RE: New Atheist Fundamentalism
With regards free will - humankind has covenental free will which includes our ability to deny God and also deny the existence of God.
If you are unable to deny the existence of God then you no longer have free will.
Atheism is a necessary part of the human condition, as is Love & Death, because it shows our ability to disbelieve is still there.
As you correctly say, once God is beyond doubt you’d have no choice but to believe.
As per another post, the man who developed the Atheist philosophy you rely upon through people such as Hitchens ( Dawkins isn’t a philosopher so his arguments tend to be shallow - based in the material world) was Professor Anthony Flew.
He successfully argued against faith and religion, the existence of God between 1955 and 2004, and was regarded as the World’s greatest Atheist.
He followed the Socretean argument of pursuing the question where ever the answer took him - dialogic - see link on Socrates
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
Have you read any of Flews books on Atheist philosophy? It’s the basis of pretty much of all of what Atheism bases it’s arguments on today - he first work arguing against the existence of God was 1955 and he pursued this rigorously his whole life
Hiya Andrew.
Like apple pie, I would say that love physically exists if you can find some of its ingredients in the body. As far as I'm aware, they haven't found any God ingredients yet.
You can recreate feelings of love. Remember that experiment where they had strangers sit across from each other and directed to silently just stare into the eyes of their opponent? They started to develop feelings of love. Amazing! Yes, philosophy describes love. So does poetry and science.
Your god is a girl? That's cool :D
Yes, lots of people have beliefs in gods. I think this is due to there being a lack of good accessible information, tradition, culture, etc.
LOL warn Liverpool. Hahaha.
Atheist philosophy: yes, we do tend to lean more towards materialism. Maybe we all have trust issues :P
I've never read Flews. Thanks for the heads up. I'm currently neck deep in books (3 on the go + steemit). My eyes are bigger than my belly when it comes to books. 'Add to cart' without having extra time to add to my reading time.
My atheism started as a child. I just didn't believe it even though I tried to. I suppose that must've set me up to search for others like me, eh.
Thanks for the thoughts and here's hoping you get pleasant weather for your tour.
Cheers
On the apple pie analogy maybe I haven’t explained very well:
I’ll try again-
You cannot hold love in your hand, it has no material status.
You cannot weigh it, it has no mass.
You cannot measure it.
Love is a philosophical concept.
You can measure the effect of Love - a physiological response, chemical markers that excite or are involved in its perception. We can see Love occurring and having an influence. We cannot measure it directly.
That’s simply fact about something hopefully we both know and have experienced.
If you still disagree then I’d suggest we wait until such time as you can understand something that is normally accepted by both scientists and philosophers.
As a poet, Love is an important thing to understand, if you could bring it down to being a material thing then it would be destroyed for ever. People would start to reject Love.
Hiya Andrew
Flews: I'll reserve commenting on him until I get some reading under my belt first. I know I wouldn't be able to do the subject proper justice in my current state. I'm not concerned about the cost of a book (think I can stretch to that); I'm time poor and have many books on my to-read list.
If he thinks there's any intelligence behind this universe, then I disagree with him. It most certainly wasn't intelligently designed for life. Only a tiny fraction of 1% is capable of supporting any form of life. Most of the universe is hostile to it. I think life is a random fluke.
Atheist industry: what wrong tools? What did they just pull out of a hat, Ta-dah-style? I can't speak for others but I form opinions based on the things I read and personal experiences. The only tools I use are honest research into topics. Obviously, I prefer to read experts who have proven they are capable of genuine research using proper techniques, and am repelled by 'experts' as soon as they are shown to be dishonest or employ dishonest tactics to win at any cost.
I watched a Kent Hovind video the other day! He believes every word of the bible is true. His style of debate is slippery, evasive and dishonest. It's hard to respect people who pull tricks to 'win'.
Philosophy isn't really my cup of tea; it takes navel gazing to an expert level. I like solids. Facts. I feel more at home with stuff that can be measured and tested.
I think the history of religion is as relevant as the history of communism. If it was capable of inspiring such horrors, then it's important to unpack and interrogate it in the hopes of avoiding future catastrophes. Look at Islam. They're still in Crusade mode and it ain't pretty. All coz religion.
Love: yes, it's a philosophical concept and an emotion. These are hard to describe and quantify, I totally agree. But, everyone seems to agree it exists. It's integral, how humans bond with other humans, important to the survival of the species. It's universal.
God: not so much. Gods are not part of the human package. They were created externally for other purposes and, if we look at history, have not exactly been great for the species.
Stay with your facts - avoid Truth, Love etc - enjoy the life you have and focus on things you can understand
Have a good life ;-)
Ah, you've misunderstood me. I seek TRUTH and UNDERSTANDING. I love LOVE. It's not necessary to bend or warp reality to make a pre-existing belief work. It's about being real and honest.
I wish you well too
Peace :D
You can’t understand Truth or Love using science - you have to use philosophy - I have understood - it’s just that to be able to discuss something there needs to be a mutual understanding - where that’s not feasible then it’s like two foreigners meeting and trying to discourse - one with an open hand and the other with a sword and a spear - it can’t easily produce a good outcome
No offence but I need to leave the discussion for the time being - I’m happy to discuss science with you or dispute your assertion that religion has had no positive effect - the fact we are holding this discussion in the western world is due to religion, as one example. But I do like to deal with facts in discussions, not stuff that folk bandy around chat rooms etc and then self congratulate each other that it’s true - far better to leave that to self congratulate itself and forget about it in my humble opinion :-)
Have a good weekend ;-)
By the way @anjkara, you very kindly noted I was voting at 100% - I’ve spent ages trying to change it - it appears that everyone with low Steem ( newbies) votes with 100% until they reach enough Steem to get a slider - however I’m sure when I started it was at 50% so if you know anyway of setting it back I’d be eternally grateful :-)
Hi @Anjkara thanks for your reply and best wishes for our voyage, really appreciated ;-)
Flews is really worth reading for two reasons:
He is the basis of a significant amount of Atheist philosophy
And the sting in the tale
Following an accepted rationale for logical thinking he came to the conclusion there must be a ‘God’, in that there must be an intelligent force behind the universe
There are a myriad of reasons for this and you should read his book, it’s not expensive, very well written and of course most of it is about the arguments for Modern Atheism, which he developed
There is an industry behind the Atheist polemic curently. It centres on using the wrong tools to discuss things, then like smoke and mirrors, it pulls the rabbit out of the hat and says ‘look at that’
His book can be found via this link below, Prof Flews never became religious
( in my view there are valid discussions to be had regarding what humankind has done with religion, as I think you know- but what humankind has done when compared to the important question - Is there a God, whilst potentially disgusting, is actually irrelevant. You deny something, which is your right, which as an agnostic I came face to face with and cannot deny. Thus your denial is as irrelevant to me as my faith is to you, it makes no difference. If you choose to deny anything I know for certain is there then that’s simply your choice, the reasons don’t really matter, just your choice)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/There-God-Notorious-Atheist-Changed/dp/0061335304
I’ll post something for fun for us to discuss if you have time, look out for the link ;-)