Honest question. Is this site a religious site?

[follderol]

It seems to me there's a large amount of Christian posts. I've also noticed a fair amount of disapproval for other religions.

I am an atheist. I don't really want to be part of a christian site posing as a parenting site.

So is this actually a Christian place?

Of course, I could always turn this question back on itself and ask why it is that religious believers don't ever seem to have studied atheism properly, and mostly only seem familiar with Dawkins. (That doesn't necessarily apply to anyone here, but it's often the case.)

But that wouldn't be fair. Because, as an atheist, I don't expect anyone to have "studied" the principles and all the writings about it. You don't need to, in order to know which side you stand on. There isn't much to grasp. On either side.

Unquietdad, I've never asked anyone else on here whether they have read any theology, only you, and that is because you seem to have very clear, but very narrow ideas about what constitutes religious belief, and I don't find them very accurate.

For example you say "There have to be gods you don't believe in if you do believe in one or a type of one. There are gods you have "discounted"."

You also ascribe this sort of sentiment to people with faith: "It's convenient for believers, because they always have an answer: "oh, well, my god is special, my god is different, you can't prove MY god doesn't exist, yah boo sucks.""

Yet I have seen many posts on these discussions by believers saying in eloquent terms that they regard their faith as one path of many to the divine. No doubt this kind of faith falls under your definition of "nebulous load of shite", but it is faith nonetheless, and it makes no sense whatsoever to compare it to belief in dragons or the spaghetti monster, or whatever other specious examples come to mind.

I've been following the thread with interest.

The problem as far as I am concerned is the tendency on both sides to insist that one has not thought through an issue far enough until the point at which you agree with them, whereupon you are required to stop thinking ever again.

In my experience, however, if you think 'past' religion, you get to atheism. But I have yet to find a way to think past atheism to get to (or back to) religion.

(And yes I have read quite a lot of theology...)

I agree with Iorek here - people who believe in God do not necessarily "discount" >99% of the available "gods" and believe one specific one is correct while all the others are fiction. If that was the case, then I'd agree with your argument that making a case for their very specific god(s) while claiming everybody else's are fake would be "special pleading".

But many on here believe that there is one single supernatural presence, and that all religions (current and past) are attempts to descibe, understand, and relate to that presence. The reason for the differences between religions is that we are all struggling to understand something which is beyond our grasp, and we believe that some people have got it more right than others, or that they have grasped features which are particularly important.

So - it doesn't worry me if some people believe in God, or Allah, or Thor, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If they are trying to comprehend the supernatural presence, and those descriptions help them, then that's fine.

I can completely understand your decision that there is no such supernatural presence, in the absence of proof. As you say, the default ought to be disbelief. I don't have anything which counts as evidence of its existence - I have an awareness of its existence which is convincing to me personally, but that proves nothing to anyone outside of my head, and I even accept the possibility that what I experience is some randomly-firing neurons.

well as a few people arguing here are agnostics subtle mouse i don't think one is required to stop thinking
I do know what you mean though.

Yes - just to be clear, I also have been through the process of thinking "past" religion to atheism. I have no particular interest in defending religion, and would be equally inclined to challenge someone who was rubbishing an atheist viewpoint as an agnostic or religious one. But these discussions really are pointless if no attempt is made to arrive at a common understanding of the terms involved.

Hi all

I have to agree with Iorek that 'god' must be defined before you can decide if it's reasonable to suppose he exists.

God (to continue the theme loosely) may be a particular packet of chocolate bourbons with no special powers at all. If so then it's possible he exists because I have seen such things as chocolate bourbons.

But! and it's a big butt (must stop eating biscuits) Atheists are generally failing to believe in particular gods who are presented to us. For example "god who made the universe and made fake fossils to trick us and wanted us to obey the commandments until 2000 years ago when he changed his mind" or "god who made the universe and will take me to heaven if and only if I don't cut my hair/do cut my hair/wear a special hat/don't wear a special hat"

If a religious person asked me about a god without defining him at all then no actual conversation took place. It would be like the sound of one hand clapping I think.

UQD - re this post:

By UnquietDad on Wed 28-Jan-09 21:52:23
When someone says "We had this conversation before and I explained to you" that's when I tend to roll my eyes. Having put an unconvincing argument is not the same thing as having "explained" something. I'm not suddenly going to throw my hands up and say "Gosh! What a fool I am! You;re so right!"

Yeah, well, if it's that "unconvincing", how come you have never managed to say anything against it? I have told you again and again that lack of evidence does not mean low probability, and given the example of the die thrown in the dark.

If you have anything to say, let's hear it. If not, you might as well say "You are so right!". (I won't insist on the "What a fool I am" part)

Alternatively, why don't you read a bit on probability and see for yourself that I am right.

re definition of "God"

Surely, we are all talking about the entity that supposedly created the universe and everything in it, including all sentient beings.

All else is religion and can quite possibly be do to misunderstandings of some guy on a camel or the hundreds who passed the message on by word of mouth.

Meaning, it is entirely possible that God may exist without any of the surrounding beliefs (heaven, hell, thou shalt not kill, etc) being correct as well.

IorekByrnison - re "Unquietdad, (...) you seem to have very clear, but very narrow ideas about what constitutes religious belief, and I don't find them very accurate"

That is because he regurgitates Richard Dawkins' arguments, verbatim in parts. "Flying spaghetti monster" is from 'The God Delusion'. So is discounting all previous Gods and atheists only discounting the present version.

Atheists are often accused of defining the religion they then fail to believe in. This is because we assume the speaker to be refering to the definitions we have commonly encountered. This is unavoidable unless every speaker defines their god at the start of the debate.
Since there are so many beliefs (nearly as many as there are believers) I don't see how anyone can assign accuracy.

Onager - the thing is, believers don't usually believe in "god who made the universe and made fake fossils to trick us and wanted us to obey the commandments until 2000 years ago when he changed his mind" etc.

They believe in one god, who has existed since the beginning of the universe, and whose nature they have interpreted to include the characteristics you list.

Therefore, as an atheist, you are not choosing to disbelieve in lots of individual gods, you are choosing to disbelieve in the one God.

We as believers are choosing to believe in that one God, though we disagree about the characteristics of that God, and in how we should respond.

So your (or UQDs?) argument that atheists disbelieve in N gods, while believers disbelieve in N-1 gods and therefore we have to accept that you're only doing the same as us but more so, falls apart.

A fair answer though I'm tempted to say that I could round up a few thousand believers who would claim that their god exists exactly as they have described and that the rest of you are evil followers of satan.

There may be fewer of those about nowadays, at least in the UK, but if some were here now our comments would be accurate as applied to them. So we are not simply making it up as we go along.

About the probability thing. I think language fails us when we speak of that rather than mathamatics. It may well be technically true to say that you can't assign a probability to god's existence.

If I ask how likely it is that a whifflebanger exists then since we have no information to go on (since I just made it up - me not dawkins ) we have to say we can't give that a probability.
Most of us will feel like saying we don't believe in it though or at least will continue our lives without taking the whifflebanger into account. We may even say "the whifflebanger probably doesn't exist" but it's a figure of speech more than a mathamatical statement.

Most of the time humans live by occams razor because on a practical level that works. Of course occams razor is wrong in the sense that the simplest answer is not always the true one, but if you don't go by it you live in chaos. There are an infinite number of things that might exist. We don't consider those moment to moment, but judge by recent experience.

Maybe, but arguing philosophy with them is like shooting fish in a barrel isn't it? To stand a chance of being convincing, you have to be able to make a case against those of us who apply enough rationality to the subject to be able to shoot back.

But with Occam's razor, surely you start with a set of assumptions about what is a simple and acceptable solution? So, for some people "because God made it so" is simpler than the set of complex circumstances which you have to invoke otherwise. Perhaps because they don't fully understand the science behind the other explanation, but I think for a lot of people the set of assumptions which they'd include as acceptable under Occam's razor includes a lot of items which are not really logical or rational. It's nice to think that people are going through their lives working things out logically, but they often have a strange set of assumptions which they've never thought through, by which they judge whether something is the most likely explanation.

Oh yes and this is more fun in many ways

Still, if I ever get rich I may donate to several of the "one true church/es" and some of the wackier bishops as they are a good advertisment for atheism if only they knew it.

well onager God is just a metaphor for the idea of purposeful creation - God and science have no intrinsic mutual exclusivity - the very opposite. The bible is a way of explaining that God through metaphor and parables, etc. Just because a lot of people [though not the majority of christians] say fossils are fake, etc, doesn't mean there is no God [though I am open minded about the possibility either way]

Well I suppose the assumptions are mostly based on what happened last week and the week before. Generally that putting the kettle on produces hot water and so on.

I remember being taught that the pavement is not as solid as I imagined, but made up of particles held apart by forces that could not be seen and were only vaguely understood. I was fascinated, but I continued to walk on pavements without worrying that the particles might decide to spin the other way and allow me to fall through. They'd never let me through before and previous experience is ok as a rule of thumb.

But you are right of course that some assumptions are very strange and lead to people making poor decisions.

In fact isn't that what psychoanalysis is supposed to help fix? That we grow up with rules learned as a child such as "tall people are more likely to hit you" "the color blue is safer" and don't realise we're basing decisions on them.

I'm trying to imagine how the OP could have only chanced upon Christian threads on MN...weird. And funny!

AMIS, I really like your post of 16:39, culminating in:

"We as believers are choosing to believe in that one God, though we disagree about the characteristics of that God, and in how we should respond. So your (or UQDs?) argument that atheists disbelieve in N gods, while believers disbelieve in N-1 gods and therefore we have to accept that you're only doing the same as us but more so, falls apart. "

I'm sure you are right, and that that tack by UQD fails.

But I worry that once we have this apparent idea of the one god, compatible with all the evolving interpretations of god, it is actually just too vague, too abstract, to get us anywhere.

God becomes just 'that which created the universe', etc.

Is it excessively verificationist to say that we can only attach meaning to a concept of that sort by at least beginning to define what sort of thing would count as evidence for the existence of the entity that it designates? Can we even begin
tomake sense of the idea that 'an agency' willed the universe into being? It is superficially meaningful, because grammatical, but is that enough? I don't know.

This thread has now not only made MN classics, it's got quote of the week too
(Kay's response to my musings on Saint Anne being patron saint of women in labour and miners)

"Oh, I dunno, makes a weird kind of sense. In my third delivery, they did send a canary up to check for poisonous gas."

That line deserves to be

PMSL.