Freedom From Atheism

You can call it whatever you want. In fact, it would be hilarious to take the word completely away from religious people.

The second paragraph is just plain funny. How old are you?

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By your logic you're "on the right path" when you upset another person (so far I haven't seen anyone come out and say they are offended... which is a step forward in 2016), what does it mean when you're annoyed?

 

I said it appears integrated when we chop it up into pieces and then marvel that the pieces appear to constitute a whole. I don't see what this has to do with solipsism; I'm not saying the universe isn't really "out there"; I'm saying that the whole trope of "integrated complexity" needing an explanation is epistemically misguided.

What does it mean for something to have integrated complexity? It means it has lots of parts that fit together; but how else could it be? This to me seems to sit comfortably in the realm of truisms.

What on earth would a non-integrated universe look like? It certainly couldn't have observers in it the way we understand to even comment on it. It would be some kind of jumble of processes and entities with no underlying or overlying connection. Pure chaos.

The analogy to a lottery does not work, because in a lottery, you have a temporal sequence of tries which fail and then a try which succeeds; but we have no evidence of any "failed tries" with the universe; we only have a universe.

I think it's facile to say the universe has an ordering principle; its a statement like "the number line is arranged".

Well how else could it be?

That's either a really bad question, stemming from a confusion about the nature of physical laws, or a great empirical question which requires only the right kind of machines to be built to measure the answer.

Remember that physical laws are descriptive, not proscriptive; it's not like there was a universe without laws, and then suddenly there were laws, and we're scratching our heads trying to find the tablets in the stars.

Physical laws = ways in which we see the universe works.

You're asking "We have observations about the ways in which the universe works, but how did those ways originate?"

It may not be a sensical question; there may not be an origination, there may not be any other way, or any other way that can yield observers, etc.

It really, really isn't. It's an end. Full stop. Your journey of knowledge has been brought to a close with this one step.

Fabrication of anthropomorphized magic is not a viable answer on the road of knowledge.

You think? I'd say that's a whollop of an obvious answer. To say otherwise is to engage with a god of the gaps argument, plain and simple.

As soon as you say "Well, we can't figure this out properly right now, so why don't we say that it was maybe kind of God . . ." . . . you are just smuggling in your own metaphysical agenda.

And how about theism and deism? :|

Anybody who thinks the universe is "any concotonation of entities and forces" is not somebody you should be discussing the nature of the universe with.

Ingenius is a human description of what we consider to be intellectually stimulating. Don't be confused and think that because it would take a really, really amazing mind to come up with the universe, that therefore such a mind exists and came up with the universe.

Anymore than it would take an amazing hammer to create the universe, therefore that hammer is out there in the orion nebula.

"integrated scheme" lol . . . is the skin of an apple an "integrated scheme" with the rest of the apple?

 

So you would accept as valid solipsism and metaphysics but not supernatural?

How did you manage to sort that out?

 

invoking God really is not the end if its rationalization is included it alludes to a reasoned conclusion in agreement with God.

It would not be metaphysical, the word you want for that one is supernatural.

 

They want to take our souls but they will not win

 

If the vast majority of atheists don't believe in souls, which I think is fair to say, how do they want to take yours?

 

Invoking god makes sense as long as you explain yourself because then you know you're in agreement with god?

 

There are souls here?
Really?

 

Whats that supposed to mean? It sounds like you changed the intended meaning of my post using sarcasm?

 

That was my understanding of your post, hence the question mark. Why don't you clarify what you meant by:

It sounds like you are saying "It's ok to explain something by saying 'God did it' as long as you have a rationalization, because then it will be reasonable to believe that it's in agreement with God". It sounds like circular reasoning. Less alluding to reasoned conclusions, more reasoned conclusions

 

no thats not remotely close to what "I" said, or the intended meaning of what "I" said, in fact its completely contrary to what "I" said and its clear now that you strawmanned it to mean the same thing you said.

 

of course atheism is a religion. Atheists have even gone so far as to establish a pseudo philosophy around themselves to pretend they are not evangelizing and attempting to establish their religion as some sort of superior rationalism to destroy all deity based religions.

They often do that through the use of governments because then they can add lots of men with guns to help them force their point on dissenters.

Which brings us full circle, how do we obtain freedom from atheism?

 

:rofl:

 

whether there is one god, no god or lots of them, i'm sorry but i really don't 'get' how not pretending to know what is not known, is supposed to be not free.

 

The only way to do it is to establish an official state religion and eliminate personal freedom of religion. America was founded by people who were highly motivated to get away from that system.

 

I don't want to be free from atheism or theism. They're both interesting points of view. I just want to be free from people calling me stupid for not agreeing with them.

 

I'll say this much; they want to keep us in fear but when we choose love over fear we help maintain our souls and help restore the balance.

 

Are you sure you know what you're talking about? I'm pretty sure the religious have had, and continue to have the fear corner on lock. After all, they (generally speaking) are the ones clamoring that you have a soul that needs saving, certainly at least in the West.

I have found most atheists to be fairly compassionate, I think that perhaps it's more difficult to be unruly to your fellow man and woman, when you got no (potentially completely imaginary) safety net or displacement blanket to fall back on.