care about your Atheism v. Theism concerns? — 3017amen
Okay, take a deep breath, you haven't explained why you care about those beliefs — 3017amen
why would you care about inconsistencies — 3017amen
atheism is nothing more than the lack of belief in god(s). — Isaac
It's a habit of thinking which I've learned and find useful. — Isaac
why do you care to take a position on the subject matter? — 3017amen
I don't really care what other people believe unless it justifies actions which I think are immoral (which religious beliefs sometimes does).
I care very much about my beliefs though. It's important to me that they are useful, consistent and not overwhelmed by empirical evidence to the contrary (where such is relevant).
To this latter aim, I'll robustly defend my beliefs as best I can, and try to show inconsistencies and contrary evidence in competing beliefs, just to make sure they are not something I might be advised to adopt myself. — Isaac
Why is that useful, for what purpose? — 3017amen
you haven't explained the reason why, you yourself as a human being, care about those things — 3017amen
you're presuming those things are important for some reason, but you haven't explained the reason why — 3017amen
If I say I like the color green, I don't have to provide a reason why, it just is a feeling I have. — Isaac
"Why?" just in general terms without any context is a nonsensical question, what could possibly constitute an answer other than the entire history of all reality? — Isaac
The frame work is Existentialism. It started in the Book of Ecclesiastes — 3017amen
Sure, the 'whys' of existence are very perplexing. — 3017amen
You can continue to ask "why?" to every explanation given, for ever. What's the point? — Isaac
I'm trying to understand how the Atheists account for existential questions. — 3017amen
I'd recommend you look at the untenable Atheist thread OP. There are ton's of questions over there... — 3017amen
I tried. — Banno
1. Consider the natural drugs the body produces: dopamine endorphins and serotonin.
2. Consider the aforementioned LSD drug induced experiment… .
Could there me more to the conscious mind than just things like eating, drinking, procreating, sleeping et al.?
Conversely, Is there a mystery at the end of the universe? If not, why not? — 3017amen
... the 'whys' of existence are very perplexing.
Does Atheism provide for such reasoning? — 3017amen
It becomes harder to assume sincerity when @3017amen continues to ask questions that have been answered multiple times by various folk, and in much the same way. — Banno
On the one hand, you consider science as reductive to the notion of first person experience; nevertheless you believe that (mystical) first person experiences (of revelation) are a better revealer of truth. — fdrake
Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatio-temporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatio-temporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos p35-36
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. — Wayfarer
Here we are looking at the difference between two alternative worldviews that pretty much exhaust the possibilities. — Janus
Since theism usually involves the idea that there is an afterlife, divine judgement, the possibility of redemption or salvation and a much more robust notion of personal responsibility, it seems obvious that the presence or absence of belief in these theistic ideas would involve significant differences in philosophical attitudes. — Janus
And I am not a theist (I have no idea what gave you the idea that I was), but a "soft" atheist, by the way. — Janus
For some reason, these discussions always seem to ignore ignosticism and it's twin sibling theological noncognitivism. — EricH
"They" are "what we are not" is simply the backwards description of atheists. Atheists lack positive belief in theism, god, or gods; nothing less, but sometimes more. — VagabondSpectre
I regard science as 'reductionist' insofar as it reduces the scope of discourse exclusively to the objective domain. — Wayfarer
But what all of this omits, is the acknowledge of the nature of being, the first-person perspective with all of its struggles and joys. It has no way of dealing with it, so relegates it to the personal (you can trace the consequence of Protestantism in this respect). — Wayfarer
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