The Theist - Agnostic - Atheist Poll

Planting the seeds of doubt seems much healthier to me than dogma. Of any kind. Doubt leads to discovery. Dogma leads to dogma. Of any kind.

Theist in the strongest sense of the world.  Personal God of the bible of the original writings.

I'm not completely convinced that colour 100% subjective and can't be objective. If I radiate you with electromagnetic radiation at a wavelength of 650 nm you're going to say get that damn red light out of my eyes. Why do you call it red? Because that is the name of whatever stimulates the L cones in your eye and not the M or S cones, and what does that is light of wavelengths greater than 650 nm, which you learnt as an infant was called the colour red. It really doesn't matter how your brain interprets or perceives that information, but colour mixing theory suggests that every one generally sees it the same way so when you mix the wavelength of light that you have learnt is called Red with the one you have learnt is called Green the resulting perceived colour is the one you have learnt is called Yellow - but it is not Yellow light.

Edited by Dean - December 05 2009 at 19:20

               Thank God I am an Atheist

Edited by weetabix - December 05 2009 at 19:28

Dean wrote: I'm not completely convinced that colour 100% subjective and can't be objective. If I radiate you with electromagnetic radiation at a wavelength of 650 nm you're going to say get that damn red light out of my eyes. Why do you call it red? Because that is the name of whatever stimulates the L cones in your eye and not the M or S cones, and what does that is light of wavelengths greater than 650 nm, which you learnt as an infant was called the colour red. It really doesn't matter how your brain interprets or perceives that information, but colour mixing theory suggests that every one generally sees it the same way so when you mix the wavelength of light that you have learnt is called Red with the one you have learnt is called Green the resulting perceived colour is the one you have learnt is called Yellow - but it is not Yellow light.   I chose purple because purple light does not have a wave length - it is not a spectral colour - it can only be seen by people with working L and S cones.

Edited by Negoba - December 05 2009 at 19:30

Negoba wrote: Dean wrote: I'm not completely convinced that colour 100% subjective and can't be objective. If I radiate you with electromagnetic radiation at a wavelength of 650 nm you're going to say get that damn red light out of my eyes. Why do you call it red? Because that is the name of whatever stimulates the L cones in your eye and not the M or S cones, and what does that is light of wavelengths greater than 650 nm, which you learnt as an infant was called the colour red. It really doesn't matter how your brain interprets or perceives that information, but colour mixing theory suggests that every one generally sees it the same way so when you mix the wavelength of light that you have learnt is called Red with the one you have learnt is called Green the resulting perceived colour is the one you have learnt is called Yellow - but it is not Yellow light.   I chose purple because purple light does not have a wave length - it is not a spectral colour - it can only be seen by people with working L and S cones.   Color is still a characteristic of the subject and not the object. The same object will be perceived differently by species with different methods of gathering light information.   Dean was actually helping the argument by picking purple. (I actually didn't know that but it makes sense. I'll have to go look that stuff up)

The colour 'thang' is damn good fun. Problem - given that I recognise a portion of wavelength as 'red' and Negoba recognises that exact same portion of wavelength as 'blue' (or one of us cannot see that part of the visible spectrum at all)  - surely the only concrete reality that this proves to exist is that we both have genetically limited sense organs - some people can perceive more colours than others but as you have already explained, colours are illusory, they may very well enhance your life but that doesn't make them any more real. Taking this a step further, it seems clear that the authorship of any belief system based just on what the 5 senses we have available to us report back to our brains as raw experiential data, ain't going to win many design awards. Like I said earlier, it is transparent that I have no scientific schooling, but shouldn't more stringent/objective/verifiable/quantifiable methodology etc blah be used to argue your case: that even if I cannot perceive your subjective reality, the latter really exists ? (or am I guilty of a
non sequitur - like the dog that chases its own tail ?)

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Your disbelieve in God has no evidence at all. Isn't this a contradiction?

The reason why many Atheists don't believe in (any) God is that there is no evidence that it exists. Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence, if evidence should exist. I can refer you to the other thread about Evolution vs. Creationism - one of the pieces of evidence that support the existence of God should be evidence that the world was created like it was described in the Bible. But when we look at the actual evidence (fossils, DNA etc) it suggests that it happened completely differently, and everything suggests a development that was not guided in any way (there was no designer).

This is why I say that I'm certain, beyond reasonable doubt, that the kind of God that we're talking about when we use the word "Theism" doesn't exist. There may exist supernatural beings outside or beyond this universe, but even then two things would be clear:

1. They wouldn't interfere with life on earth, so their existence would be totally irrelevant to our personal lifes.
2. It still would not explain existence in general, and that question ("why do we exist") will probably never be answered. Even if you try to answer it through your (illogical) Christian God, you would next have to explain who created God, and why.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: 2. It still would not explain existence in general, and that question ("why do we exist") will probably never be answered. Even if you try to answer it through your (illogical) Christian God, you would next have to explain who created God, and why.

The T wrote: ^hey Ivan, as a lawyer that you are, aren't the ones that want to prove that something happened the ones with the burden of proof? (or whatever it is called in english). First time i see someone requiring evidence for a negative... Evidence that something isn't there??? If there isn't, by pure logic, how the hell can you have evidence that there isn't? That's why I prefer doubt over 100% certainty that god doesn't exist. Though I tend to favor this idea