To think that some people conflate being “intellectual” with rejecting anything spiritual?

I'm just talking about debating with people on beliefs, that's all, I'm not advocating burning them at the stake!

I find both sides hugely arrogant. To think they can know beyond all doubt, anything really.

So what, really? I don’t say that out of intellectual laziness. My research is quite rigorous.

Let people work out best how to live good lives. Using religion or atheism as a pretext for looking down on others is wrong because the whole thing is undecidable. (Using either as a pretext for violence is of course unspeakable)

Everything can be measured though. We may not have the desire or capability to measure it all, but we can, or will.

Entropy, for example, could be viewed as a fairly abstract concept, but it has an Si unit, Joules per Kelvin.

The Human genome has been mapped. We could go further, and measure every individual atom, but no need. And of course the Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes into play.

What we do not have is Si units for prayer, or wishes. And be honest, that is not for want of trying. The conclusion for that, so far, is that there is no prayer energy. It's possible that might change. But there is no indication of that from any studies. Just statistical probability.

People on here are always saying trust your gut instinct, especially about a man or a situation you’re not comfortable with. There have been threads asking for people’s experiences about someone who gave them creepy vibes from the moment they met them and lots of people came on to share.

So why is it ok to have a gut instinct about people and situations as mentioned above, but it’s not ok to feel like there was a presence in the room? Does it not all come from the same part of your brain?

I'll take the fact you deliberately miss the point as a evidence that you didn't have any counter

Because you can’t prove a negative. Credulous posters tend to come back with ’Well, you can’t prove god/ghosts/Slender Men/Yetis/timeslips etc don’t exist!’ as if it’s some kind of gotcha. And then we get into Bertrand Russell’s teapot ie. the burden of proof lies on the person making unverifiable claims, as opposed to shifting the burden of disproof to others.

My mum and dad had sex, and here I am. We do know how that works. It is a proven fact.

Properly marshalled evidence is a fine thing. But where is it? People are saying, we have no proof therefore I know such and such does not exist.

It isn’t scientific: it is confusing the absence if proof with the proof of absence, and when it is done dogmatically I do call it smug. Unfactual assertions obscure facts

@Datadriven

Couple of point's on your post.

You say, "... is not the only theory and others based on cooperation rather than survival of the fittest (and Dawkin’s selfish gene theory) are being considered."

This "survival of the fittest" mildly annoys me now. It totally threw me off, and I was in my early 50's before I actually understood evolution. I trained as an Engineer, not biology, and I spent too many of those years as an evangelical, partly because that phrase leads so easily into "intelligent design".

Now I refer to evolution as small random genetic changes that might give an organism in a particular environment an advantage, or a disadvantage.

Not very catchy I know, But it describes it better.

To quote you again :" I remain agnostic (atheism is a position of faith)."

No atheism is not a faith. Not in any way shape or form. I am atheist now, after the difficult process of de-converting, and there is no faith involved anywhere. Facts are facts, what is known is proven, what is unknown is just that, unknown.

I am not arguing with you on your post overall, just that last line.

I'm saying that not everything that is can be measured. Do these things then not exist?

You can say we were not created as many times as you like. Just as I can say we were. Neither of us know. There is no proof.

As I understand it, he’s not talking so much about whether seeing a robin in the garden means your granny is getting in touch from beyond the grave as he is about valuing the insights that come from imagination and creativity — he’s originally from an English Literature background before training as a psychiatrist.

It also got pretty mixed reviews. I haven’t read it, but I remember reading reviews that suggested that brain science hasn’t arrived at anywhere near the understanding of the hemispheres’ function thst would be needed to support IMcG’s big arguments about Western civilisation.

It's probably because it's because i'm not putting it well

Or, of course, he could be wrong. It’s not much of a reasoned argument!

Yes, but their PhDs are in things like apologetics!

Sorry if someone has brought this up already, but Ian McGilchrist has written several books on how the West over- prioritise the intellectual side of the brain, in relation the the intuitive side. He says that, as a society, we need to pay more attention to things we can't measure, such as spirituality.
I haven't phrased it very well, but think he's right.

I mean the last few pope's have been pretty educated degree-wise all having multiple degrees including PhDs so I don't think that works as a sweeping statement..

But ‘smug’ is neither here nor there in this discussion. ‘Smug’ has no bearing on the intellectual validity of a position, or someone’s ability to marshal evidence, probability etc.

I think you’re granting undue dignity to superstition, gullibility and credulousness.

The kind of thing I see most often mocked on here is absolute nonsense like ‘psychics’ who told someone ‘unbelievably specific stuff they couldn’t have known’ or ‘my toddler waved at something invisible and the lights flickered, therefore my house is haunted’.

The poster’s lack of basic critical intelligence is evident, as is their extreme reluctance to admit that there’s a perfectly rational reason for their ‘paranormal’ occurrence. There was a thread ages back where a poster claimed to have seen a group of ghost horses and soldiers on Oxford St, and remained absolutely adamant that what she’d seen were ghosts even after someone pointed out that the Household Cavalry go that way returning from dawn exercise in Hyde Park.

Or the way the Savernake Forest story seems to be regarded as true by some posters purely because someone posted it on here and it’s been reposted often. Ditto the angry man in the nightclub. They’re both effective stories, but that in no way makes them true.

I mean, it’s not that I don’t sympathise with someone who is bereaved and longing for a sign someone continues to exist in some form. We’ve all been there.

People like Gregor Mendel, Francis Collins, Nikolai Copernicus and Isaac Newton? Nit very bright…..

Thanks, I am aware of this. My PhD is in a very maths-y STEM field.

Obviously many religious people believe this of their religion. You do not share their axioms. Neither your axioms nor theirs are acceptable to those on the other side.

I cannot see that there is anything inherently superior about either atheism or religion. Either can be used for good or for harm. In recent years, at least in my circles, it’s (a subset of) atheists who have been more smug. This thread is validating that observation.

Some of the things referred to on this thread as obviously, definitely not true are being explored in Physics, though. At a level I certainly can’t understand or explain, but I can follow radio programmes about it, though 😁

We don’t quite know how the universe, or reality works. We don’t understand time. Multiple dimensions and quantum stuff leaves a lot of scope for the world to be not quite as we experience it.

There is so much more to life than that which is measured and explained by science.

I am happy to use the framework of the religion of my culture to describe it, knowing that doesn’t mean the languages of other cultures religions are wrong. It’s possible that science will one day resolve the questions faith explores, but it’s also possible it won’t.

There’s a great book by Orson Scott Card about exactly this. It’s in the Ender’s Game series.

My point was that at some point in some scenarios, ‘absence of proof’ should be turned into ‘proof of absence’ and it’s about where we decide to draw the line and decide that actually, something doesn’t exist.

Yes i’ve stated earlier in the thread that i am an atheist, therefore i do believe god is a made up story. Absolutely. But i think it’s also a good example as to understand where we must draw the line into deciding it is a case of ‘proof of absence’ and not ‘absence of poof’