Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

^ Have it your way. 

I conceded that I exaggerated. My initial point, being that Catholicism and Islam are mutually exclusive, stands and is valid. You may argue that it is not precise enough, but I think that with just a tiny amount of common sense anyone can understand that what I mean is that someone cannot be Catholic and Muslim at the same time. I also accepted Iván's argument about the common heritage of these religions - but that, as Catholics and Muslims will confirm, doesn't mean that people could be both Catholic and Muslim at the same time. You're either a Catholic, a Muslim, or something else - that's mutual exclusiveness as far as I'm concerned. I also elaborated on how these religions are specialized version of the initial one (Judaism) - which means that they added doctrines on top of Judaism which turn them into entirely different religions (as Jews will confirm). Any way you look at it, my claim is correct.

If that still doesn't make sense to you - I don't care.


BTW: I now realize that I misread your question - when I replied "Of course not. [...]" I thought you meant whether I thought I had changed Iván's point of view - since in the previous post we were talking about that. As I said here - I exaggerated. But I don't think that I grossly misrepresented him, since he disagreed with my claim of mutual exclusiveness. You can analyze Iván's posts as to whether he's blowing my points out of proportion ...


Edited by Mr ProgFreak - September 04 2010 at 15:47

CCVP wrote: OK, I have spent time enough on the internet top see much better and amusing trolls than you. Ivan may fall for your stuff becuse he is kind of old and has a family, so he isn't quite familiar with this, but come on.

Hey, I'm not kind of old with 46 tender years  And I'm single at the moment with no sons.

Dean wrote: CCVP wrote: Dean, Philosophy is not a science, it is a knowlege in itself. It is a mean to understand and explain reality, jsut like science, but with different means and results. Science uses experimentation and trial and error to decypher what make  things work. It is basically a mechanic trying to understand how an engine works. Philosophy, on the other hand, is used to explain usually immaterial things or things which science cannot understand or analyze. Back when our means of understanding reality were limited and science were nothing but a fetus in the minds of men, philosophy was used to conceive machines and explain how things worked. How aplyable it is today i simply do not know, but I wouldn't discard it as useless. After all, we still use common sense, on our daily lives despite being the most flawed and imperfect kind of knowlede known to men. I know what philosophy is. In antiquity there was no difference between philosophers, alchemists and scientists - we have managed to consign alchemists to the history books, I believe that now is the time to do the same with philosophers.   My contention is that philosophy explains nothing. For each theory there is a counter theory, for each counter theory there is an alternative theory - none of these are provable, all of them claim to be common sense. No two philosophers can agree on anything - if they did they would be out of work. It is a self-propagating pastime that feeds on itself and has never produced anything of any worth - even as a purely intellectual exercise. If I asked for a philosophical theory that has any practical application what can you give me?   And has little to do with common sense. If philosophy was common sense then philosophers would be out of work.

I understand what you mean, but I don't think it is quite like that. I mean, many sciences, special those which deal with society and the individual, use philosophy as its stepping ground. Even something as basics as the law ins completelly backed by an enourmous array of philosophy, believe it or not.

Sure there are the theory problem, but they are mostly just tricks and shows. Most of those aren't backed up by people with credibility and so it mostly gets reduced to some very few points in which there are actual constructive disagreement.

But yes, I understand completely wht you mean. I have a friend that studied philosophy and he quit the damn thing because it just led to nowhere. The true philosophers are not the ones with majors, but the ones that actually make knowlege out of thin air.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: CCVP wrote: OK, I have spent time enough on the internet top see much better and amusing trolls than you. Ivan may fall for your stuff becuse he is kind of old and has a family, so he isn't quite familiar with this, but come on. Hey, I'm not kind of old with 46 tender years  And I'm single at the moment with no sons.   Now, I don't believe Mike is a troll, he's a fundamentalist atheist with a lot of hatred for religion, even when I disagree with him, I defend his right to disbelive, what I don't accept is that my words are changed, that's all.   Iván

So Mike's religion is bashing other people's religion? How interesting. . . .

CCVP wrote: I understand what you mean, but I don't think it is quite like that. I mean, many sciences, special those which deal with society and the individual, use philosophy as its stepping ground. Even something as basics as the law ins completelly backed by an enourmous array of philosophy, believe it or not. Sure there are the theory problem, but they are mostly just tricks and shows. Most of those aren't backed up by people with credibility and so it mostly gets reduced to some very few points in which there are actual constructive disagreement. But yes, I understand completely wht you mean. I have a friend that studied philosophy and he quit the damn thing because it just led to nowhere. The true philosophers are not the ones with majors, but the ones that actually make knowlege out of thin air.

Dean wrote: CCVP wrote: I understand what you mean, but I don't think it is quite like that. I mean, many sciences, special those which deal with society and the individual, use philosophy as its stepping ground. Even something as basics as the law ins completelly backed by an enourmous array of philosophy, believe it or not. Sure there are the theory problem, but they are mostly just tricks and shows. Most of those aren't backed up by people with credibility and so it mostly gets reduced to some very few points in which there are actual constructive disagreement. But yes, I understand completely wht you mean. I have a friend that studied philosophy and he quit the damn thing because it just led to nowhere. The true philosophers are not the ones with majors, but the ones that actually make knowlege out of thin air. I accept that philosophy has been a basis for those human "emotional" sciences (the humanities) that aren't real science such as social science, economic science and political science. I wonder what those social, economic and political landscapes would be like if philosophy had kept it's meddling nose out of it and not applied their particular form of bias in attempting to malform the world into an image that fits some pre-conceived ideal. In those cases philosophy is not trying to describe nature, but is forcing nature to fit the narrow description they've produced. So far none of these philosophies have worked out too well in practice because nature cannot be altered so easily. (and by nature I mean human-nature, human social nature, human political nature, human psychological nature, human moral nature, human ethical nature, human aesthetic nature and human metaphysical nature)

I don't know if it is just as easy as that. It have been tried. I mean, social "sciences" and other stuff are not as easy as mathematics. Most of times, it does not have an answer or the problems it present cannot be solved by the imple fact that solving social problems lots of times lead to totalitarian attitudes (in order to change that social disposition overnight) or social engeneering (Pol Pot, Hitler & Stalin being the prime example of how well that works).

JJLehto wrote: Just a word of warning CCVP. If you plan to make any headway or really go anywhere at all.... This thread has been going on just like this for 112 pages Hail Satan But what if Satan is God? Like God is polar or some crazy made up pseudo intellectual stuff. Also atheism is a faith LOL Also, ignore me

I don't expect nothing, actually. And yes, atheism is as much as a religion as most neo-pentecostal evangelical churches / televangelists churches, so either you have to have a lot of faith to sing with the choir or. . . . . Well. . . .

I think you get it.

Dean wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Dean wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Whatever, I'm still a realist. So am I, but not by that definition. I can be a realist about some unobservable entities when the limits of what can be observed are restricted by physics, for example the detection of sub-atomic particles directly is physically impossible, we can only see the effects of them, but when it ventures into unobservable entities that are purely abstract like knowledge and belief then my common sense says the limits of observation do not apply and science cannot apply. To me "observation" also includes indirect methods and even abstract mathematical theories. The key is that they follow from - and are consistent with - direct observations. A good example would be the big bang ... I didn't observe it directly, but I could measure background radiation and conclude from the various calculations that something like the big bang must have happened in order to explain the radiation. Isn't that what I said?

The difference is that I think that this is still covered by "scientific realism". Which means that we seem to be in basic agreement about how we see the world (reality), but we are quivering over words.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: CCVP wrote: I don't expect nothing, actually. And yes, atheism is as much as a religion as most neo-pentecostal evangelical churches / televangelists churches, so either you have to have a lot of faith to sing with the choir or. . . . . Well. . . . I think you get it. How so? Please explain to me what I need to have faith in in order to hold the Atheist position - which, as a reminder, goes as follows: I don't believe in any God claims until there is evidence to do so.

Well, to believe (or not to) is one thing. To defend it somewthing as strongly as you do you need to have faith.

Besides, if you are trying to convince people that you are right you are basically trying to convert people. The thing most atheist don't get is that, in spite of what they think, the way they desbilieve something is actually the same as having a religion. The main difference is that you don't expect nothing at all and usually adopt a pessimistic world view (philosophically speaking).

I can't precisely explain that because the explaqnation basically uses a lot of psychological stuff which i am not very familiar with. However, the basic idea of the thing is that the human mind cannot truely understand things, most of times we simply believe that what we do is right and go on with our lives. These are the so-called dogmas.

We believe that math is exact and, because of it's suposed precision, we use it as the basic mean or method to explain things in nature (scientific method, etc). like it or not, many of the postulades in math simply uses dogmas as their starting point, exactly like religion, and everybody seem to be fine with it. How is that so very different from religion? It simply is not. It is just more socially acceptable to believe in scientific dogmas with no explanation whatsoever than believe in religious dogmas.

Same thing with atheism. There are many, many ways to explain why God does no exist. Some just go like "f**k it, i don't care" and some do have some arguments. The ones that do have arguments must use dogmas to back your claims, even if they are so back on your train of thought (or of the persond that DID thought that) that they simply do not matter at this point, so they are seen as rational and precise, despite the fact that they used the same method of thinking as the ones they are trying to debunk. The main difference is that science and theories that try to bakc up atheism is that science do have some kind of aplication beyond personal enlightment or personal world view, one of the many conducting points of both atheism and religion.

There are much other things that need to be said, but I really don't have the scholar preparation to do so, but you can go all day long (literally) puting those two together as similar things.

At  the end of the day, the best thing that can illustrate this is the popular horseshoe theory: the opposites are closer with eachother than with the core/center.

Hope that it won't be a non-answer.

Edit: I'm not saying I don't believe in scienve nor that i am a creationist or something like it (I do have a critical sense, you know), just questioning  things.


Edited by CCVP - September 05 2010 at 03:14