Religion and Science in the Classroom

I also don't like this bullshit notion that the only knowledge is deductive knowledge and that it's only things that we know with 100% certainty that we're allowed to say you believe.

The fact is, almost everything you believe, you believe inductively with at least some very small margin of error. Inductive knowledge still counts as belief. If I can say, reasonably, that I find the notion of a God to be incredibly unlikely, I can still call myself an atheist and not have to say it was a leap of faith or an absolute.

Incredibly unlikely based on the evidence.

You're right, it has shit all to do with faith.

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Originally Posted by Mzo

You could expand your definition of faith to mean trust, such as the trust we hold in many scientific theories that have held up consistently over the years, which is different from the standard religious blind faith.

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That's more what I meant when I was talking about atheists and faith.

We talking about Preaching in the classroom?

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Well, let's put it this way: I believe that man's concept of God, throughout all incarnations that have existed, is defined as supernatural, and I believe anything that actually exists is inherently not supernatural, therefore God does not exist. If he did, he wouldn't be God. ns or an alternate dimension exists that it makes me not an atheist, then you are free to call me agnostic if you like.

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this is just semantics.

As said previously, everything we do today would be considered magic to those that lived 3000 years ago. A fucking crayon box would be magic.

But we don't call it magic because we have the ability to understand it. We define magic as a way to do big or complicated things in a way that doesn't let you understand the mechanics of it.

So you've positioned yourself to not believe in a God, because IF we were to find one, it would be instantly more understandable and knowable via its discovery and presence and thus no longer be magical or supernatural.

You, personally, have made 'being unknowable' a defining feature of a God.

This is just silliness. Its as bad as Christians who say the Bible is a 100% the word of God because God said as much in the Bible

I guess being atheist is "cool" now, so no one wants to be kicked out of it.

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Originally Posted by Fe 26

You, personally, have made 'being unknowable' a defining feature of a God.

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Frog, personally, did not come up with that idea. I'm pretty sure he even said as much.

He also limited that discussion to Judeo-Christian beliefs, which is not sufficient. Atheism is not a set of beliefs counter to that limited scope. It is the belief that no deity exists anywhere.

Opaque bringing evolution into it shows he doesn't get it, because that has shit all to do with the existence of deities. We've even brought up scenarios where a deity and evolution can co-exist.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Well, no, not necessarily.

For example, most Judeo-Christian traditions say that god cannot be understood, which is different than saying we have inadequate data to understand him. There's a fundamental element of "magic" to most Gods, which is inherently bullshit.

I also think that almost all Gods are described as conscious beings that think and speak and feel, and I think there's a pretty good argument that such a being is also incompatible with the notions of perfection that people also ascribe to most Gods.

I know people get into a lot of "Well what if the laws of physics are god" or "What if aliens are god" horseshit, but if we're going to use the term that loosely then there's nothing there to discuss in the first place.

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You also need to have some historical perspective on this stuff. God was unknowable to them...because they were stupid. Pi was unknowable to them. That doesn't mean it was actually unknowable or not real. They just thought the number was 3.

Secondly, I don't think anyone on TNL is arguing for the judo/christ God. The God of the Bible, as it is written, is most likely not real. There is just so much inconsistency in his character. And frankly, it is a miracle of brain washing that we still buy into stuff like the crucifixion since we are about a 1000 years or more, removed from believing in blood sacrifices. It is really astounding that people buy into the idea that "believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and you shall be saved" in the year 2013. It really is vampire power of the blood type stuff, but 99% of Christians ignore that fact. They give no thought to how their salvation works. How the death of a God like entity gets us through the pearly gates. Was he like the Matrix of Leadership? When he died, did it release the power of jesus for us all to enjoy? And God has bad eye site, and will let us into heaven because we remind him of Jesus and he was such a swell kid?

BUT, that doesn't mean there wasn't something. People writing dumb shit about a thing doesn't mean the thing isn't real. It just means that the dumb shit is dumb shit. You know, like people that think we faked the moonlanding.

They were close to Pi 4,000 years ago. I think they were further away later per religious text. So that ain't good.