee responsibility approaches infinity. Is this a bit harsh? Probably. But the fuckers won’t stay off my lawn so fuck them very much.

Agnosticism… It really is fairly simple but requires a lot of courage to say “I DON’T KNOW” and then get on with it. “Oh my! life has no meaning.” Bullshit. You have to CREATE meaning for yourself. Yeah, it ain’t easy. It’s damn hard work but it’s doable - mostly. How to find meaning? Damned if I know, but I’ve managed somehow and it has nothing to do with anyone but me. It’s nice to recognize others who have managed to thread the needle but ultimately, I’m just me. Nothing special and I accept responsibility for that.

On labels… The problem with labels is that they create edges and boundaries. As an agnostic I avoid labeling wherever possible but labels do have localized utility. It’s difficult to avoid is - isn’t. Still, the larger picture remains in the “I don’t know” field of view.

So how’s that? I do enjoy babbling now and then.

Actually, omnibenevolence is THE very most important one —- which is why it’s not mentioned. It’s the most important and can be immediately falsified by even a fucking stone on the ground!

Actually, it is mentioned in EVERY religion is “god is good”

This reflects the futility of trying to approach religion as though it actually did revolve around being reasonable.

The problem here of course is that the religious folks can always fall back on God working in mysterious ways. Sure, it seems that, over and over again, God is really a rather sadistic son of a bitch. Look at the coronavirus. Or extinction events.

But what can we mere mortals possibly know about “the will of God”.

Besides, only with religion do we attain both immortality and salvation.

It’s God or oblivion, right?

Those edges and boundaries however are merely descriptive as no definition is absolute
Also on balance it is better to have some definition [ even a loose one ] than none at all

[b]I dont know whether or not God exists and I dont like labels

I dont know whether or not God exists and I dont really care
[/b]

Iambiguous,

To me, immortality is a given. God has no part in this given, just like god didn’t create a triangle.

It’s been said that the whole point of philosophy is to teach us how to die… I disagree. The whole point is to teach us how to live forever.

The point of philosophy is to make sure that the right type of questions are being asked
But accepting death is certainly something to consider given it will happen to everyone

In other words, if you believe something about God “in your head” that [apparently] need be as far you go by way of demonstrating that it is true.

This, in my view, is predicated either on the manner in which your thinking is derived from what may or may not be a “mental condition”, or you are of sound mind but just another run of mill objectivist.

To have “a point” about immortality is no where near the same thing as being able to show others how, given the things they choose to think, feel, say, and do, will actually result in them living forever.

Believing in immortality does not of course make it true no matter how strong the belief is
But if it is really that strong then you have already convinced yourself that it must be true