What are your unpopular opinions? (Vol. 2)

[gregs656]

bodhi said:

Still massively disagreeing I will be honest, as I see atheism and agnosticism as two completely different things. Agnostics don't believe in anything in particular but are happy to see proof, atheists strongly believe there is no higher power - and judging by Dawkins followers and a certain comedian who created The Office, will not be persuaded otherwise.

It's a subtle difference, but a massive one imo.

An absence of a belief is not a belief.

Agnosticism is a conceit. A fudge. It is a euphemism developed for polite company in Victorian England. It is Pascal's wager in different language. No one lives agnostically. People either have their faith, or they don't.

[paulguitar]

gregs656 said:

An absence of a belief is not a belief.

Agnosticism is a conceit. A fudge. It is a euphemism developed for polite company in Victorian England. It is Pascal's wager in different language. No one lives agnostically. People either have their faith, or they don't.

I've thought for quite a while that in many cases agnostics are really atheists that haven't thought it through much yet.

[Dr Jekyll]

Buddhism isn't exactly a religion though, and to further confuse the issue Buddha seems to be based on the same person as the christian St Josaphat.

[Golfgtimk28v]

captain_cynic said:

My issue isn't that you believe in god... Your issue is that I don't believe in your god,

I don't believe in God doesn't mean i don't believe there could be one, old or new gods, and I'm not arrogant enough with my monkey brain to say I know the true answer, when we know zip about the mechanics of the universe.

captain_cynic said:

Now you've got two options when it comes to my opinion, you can rail against it and continue to thrash against a wall of logic or reason... or accept I have a different opinion to you.

Logic or reason against a brain evolved through millions of years to not apply that to things we think and do.

captain_cynic said:

Now we can say Buddha exists or really, existed... But Buddha isn't a god. An important lesson for you here is that you seem to be trying to tar all atheists with the same brush without realising that there are huge differences, there are literally millions of religious atheists in Buddhism alone.

The issue is, as other Atheists love to do, is already deciding what others think, coming to a conclusion they think is right, and are not happy to even challenged their own thinking. They end up thinking the same as the ones they think they are different to. A religion that now has no god is still a religion.

[stemll]

I thought Red Dwarf cleared this up years ago

[simon_harris]

Is it time for the "any sufficiently advanced technology will appear like magic" quote yet?

There are no gods, there may well be beings who appear to have god like powers, but we have no evidence of that.

I like Ricky Gervais's take on it (or whomever he stole it from) If Christianity disappeared today in 1000 years whatever new religion and deity appeared to replace it, it would not be recognised as christianity. If all Science disappeared today in 1000 years it would be rediscovered exactly as it is now.

[Bill]

paulguitar said:

someone else said:

A god created by monkey brained animals, probably not, but a God of suchlike we can't even imagine that doesn't fit the current rules of what defines a God, probably, there are billions of things in our universe that make little sense.

Well, that's all fair enough, but inventing 'gods' to fill in for what we don't understand is intellectually unsatisfying. Better, perhaps, to accept there is plenty we don't understand, keep seeking as much knowledge and understanding as possible, and in the meantime, resist making stuff up.

I disagree. It's a ridiculous fudge. There's "probably" a god out there that "doesn't really fit the definition of god". Utter bks.

A) Bearing in mind our current (limited) understanding, what evidence is there? We haven't found life elsewhere (yet), nevermind intelligent life. So what form does this all encompassing "not a god as we understand* it".

B) if it doesn't fit the definition of a god, then what is it??


*"Understand" meaning we've made it up from the outset.

Edited by Bill on Monday 6th February 16:11

[e-honda]

Bill said:

I disagree. It's a ridiculous fudge. There's "probably" a god out there that "doesn't really fit the definition of god". Utter bks.

A) Bearing in mind our current (limited) understanding, what evidence is there? We haven't found life elsewhere (yet), nevermind intelligent life. So what form does this all encompassing "not a god as we understand* it".

B) if it doesn't fit the definition of a god, then what is it??


*"Understand" meaning we've made it up from the outset.

Any form that is capable of making a universe.
The idea that no one created it, it's just here, it came out of nothing, or it was somehow always there, even though there was no there for it to be is as absolutely unbelievable lacking any kind of proof as the idea that it wasn't there but then something made it.

[Strangely Brown]

e-honda said:

The idea that no one created it, it's just here, it came out of nothing, or it was somehow always there, even though there was no there for it to be is as absolutely unbelievable lacking any kind of proof as the idea that it wasn't there but then something made it.

You're talking about God there, right?

[e-honda]

Strangely Brown said:

You're talking about God there, right?

The universe
That a god may or may not exist inside of or outside of, or both.

[deckster]

e-honda said:

The idea that no one created it, it's just here, it came out of nothing, or it was somehow always there, even though there was no there for it to be is as absolutely unbelievable lacking any kind of proof as the idea that it wasn't there but then something made it.

I would change "lacking any kind of proof" to "according to the best observations and data we have available". People aren't just making this stuff up.

"We can't currently explain what we're seeing" is quite different from "we don't know anything".

[Strangely Brown]

e-honda said:

Strangely Brown said:

You're talking about God there, right?

The universe
That a god may or may not exist inside of or outside of, or both.

Hmmm... the description seems to fit the classical definition of the Christian God pretty well. Perhaps even better than our current understanding or hypothesising of the universe.

[Bill]

e-honda said:

Any form that is capable of making a universe.
The idea that no one created it, it's just here, it came out of nothing, or it was somehow always there, even though there was no there for it to be is as absolutely unbelievable lacking any kind of proof as[b] the idea that it wasn't there but then something made it.[/b

True, but what plausible mechanism is there for that? It just shifts the "we don't know" one level up to wondering where the "something" that made the universe came from.

That's just higher level god of the gaps stuff.

[bodhi]

gregs656 said:

An absence of a belief is not a belief.

Agnosticism is a conceit. A fudge. It is a euphemism developed for polite company in Victorian England. It is Pascal's wager in different language. No one lives agnostically. People either have their faith, or they don't.

Curious argument, considering as I posted earlier Dictionary.com defines atheism as the belief that there is no God.

Almost seems as if you're trying to convert me to your religion tbh

[Strangely Brown]

bodhi said:

gregs656 said:

An absence of a belief is not a belief.

Agnosticism is a conceit. A fudge. It is a euphemism developed for polite company in Victorian England. It is Pascal's wager in different language. No one lives agnostically. People either have their faith, or they don't.

Curious argument, considering as I posted earlier Dictionary.com defines atheism as the belief that there is no God.

Almost seems as if you're trying to convert me to your religion tbh

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. i.e. They record how words are or have been used. They do not define what words mean.
The literal meaning of athesim is A-theism. A lack of theism. In the same way that A-symmetry is a lack of symmetry. A-typical is a lack of typicality.

The fact that some people use atheist to be a belief in the absence of god does not change its literal meaning as written.

HTH.

Edited by Strangely Brown on Monday 6th February 16:26

[TwigtheWonderkid]

p1doc said:

loafer123 said:

On a lighter note, my unpopular opinion is that I am not interested in Happy Valley and wish the BBC would stop going on about it.

watched last 10mins as thought news was at 10 seemed ok but nothing special lol

It actually is something special. One of the best TV dramas this country has ever produced. Give it a go from the start, Series 1 and 2 are on iPlayer, series 3 is the one just aired.

[QJumper]

Golfgtimk28v said:

The issue is, as other Atheists love to do, is already deciding what others think, coming to a conclusion they think is right, and are not happy to even challenged their own thinking. They end up thinking the same as the ones they think they are different to. A religion that now has no god is still a religion.

Not really. A religion generally has a belief system that people follow, often with rules and rituals that run either as a part of, or parallel to, one's daily life.

Pretty much all religions require one to do something in the practise of that religion. An atheist has no belief system, and so just gets on with life without any additional rules and rituals, and doesn't have to do anything additional.

In other words, a lack of belief isn't a religion.

[QJumper]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

p1doc said:

loafer123 said:

On a lighter note, my unpopular opinion is that I am not interested in Happy Valley and wish the BBC would stop going on about it.

watched last 10mins as thought news was at 10 seemed ok but nothing special lol

It actually is something special. One of the best TV dramas this country has ever produced. Give it a go from the start, Series 1 and 2 are on iPlayer, series 3 is the one just aired.

I think it's good too.

Not happy though.

[QJumper]

e-honda said:

Any form that is capable of making a universe.
The idea that no one created it, it's just here, it came out of nothing, or it was somehow always there, even though there was no there for it to be is as absolutely unbelievable lacking any kind of proof as the idea that it wasn't there but then something made it.

That's the fallacy that the faithful use to support their faith.

It's a bit like saying that if I have to define X, in an equation, but have insufficient information to do so, then it's just as valid to say that X is some kind of mystical number that means anything and everything, than it is to say that X is a defined number which cannot yet be determined.

In other words, there are questions for which we don't yet have answers, but in no case is making up an answer, that has no evidence to support it, a better alternative to saying we don't know yet.

[paulguitar]

QJumper said:

In other words, there are questions for which we don't yet have answers, but in no case is making up an answer, that has no evidence to support it, a better alternative to saying we don't know yet.

Yup. And yet religions have been lying to people for millennia. It's very weird.