Ye Religion Thread

[The Dreaming Dragon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOfLdn74GcI

New Testement Wine Cooler.

[DaHanG]

i don't think people are always trying to fill in the gaps, i think a lot of people have  been believing in god a long time

Quote of the day. October 1st, 2009.

Laughed at this just looking at it, man there were some REALLY good moments in this thread.

 

[quadz]

Dunno how sound the science is, but, the research dept. from some dating website ("OkCupid") computed various statistics on 526,000 randomly selected profiles from their site.

The full article is here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-people-like/

But I was intrigued by the results of the reading-level analysis, divided into groups based on the person's stated religion, and "how serious" they indicated they were about their beliefs.

Since we were parsing all this text anyway, we thought it would be cool to do some basic reading-level analysis on what people had written about themselves. We used the Coleman-Liau Index ... we [...] ran reading level by religion and found this:

We subdivided this chart further, by how serious each person was about their beliefs:

Note that for each of the faith-based belief systems I've listed, the people who are the least serious about them write at the highest level. On the other hand, the people who are most serious about not having faith (i.e. the "very serious" agnostics and atheists) score higher than any religious groups.

[fdrjk]

I cant really say I'm agnostic or atheist; I'm more of an apatheist. In the sense I couldn't give two fucks about religion. 

[reaper]

great pointless graphs!

[quadz]

great pointless graphs!

Apparently, it's all part of God's plan!

[Whirlingdervish]

If the point is to draw a correlation between a general education level (measured using a test that the person doesn't realize is a test, to minimize the amount of intentionally false results) and the "seriousness" with which one person ascribes to a certain faith/religion, then the graphs do what they're supposed to do.

They show that people who believe (however strongly) that invisible imaginary things are actually "real" tend to be less able to express themselves intelligently than those who do not profess to believe such things at all.

[reaper]

Yeah sure , smoke another one..

Looking at metrics for belief on a dating site is about as far from serious you can get to draw any conclusions, besides it's pointless anyways.  You shouldn't trust the veracity of any of these claims.  It's not something you can test well,and it wouldn't matter if you could.

 

[fdrjk]

Also, whats the difference between being agnostic and atheist? 

[reaper]

I would say ahteists genereally believe there is no god, and they are fairly sure of it.  Some reason they might cite:

1) religion has been shown to be wrong over and over, you can even rule out gods based on the fact that people believe in multiple different gods
2) there appears no need for a god, and we have explained so much


Anyways I would say those are the main arguments.  Agnostic generally means the person doesn't ascribe to saying one particular belief is true.

edit: by default the ahteists have an agenda

[Whirlingdervish]

It's not something you can test well, and it wouldn't matter if you could.

Conveniently that also applies to the existence of an all powerful creator who doesn't want people to question his existence but is somehow unable to stop such a thing from happening with all of that power.

Even if the existence of a God could be tested, some dumbasses with a less than 9th grade education would go around believing in him strongly no matter what the result.

I would say ahteists genereally believe there is no god, and they are fairly sure of it.  Some reason they might cite:

1) religion has been shown to be wrong over and over, you can even rule out gods based on the fact that people believe in multiple different gods
2) there appears no need for a god, and we have explained so much


Anyways I would say those are the main arguments.  Agnostic generally means the person doesn't ascribe to saying one particular belief is true.

edit: by default the ahteists have an agenda

The fact that you refer to other people's reasons for not believing in things both invisible and unprovable as "arguments" shows that you have an agenda.

Lacking a faith in something that does not exist does not equate to having an agenda. Nothing about being an atheist implies that they all have some secret agenda.

You're making idiotic claims based on a complete lack of evidence, which seems to be your pattern of thinking.
It's no wonder that believing in a God comes so easily to you.

[quadz]

Also, whats the difference between being agnostic and atheist?

It depends on who's using the words, unfortunately.

Some people use atheist to mean: "I know there is no God."

Some people use agnostic to mean: "I don't know if there's a God or not, but I believe the chance is about 50/50."

However, other people use atheist as a shorthand for: "It's not possible for me to know that God doesn't exist; however based on what we've learned about nature so far, the existence of a supernatural deity seems both improbable and unnecessary."


Einstein disliked being referred to as an atheist; however he also acknowleged that from the point of view of someone who believes in a personal god, he would indeed be considered an atheist:

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. -- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949

From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. -- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945

I found Richard Dawkins' exposition on the concepts of athiesm vs. agnosticism in The God Delusion to be useful.

Dawkins observed that a scientist can't take a position of strict atheism, because "I know there is no God" is an unscientific statement.  It makes an unprovable claim.

However, Dawkins also avoids the term 'agnostic', because many people interpret it as meaning "50/50 chance that God exists".

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248

Let us, then, take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty. The spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following seven milestones along the way.

   1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung, 'I do not believe, I know.'
   2. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. 'I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.'
   3. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. 'I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.'
   4. Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. 'God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.'
   5. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. 'I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical.'
   6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'
   7. Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.'

I'd be surprised to meet many people in category 7, but I include it for symmetry with category 1, which is well populated. It is in the nature of faith that one is capable, like Jung, of holding a belief without adequate reason to do so (Jung also believed that partuclar books on his shelf spontaneously exploded with a loud bang.) Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist. Hence category 7 is in practice rather emptier than its opposite number, category 1, which has many devoted inhabitants. I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7 - I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Hope this helps...

[quadz]

by default the ahteists have an agenda

If we decline to teach our kids about Santa Claus, we don't need to replace that with stories about non-Santa Claus.

[|iR|Focalor]

Just throwing out an observation here:

Reaper would fall into the category of Protestant.

Dervish and Quadz would fall into the category of atheist.

I can always read and understand Quadz's and Dervish's posts.

I usually witness many spelling and grammar mistakes in Reaper's posts. His posts are frequently hard to follow.

Just sayin'. 

[reaper]

Interesting that I'm Protestant, I've only been to Catholic churches, and that was over 15 years ago .