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Emotions, beliefs, and absolute certainties belong in one category, and a willingness to look at the available evidence in another, whether the thing you are certain about is theism, atheism, agnosticism or anything else. If you are unwilling to take into account the preponderance of evidence... you can’t claim “reason” or “science” as your ally.

skado 9 Aug 4
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1

what are the category's titled im wondering

all of the ism's still carry a hint of belief attached

im thinking that there is a bit of subjectivity if u look hard enough

Great question. Let’s call them “Approaches to deciding which working assumptions to tentatively allow to inhabit your worldview”??

1

A thought-provoking, great post, and I enjoyed reading all the threads. Thanks!

Ryo1 Level 8 Aug 5, 2021
1

We’re tired of this manna (what is it?), give us some meat to eat!

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We have no absolute certainty the same way we have no absolute free will. This is why we all have different minds and opinions. I might be thinking of fixing that steak all the way home then get there and fix something else. Choices of mindset will also vary according to income categories. This means that when it comes to choices others may have different choices than you. This is why you can never understand why Charlie committed suicide when you might have had a different solution.

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We can't all know every piece of evidence about every single topic there is in the world. If a new age guru tells me to take cyanide tablets to live forever, I am going to say no, based on my general understanding of what science has said about cyanide. I would still claim science as my ally until science determines cyanide is good for your health.

As an individual you would pass the test. But we are a social species dependent for our survival on cooperation. We don’t need to know everything, but we do need to be aware of the science upon which our survival as a species depends.

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Then you mean to tell me, that you are taking back, all that which you wrote about your absolute certainty that the biblical authors, editor and scribes all wrote in the one literary genre, namely the metaphorical one ?

I can with absolute certainty give you this answer: "no". 😉

🤣 Fern humor 🤣

@skado No this time I am very serious.

@skado What no proper answer ?

@Fernapple it may not be a matter of absolute certainty so much as a preponderance of evidence when the correct symbolism is discovered; the little click you hear when a passage suddenly makes sense

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absolute certainty destroys reasoned evaluation/inquiry.

Yes, but please don't tell that to those who are wedded to their own absolute certainties. 😉

@anglophone I ain't skeered . people like that tend to be miserable sorts anyway.

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Quality of evidence, over “preponderance” of evidence.

Mvtt Level 7 Aug 4, 2021

True. Preponderance doesn't just mean quantity. It includes quality.
[ahdictionary.com]

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@skado learnt something new today 🙂

0

What absolute certainties are you talking about? Emotions and beliefs are subjective, coming from the mind. Theism is based in subjective evidence. Agnostics seek knowledge that a god exist. Atheist have a lack of belief in any god. Both agnostic and atheist want objective evidence for a god existing.

A lot of people who identify as atheist or agnostic go further than a dictionary definition of those terms would support. Many are certain that religion was developed for nothing but nefarious purposes, and has never provided any benefit to humans. That is a belief. It's not supported by evidence. And they are unwilling to look at the evidence when it is offered.

@skado Of course some churches and religious organisations do good. The Salvation Army is a good example but regarding evidence for the existence of any gods or supernatural powers, there is none

@Moravian I disagree with the example of the Salvation Army "doing good". I accept that it may do some limited good under some limited circumstances (but other people and other organisations also do some limited good under some limited circumstances) but I see it as being unutterably evil when it comes to religious scepticisim and LGBTQI.

@Moravian
From an evolutionary perspective, doing good and believing in literal gods is not what religions are about. Their main evolutionary function is curbing certain evolved traits that would otherwise thwart group cohesion. We are a social species, designed by millennia of evolution, to live in small nomadic tribal groups of 150 to 250 individuals, all of whom know each other, and most of whom are related.

Living stationary cooperative lives in large cities full of strangers does not come naturally to H.sapiens. A cultural corrective was necessary to make that happen. Whether the narrative was literally true or not made no difference as long as people believed and cooperated. Organized religion kept, and continues to keep, H.sapiens from going extinct from the one ailment that causes most extinctions - evolutionary mismatch. Atheism, while literally true, is a death sentence for our species if made universally popular without replacing religion’s evolutionary function with something that serves equally well, which atheism alone does not do.

Without corrective religion, about ten thousand years ago, sapiens would have gone where all the other Homo species went before them for various other reasons.

It’s not about doing good. It’s about avoiding extinction, and we are now in failure mode.

@anglophone You may be right. I don't know too much about the organisation and their motives may be suspect but they do quite a lot of good with homeless shelters.
I have a Christian friend who spends a few weeks every year in Nepal with a Christian charity helping to build toilet blocks for women in remote villages and again I would question her motives but the work they do is of great benefit to the women of Nepal,

@anglophone, @skado An interesting concept. I can only speak from my own experience. As a youngster I attended Sunday school and then church for a couple of years until I left home. Most people in the village did the same but now only a few people attend church services and their are dozens of empty churches around.#
Homo Sapiens may be doomed but I don't think it will be the demise of religion that will cause it.
The greatest danger comes from countries where religion is still important. eg the USA and Iran.

@Moravian
The thing you call religion I call religious literalism, which is a near-exact inversion of religion.

“Agnostics seek knowledge that a god exist”

i know you’re going to keep saying this anyway, but let me again suggest emphatically that you might be way off on your definition of “agnostic” a-gnostic against gnosticism or not trying to be gnostic about anything

since no one has any knowledge of any gods actually existing anyway, and by extension at least never will, you might see that your current definition does not even make any sense?

2

Could I make a suggestion, please? "... you can't legitimately claim ...", the idea being to point out the illegitimacy of such claims. I agree with everything else in your post.

4

Agreed. Especially in politics.

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