Any one feel off put by atheist's?

[midniterider]

1 hour ago, Joshpantera said:

 

I'm good with doing a mirror conversation in the Den or anywhere else about ex christian spirituality with no holds barred.

 

I think a mirror conversation in an aggressive area would actually be good, though. I'll certainly be there. 

 

I agree.

[midniterider]

1 hour ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

I wonder if you are confusing terms here? Remember atheism is only the position on whether God's exist. Now most people are actually mostly atheist but some have gone an extra step.

 

This is different from being aspiritualist.

 

I think a better question is should everyone be a philosophical materialist?

Well no... but I just don't see any evidence to support  the claim to the contrary- that is that there is a supernatural or spiritual or metaphysical realm to our reality. But atheism says nothing about this.

 

I think you can be both atheist and a spiritualist. We have some on discord. So the threat title is flawed methinks. It should be anyone put off by philosophical materialist who demand logic and reason as a means of obtaining truth? But that's not catchy 

 

You are correct. Atheism means non-belief in gods. An atheist could believe in esp and psychics and still be an atheist.

 

Philosophical materialist is the more precise term. Should everybody be one?

 

[Joshpantera]

48 minutes ago, midniterider said:

2 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

I'm good with doing a mirror conversation in the Den or anywhere else about ex christian spirituality with no holds barred.

 

I think a mirror conversation in an aggressive area would actually be good, though. I'll certainly be there. 

 

I agree.

 

 

[LogicalFallacy]

1 hour ago, midniterider said:

Philosophical materialist is the more precise term. Should everybody be one?

 

Yes damn it!  

[midniterider]

2 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

 

 

Thank you.

[midniterider]

1 hour ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

Yes damn it!  

 

We should all like Coke over Pepsi.

[LogicalFallacy]

58 minutes ago, midniterider said:

 

We should all like Coke over Pepsi.

Now you are beginning to understand.

[TruthSeeker0]

16 hours ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

I think you can be both atheist and a spiritualist. We have some on discord. So the threat title is flawed methinks. It should be anyone put off by philosophical materialist who demand logic and reason as a means of obtaining truth? But that's not catchy 

And what's a philosophical materialist, how would you define it?

Just think how boring conversations would be if everyone was the same thing and thought the same way. I dunno about you, but I enjoy the debates with different people, as long as I feel like my points are being seriously considered and I'm treated as an equal.

 

 

[wellnamed]

materialism here probably just means the idea that everything that exists is fundamentally physical, in the sense that it all reduces (ontologically, if not in terms of useful explanations) to the kinds of processes that a physicist might study. A common misunderstanding here is that materialism doesn't mean that only physicists are studying real phenomena, or that only a concept of some phenomena expressed in terms of sub-atomic particles is meaningful. You can be a materialist and think that psychology is a useful field of research and that psychological ideas should be expressed in idiomatic language. You just also believe that all of those phenomena do amount to some gloriously complex behavior of a physical system with no "spiritual" components outside the domain of natural science. Sometimes people use the word naturalism to mean something similar, so for example scientists usually practice methodological naturalism which doesn't entail having a strong prior belief that nothing supernatural exists, but does entail a methodological commitment to proceeding with scientific investigations as though no such supernatural world exists. The only methods allowed are methods which would make sense assuming that any given phenomena had some natural explanation.

 

I think it might be better to say that the point of contention between self-identified materialists, or naturalists, and self-identified spiritualists, is in epistemology in general, which incorporates difference in understanding about the role of logic and reason (as opposed to some kind of intuition) but isn't exactly the same as saying that spiritualists reject the use of logic and reason entirely. It's more that they admit some methods which the materialist or methodological naturalist would reject, i.e. some kind of intuition thought to be grounded in processes that transcend the physical world.

[florduh]

There are materialists, and then there are materialists. Science tells us that there is no solid "stuff" but only patterns of energy forming what we call material objects; rocks, water, people, planets. This doesn't mean that Newtonian physics doesn't work or explain anything, it does. Solid objects behave in certain predictable ways, but those solid objects aren't actually solid. That in itself feels a bit woo, though it shouldn't.

[wellnamed]

Yeah, that's why I specified "physical in the sense of being something a physicist would study" rather than physical like I can poke it with a stick. Gravitational fields, microwave radiation, and so on are also "physical" then.

 

Philosophically, one of the more interesting consequences of the triumph of physics is basically that we've given up on ontology, in the Greek sense of wanting to know what kind of stuff exists. What's an electron, really? From a physics perspective it's just a bundle of measurable properties, mostly just mass, charge, and "spin", whatever the hell that is But that's why I say the differences between "spiritualism" and "materialism" are more epistemological than ontological. From a materialist standpoint the idea isn't that some really spooky phenomena can't exist; QM has you covered. It's just the expectation that all the spooky stuff can be studied using empirical methods which make no assumptions that this process must involve something fundamentally different from the rest of the natural world. There's lots of practical reasons why the scientific study of X or Y might be difficult from a materialist perspective, but no philosophical reason why the scientific study of any phenomena would be impossible. Whereas non-materialists generally hold that at least some such non-physically-investigatable phenomena exist.

[disillusioned]

3 hours ago, wellnamed said:

 There's lots of practical reasons why the scientific study of X or Y might be difficult from a materialist perspective, but no philosophical reason why the scientific study of any phenomena would be impossible. Whereas non-materialists generally hold that at least some such non-physically-investigatable phenomena exist.

 

There's also a general assumption (not saying it's your assumption necessarily!) that scientific study is the only valid kind of study. It's an assumption which is fairly well-grounded in the fact that scientific study seems to work pretty well,  while other approaches have historically yielded... limited results. But it may still be the case that the scientific method is not the best we can do, at least in certain situations.

 

Also, the question of whether or not everything actually is physical ought to be considered, and considered seriously, in my opinion.

[wellnamed]

8 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

 

There's also a general assumption (not saying it's your assumption necessarily!) that scientific study is the only valid kind of study. It's an assumption which is fairly well-grounded in the fact that scientific study seems to work pretty well,  while other approaches have historically yielded... limited results. But it may still be the case that the scientific method is not the best we can do, at least in certain situations.

 

Also, the question of whether or not everything actually is physical ought to be considered, and considered seriously, in my opinion.

 

Agreed on both points. Although I feel like there's a fundamental problem with any kind of dualism, which has been known since Descartes. If there's some non-physical thing, but it has causal power over the physical world (which it must, for us to observe it at all; we know all our senses are physically based), then how is that even possible? Even if there were some hidden aspect of that phenomena (akin to hidden variables theories of QM) we would still physically investigate the causal nexus, which is basically just how science works anyway. So I'm not sure the philosophical distinction between monism and dualism matters a lot?

 

I guess the world in which the distinction becomes really important is one in which the causal behavior of some plausible non-physical agent is neither predictable nor stochastic, where it was obvious that there must be some hidden kind of agency or process. Otherwise such a phenomenon would just look like every other physical process, where there's some association between state A and B, and we attempt to understand how that association works.

[VerbosityCat]

On 10/18/2018 at 12:24 PM, TruthSeeker0 said:

And what's a philosophical materialist, how would you define it?

Just think how boring conversations would be if everyone was the same thing and thought the same way. I dunno about you, but I enjoy the debates with different people, as long as I feel like my points are being seriously considered and I'm treated as an equal.

 

 

 

I can appreciate discussion and I'm happy to talk about my beliefs and why for those who are curious (not for those on a deconversion mission because that shit's annoying.) But I like that there is a space where I don't HAVE to deal with constant "well that's woo, prove it, that's not real" sort of bullshit. So like here is my thing... my curiosity is why is there such a weird knee jerk to jump constantly to argue with anybody with woo? How insecure do you have to be to do that?

 

Like why is it that a thought cannot exist on this planet that has any spiritual content or ideology without some atheist feeling the need to "correct" people's ignorance? I don't even feel the need to argue with Christians who aren't getting in my face about it or here to argue. I have Christian friends. I leave them the fuck alone. They don't bother me with their beliefs, I don't bother them with mine.

 

I mean does nobody understand how fucking arrogant that sounds to most normal people? This is actually why atheism will likely only ever be a small group in the world because while many people label "spiritual but not religious" most people are turned off by the religious fervor some atheists show in an attempt to deconvert the world and have a world without meaning because for whatever reason they find their nihilism just fine and dandy and we all should think the same way.

 

I could jump on atheists about materialist assumptions and the problems I have with it, but it's a POINTLESS WASTE OF TIME. They aren't open to that perspective. I'm not wasting my energy on it. I find it fucking EXHAUSTING debating this shit with people whose mind is totally closed to it (they say they aren't, but they are. I've had the discussion too many times. It would be like trying to talk to James Randi. They see things their way, I see them mine. and that is FINE.) But seriously, I can just let atheists be atheists. I don't give a fuck if they think they die and then nothing. How does that affect me? It doesn't. But why do they feel the need to just jump on anything that isn't hardline atheist to demand "proof" when nobody was trying to convert them?

 

Again, "not all atheists". I'm married to an atheist and he has been the most refreshing person in my life because he gave me the total freedom and space to find my own path. He didn't try to push me in ANY direction and respects my spiritual space. If all atheists were like that, I wouldn't have the first problem with them. If all Christians were like that, I wouldn't have a big problem with them.

[LogicalFallacy]

On 10/19/2018 at 10:54 AM, disillusioned said:

But it may still be the case that the scientific method is not the best we can do, at least in certain situations.

 

True which is why many people turn to religion. It fills in the meaning question of life doesn't it? And it would appear spiritual stuff does the same.

 

On 10/19/2018 at 10:54 AM, disillusioned said:

Also, the question of whether or not everything actually is physical ought to be considered, and considered seriously, in my opinion.

 

Agreed. However I would also say the time to accept that not everything is physical and that previously undiscovered stuff outside reality can affect reality is when that's demonstrated. That's my position. Not the strawman that people seem to like creating that "I'm closed, or just want to argue" That's what Christians say when they can't back up their magical thinking. It seems that whenever anyone has a position that can't actually be demonstrated, those people not accepting the position are attacked as close minded, or arrogant, or [insert particular insult that does away with any real explanation]. But what would I know?

[florduh]

10 minutes ago, LogicalFallacy said:

I would also say the time to accept that not everything is physical and that previously undiscovered stuff outside reality can affect reality is when that's demonstrated. That's my position. Not the strawman that people seem to like creating that "I'm closed, or just want to argue" That's what Christians say when they can't back up their magical thinking. It seems that whenever anyone has a position that can't actually be demonstrated, those people not accepting the position are attacked as close minded, or arrogant, or [insert particular insult that does away with any real explanation].

 

That certainly does happen too. How can one dismiss Christian healing but think a spell might just do the trick? Both rely on faith and anecdotal "evidence" and can't stand up to testing. What's the difference? Is there any?

[LogicalFallacy]

24 minutes ago, florduh said:

 

That certainly does happen too. How can one dismiss Christian healing but think a spell might just do the trick? Both rely on faith and anecdotal "evidence" and can't stand up to testing. What's the difference? Is there any?

 

That gets to part of my curiosity and willingness to engage with our spiritual members here because they left the same religion I did. They know prayer is shit and works at the rate of random chance. But apparently while saying Jesus please heal me does nothing, casting a spell and writing sigils does do something. And its this that really puzzles me because its all asserted without any evidence. Of course now I'll be accused of just needing evidence for everything. Well yeah. If I didn't I'd still be thinking Santa Claus is real... and Jesus loves me.

[Joshpantera]

4 hours ago, VerbosityCat said:

I mean does nobody understand how fucking arrogant that sounds to most normal people? This is actually why atheism will likely only ever be a small group in the world because while many people label "spiritual but not religious" most people are turned off by the religious fervor some atheists show in an attempt to deconvert the world and have a world without meaning because for whatever reason they find their nihilism just fine and dandy and we all should think the same way.

 

One of the reasons for this thread is to try and work through problems like this. It's more directed at those who are spiritual maybe letting it fall off, to some degree, and not allowing it to consume them.

 

One of the questions I've faced down is what does it matter, really, if the more hard atheists and ultra skeptics don't see the relevance of engaging anything not strictly proven by science and all of that? And I've found that I don't see why it would matter all that much. It's not as if they're missing out on something that they must not miss out on.

 

I've gone through so much of the 'myth is metaphor' material, and looking at it as more than just a lie. And granted, Campbell and others present arguments. I've followed those arguments all the way through as far as they reach. And I still don't see anything there that doesn't constitute a 'take it or leave' status. Everything points to the transcendent mystery, ok. In other words, the gods are not literally true. That means the gods don't literally exist, hence lack of belief in the existence of gods is well justified - through this spiritual journey into myth. It all sort of comes together in the end. 

 

So I'm wondering how close this is to your beliefs about the gods as ancestors and the spirit of a given people and so on. It sounds to me like you're also taking the gods as something of a metaphor, or symbolic more so than literal existing entities. Is that correct or have I misunderstood the position you're laying out? 

 

 

[Joshpantera]

12 hours ago, florduh said:

 

That certainly does happen too. How can one dismiss Christian healing but think a spell might just do the trick? Both rely on faith and anecdotal "evidence" and can't stand up to testing. What's the difference? Is there any?

 

There doesn't seem to be. Unless it so happens that at least some of the time it works, for the christian or magician. In which case, the common factor would be coincidences, or possibly the power of the mind, or combinations of both.

 

All this praying, and faith, and believing, and carrying on is literally people in the act of feeding their own sub conscious minds, of course. So it is all the same thing in that way - the magick, the praying, all of it. I realized that when I started reading through the old law of attraction stuff. Prayer = manipulating one's own sub conscious. Maybe some are better at it than others. Maybe coincidence accounts for the positive hits. But it's all people taking in thoughts and feelings into their sub conscious. 

 

Maybe someone beats cancer or something with prayer. Some one else manages to do it through magical incantation. Another doesn't do either but gets lucky by chance. 

 

But maybe all three boil down to the mind, and strong will, and those types of explanations. 

[disillusioned]

11 hours ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

Agreed. However I would also say the time to accept that not everything is physical and that previously undiscovered stuff outside reality can affect reality is when that's demonstrated. That's my position.

 

Point taken, and I want to say I agree completely, but I think there's still something to consider here. How would this kind of claim be demonstrated? If the claim is that the non-physical may exist, I'm not sure that we are justified in demanding the usual kind of demonstration (ie, a physical demonstration). Perhaps the demonstration is non-physical as well.

 

Also, the very idea that we need demonstration before we accept claims is something which has grown out of our interactions with the physical world.  I think it's implicitly predicated on the assumption that only the physical exists, which poses a problem here.

 

Having said that, I personally do not have any spiritual beliefs. I'm also not sure the above is very clear. I'm a little rushed at the moment.  I'll try to explain what I mean better later. 

[LogicalFallacy]

9 hours ago, disillusioned said:

Point taken, and I want to say I agree completely, but I think there's still something to consider here. How would this kind of claim be demonstrated? If the claim is that the non-physical may exist, I'm not sure that we are justified in demanding the usual kind of demonstration (ie, a physical demonstration). Perhaps the demonstration is non-physical as well.

 

I have no idea how it would be demonstrated, and to my knowledge it hasn't been, therefore I have no acceptance of spiritual things. Or Magic. JP and I are doing an 'experiment' at the moment regarding seeing a person with pink roller skates. Very unscientific, but I would think if spells and incantations actually work we would see some result even if we cannot explain the mechanism. The same goes for prayer. Prayer does not work, we know this. If it did you'd have the experiment group getting better at much better rates than the control group. IF that was the case, we might not be able to explain it, and there might be questions about it being God, Allah or the big mojo, but prayer (or spell incantation) would have a measurable effect on reality. Reality is reality right? If something isn't real, it's not real. As for physical or not physical demonstration its going to come down to what you are attempting to demonstrate. By saying its not physical aren't you saying its beyond our sensory capability? Therefore its the same as not existing or not real to us. I come back to my thoughts that nothing is supernatural really, because if we discovered spells under x conditions do work reliably it would be in our reality and become just part of natural occurrence. See what I'm saying?

 

Quote

Also, the very idea that we need demonstration before we accept claims is something which has grown out of our interactions with the physical world.  I think it's implicitly predicated on the assumption that only the physical exists, which poses a problem here.

 

I would say the reason we need demonstrations is because plenty of people all over the world make plenty of claims, many contradictory, but expect you to just believe them, and we know from experience most of those claims are just wrong. Hence the scepticism.

 

Quote

Having said that, I personally do not have any spiritual beliefs. I'm also not sure the above is very clear. I'm a little rushed at the moment.  I'll try to explain what I mean better later. 

 

Clear enough to me, assuming I understood it  

[disillusioned]

51 minutes ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

I have no idea how it would be demonstrated, and to my knowledge it hasn't been, therefore I have no acceptance of spiritual things. Or Magic. JP and I are doing an 'experiment' at the moment regarding seeing a person with pink roller skates. Very unscientific, but I would think if spells and incantations actually work we would see some result even if we cannot explain the mechanism. The same goes for prayer. Prayer does not work, we know this. If it did you'd have the experiment group getting better at much better rates than the control group. IF that was the case, we might not be able to explain it, and there might be questions about it being God, Allah or the big mojo, but prayer (or spell incantation) would have a measurable effect on reality. Reality is reality right? If something isn't real, it's not real. As for physical or not physical demonstration its going to come down to what you are attempting to demonstrate. By saying its not physical aren't you saying its beyond our sensory capability? Therefore its the same as not existing or not real to us. I come back to my thoughts that nothing is supernatural really, because if we discovered spells under x conditions do work reliably it would be in our reality and become just part of natural occurrence. See what I'm saying?

 

Yes I see what you're saying,  and I agree in large part. I'm not sure I agree that if something is undetectable to our senses it is therefore not real to us though. Humans are not detectable by deep sea fish,  yet what we do may have very real effects on their lives. So we are a part of their reality,  even if they are unaware of us,  and even if they can't be aware of us. 

 

As for reality being reality, I'm not at all sure that there needs to only be one reality, or that there even needs to be any reality. Don't get me wrong; I tend to think that reality exists,  and I generally steer clear of hypothetical other realities, but I do this because I find it useful to do it,  not because I can show it to be the case. 

 

51 minutes ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

I would say the reason we need demonstrations is because plenty of people all over the world make plenty of claims, many contradictory, but expect you to just believe them, and we know from experience most of those claims are just wrong. Hence the scepticism.

 

Right,  I agree again.  Certainly where claims are made about what we should observe in the natural world we are entitled to investigate using the usual methods. Prayer does not work. Or, at least, it's not very effective at healing diseases. But there are lots of people who accept this and still find it useful to pray for personal reasons.  It makes them feel good.  It gives them a sense of security.  Whatever. In this way,  even prayer can be seen as useful. So I can't really take issue with someone who prays in this way, as long as they don't go about making grandiose claims,  or asking me to pray as well. Same goes for magic, or whatever other spiritual practice helps you get through the day. 

 

And no,  this is not me saying "it's ok as long as they don't really believe it". I think it's possible that someone may really believe this kind of thing, accept that the belief is not rational, and just carry on. Such people say things like "I just know it's true". Call it intuition,  call it silliness,  I don't personally care.  But it does seem to work for some people,  and it's not falsifiable. Seems fairly legitimate to me. 

[florduh]

1 minute ago, disillusioned said:

In this way,  even prayer can be seen as useful.

It's "useful" in the way belief in Santa makes a child feel happy. But here's the problem, a belief in magical powers by any name has often led to some crazy, irresponsible shit going down. Again I go back to the fact that if you think your magical spell/prayer will heal your sick child and therefore forego medical treatment, that is criminal negligence due to stupidity.

[LogicalFallacy]

9 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

Yes I see what you're saying,  and I agree in large part. I'm not sure I agree that if something is undetectable to our senses it is therefore not real to us though. Humans are not detectable by deep sea fish,  yet what we do may have very real effects on their lives. So we are a part of their reality,  even if they are unaware of us,  and even if they can't be aware of us. 

 

I would disagree with humans not being detectable by deep sea fish. I get your analogy, but this is not what I'm meaning by beyond sensory capability. If we went down into the deep the fish would become aware of us and we would be detectable according to their senses. What I'm referring to is claims like God can't be demonstrated because he's so way beyond us in another supernatural realm blah blah. If that is the case then he's beyond our sensory capabilities which for OUR reality is the same as not part of our reality.

 

The human - fish analogy is similar to an alien - human analogy. There might be aliens watching us - reading this even that we are not aware of, but that doesn't make them undetectable or beyond our sensory capability.

 

9 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

As for reality being reality, I'm not at all sure that there needs to only be one reality, or that there even needs to be any reality. Don't get me wrong; I tend to think that reality exists,  and I generally steer clear of hypothetical other realities, but I do this because I find it useful to do it,  not because I can show it to be the case.

 

I agree. I'm meaning what we can show to be true. I can wax lyrical about a potential reality in which I'm a sword wielding spell caster (Hint see the game Skyrim  ) however for all intents and purposes Skyrim does not exist and discussing it as if it exists is a waste of time outside of fantasy entertainment.

 

9 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

Right,  I agree again.  Certainly where claims are made about what we should observe in the natural world we are entitled to investigate using the usual methods. Prayer does not work. Or, at least, it's not very effective at healing diseases. But there are lots of people who accept this and still find it useful to pray for personal reasons.  It makes them feel good.  It gives them a sense of security.  Whatever. In this way,  even prayer can be seen as useful. So I can't really take issue with someone who prays in this way, as long as they don't go about making grandiose claims,  or asking me to pray as well. Same goes for magic, or whatever other spiritual practice helps you get through the day.

 

Yes certainly a wide variety of things have personal utility. I use various meditation and relaxation practices that others might laugh at, but its works for me (And others) - but there is nothing spiritual about it for me. Some people go into rekei healing energies etc, and I've no problem with that unless you try and convince me that its actually real... in which case demonstrate that claim please.

 

9 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

And no,  this is not me saying "it's ok as long as they don't really believe it". I think it's possible that someone may really believe this kind of thing, accept that the belief is not rational, and just carry on. Such people say things like "I just know it's true". Call it intuition,  call it silliness,  I don't personally care.  But it does seem to work for some people,  and it's not falsifiable. Seems fairly legitimate to me. 

 

Yes. I guess where I diverge here, or can't understand is that if you accept within yourself that a belief is irrational why would you continue believing it? That's the real bit I don't get, but that's probably because of my different personality and way the brain functions. Others might be able to compartmentalise having belief A and acknowledging belief A is irrational. I can't do that. It distresses me so I discard the irrational belief A.  

[disillusioned]

16 minutes ago, florduh said:

It's "useful" in the way belief in Santa makes a child feel happy. But here's the problem, a belief in magical powers by any name has often led to some crazy, irresponsible shit going down. Again I go back to the fact that if you think your magical spell/prayer will heal your sick child and therefore forego medical treatment, that is criminal negligence due to stupidity.

 

I agree with all of this,  except for the Santa bit. I think it can be a more than that. Also,  the Santa belief is inherently empircally testable.  The kind of thing I'm talking about isn't. Once you move to testable claims you're doing something different from what I'm talking about.