Honest question. Is this site a religious site?

She does have by far the most interesting and perspicacious things to say, and it would be nice for the rest of us if she could be persuaded back for the evening, but I don't think you should feel guilty. It is the most wretched feeling to realise that once again you have left undone everything that should have been done because you've pissed the day away talking about biscuit denominations.

D'you know, I feel huge guilt (now that's an interesting emotion/synaptic response/spiritual burden to discuss, wrt god/no god. Do atheists feel more, or less guilt?) about forcing Threadie to fark orf. I'm going to email her and tell her to come back.

UQD - We had this conversation before and I explained to you before that lack of evidence for either side does not mean low probability.

Example: You throw a die in a totally dark room where you can't see the outcome. Therefore, you have no evidence as to the outcome. Still, the probability of any outcome is 1/6, just as it was if the lights were on.

"One can say that God "very probably" doesn't exist without having to use a mathematical sense of the word "probability"."

No you can't, because there is only one "sense" of the word 'probability'. And that is mathematical.

"you can't prove something doesn't exist"

Yes, you can, actually. If you know all the variables. You can prove that 7 doesn't exist on a die.

The problem here is that you don't know all the variables, so you don't really know if the God of major monotheist religions exists or not. You don't have any evidence that he doesn't exist, either.

So, as I said, your position ("There is no God") is indefensible. Agnosticism is the only rational position - if one day I see evidence that God exists, I will believe it. Until then, I have no idea if he exists or not.

Yes, I know a Christian who very happily calls himself a god-botherer. I think it's quite funny.

OBM, yes, I'm short-handing, but when I use 'meaningless', I'm using it to denote 'no inherent meaning'. I'm frankly in awe of people who can acknowledge that and impose their own meanings on their existence. I'd very much like to be able to do it, actually.

lol thought singing was too gay.

pantheists have a selection box, no?

have to go and inter-relate now. I like these eclectic discussions, it suits my attention span eclectic interests.

Actually I'm probably a pantheist at heart, but I've heard their biscuits are awful.

yes I agree with you about meaning being manufactured and ascribed. The extraordinary thing to me is that we should be here at all to manufacture and ascribe meaning, and that there should be anything to ascribe meaning to.

hmm. re uncertainty vs meaningless. I suppose I simply don't believe an uncertain world with no driving hand is a meaningless one, because of my interest (and faith, in the broadest sense) in the human enterprise...

Fundamentally I believe that all meaning is manufactured and ascribed, not inherent and objective.

The Key Change person does actually talk all the way through movies, too.

Actually, excuse me...

Iorek it would have been futile to do so.

My dh you see is one of those who is musical at heart but didn't know it. He professed to be tone deaf, but actually just thought singing was too gay.

Oh yes, meaninglessness is different to uncertainty.

I kind of think agnostics are rather at the sharp end of things, actually. Finding some sort of peace with reality does seem harder if you are in the middle, not sure if there is a God or there just isn't. Kind of like perpetually waiting for the diagnosis.

wouldn't you shout 'key change' just before you put on your serious face and told them you thought the relationship had 'run its course - it's not you, it's me etc'

Then they could respond with a minor plaint..

Don't worry onebat, that is just post modern irony. Particularly if it is to something by Bonnie Tyler or Meatloaf.

God I'm sure I've pointed out the key change in a power ballad before, to fully acknowledge the enjoyableness of the formula

But now I realize how selfish i was

ruty, re your worry about Kay's friend - did you shout "KEY CHANGE" at inappropriate moments during your relationship?

You might be right, ruty. Although I had a singing pupil a while ago whose wife had bought him a batch of lessons for a Christmas present. He had always believed himself to be tone deaf, having been asked to leave the school choir at the age of 8, and indeed it took him a long time to be able to match a note sung to him or played on the piano, but he did get it eventually and a rather lovely voice started to emerge. Maybe it's just like mathematical ability or anything else - part innate but very much affected by early exposure and training.

'meaninglessness' is a rather different animal to 'uncertainty' , I'd say.

arf at 'anxious Christian.' Christian Agnostic sounds a little less, er, full of neurosis, so I think I'll stick with that.

onebat, yes I take your point about putting humanity at the centre of it - I'm sure that is right. On your last point, I would be inclined to say the same of agnostics.

nope he couldn't be trained believe me. And he had been brought up with music, not Bach, but music being played. [starts to worry that she has more in common with Kay's friend than she'd like]