Islam IS by far the most evil religion in the world today, because of its extremists. They are without question the most extreme and dangerous. — DingoJones

It's not much advertised, but drones this very day and everyday are assassinating terrorists, thus preventing many big and bad plans.

Its not anti-west terrorism that is the big problem, its what muslims do to other Muslims. The prevalence of sharia is a tragic blight on the world.

to reinforce my atheistic beliefs — Purple Pond

Perhaps they have to lean more toward agnostic, but still unlikely toward God, but there is more to consider…

Another believer comes along, one without all the Biblical bluster of damnation from a bad Role Model type of God who had the worst character ever in literary fiction …

Hello, and good riddance to the God of religion.

Yes, what a horror made in the image of bad human nature.

Yeah, humans can be terrible, and life, it’s only in modern times that we humans have a bit of relief. Even as recent as a century ago, life was much tougher, not that it’s always a picnic.

This is God’s world, as you would have it.

Indeed, for how could I say otherwise, for the ‘fall from grace’ was but a myth based on disputes between farmers and shepherds long ago, as if there was such a great difference.

Hey, you are a good believer to talk with; no Hellfire and and that mush.

Yeah, I have a good boloney detector. It seems that our human race of life evolved from the basis of the nature of the universe, and so, in looking at ourselves we might get a big clue as to the very nature of the universe, that is, that our life could be from a Larger Life, called ‘God’.

I see that you allow that there was evolution. Also, it’s good to propose a resemblance. I’ve used that in noting our holistic versus detail alternating viewpoints.

Yes, presumably God and Existence are one and the same, eternal, as the All and/or the basis of the All, but since life arose eventually, what life is here now had to be inherent in existence all along, as a God life-full-ness principle.

Good thinking about what is here now had to be there in the beginning, or forever. It’s just that we surfers of light are but 5% of the types of matter out there. Dark energy and dark matter dominate. We appear to be an after effect.

God utilized these to create a workable area; He can only do what He can do, and so an instant creation wasn’t possible. He threw some stuff together, and then Cosmic and biological evolution had to be relied on. I’m not nutty enough to insist that God places souls in humans, plus, I don’t need any of that jazz. God is merely the highest being, and that’s that.

Well, I do have to admit that the universe has been found to be ‘unnatural’ by physicists, in that it seems fine-tuned for life to appear. Whenever and wherever we look back, we see ‘fortunate’ events; however, why did seven extinctions wiping out most all progress have to happen?

God, not being all powerful, had to resort to using this sledgehammer effect, which was the best He could do, to try to open the field for mammals to evolve, by wiping out 95% of all life, as in the last, Permian, extinction.

So, initially, God put some stuff together, namely parts of Himself, I suppose, that might lead to some kind of life that He could later steer, albeit in a clumsy way. He’s kind of a Deity, not a Theory, then.

Yes, he is kind of a great scientist who could predict somewhat, but couldn’t foresee everything down to the last detail; that’s impossible. He was creative and wanted to achieve something.

So far, I see that nature’s way and God’s way can’t be told apart, although I’m aware of the need to explain the fine-tuning some other way if there’s no God. I’m not yet convinced that an extra step of God is required, as a Person how He could be just sitting around, as First and Fundamental.

Yeah, First and Fundamental is a problem. As for fine-tuning, and playing the Devil’s advocate here, that’s something I can even help you look into, later, because I want to shore it up to be more sure of my God premise. What do you think, for now?

I still have to grant a ‘maybe’ God.

And I still have to grant a ‘maybe’ no God.

I'm late to the party, but what is "new atheism" and how is it different from "old atheism"?

I can't imagine there's much more to say than, "I gave up believing in that which is impossible, illogical, and for which there is no evidence when I was a child."

I think the differences is twofold. First, the way “new atheism” is received by the public which has to do with the second difference which is in the unapologetic way in which the “new atheists” criticise religion.
Those are the distinctions as far as I can tell.

Just think of it like this.
Before the Bible or any other religious text was written, or more specifically before its respective religion came about, did that religion have a God as far as humans knew? You could argue that no one knows the answer to this, but more than likely the answer is no, since the God of any religion only necessarily came to fruition or came to be recognized in conjunction with the onset of that religion. In other words, before Christianity came about, there may as well have been no Christian God. I will not argue that there could have been a Christian God even before Christianity came about, but unless humans were aware of His presence before the onset of Christianity (which is impossible to determine, but again very unlikely) then no one among us can argue that He existed before then. The conclusion that we would have to draw, therefore, is that this God is only a result of the development of the Christian religion, or in other words only exists in conjunction with the Christian religion.

"I gave up believing in that which is impossible, illogical, and for which there is no evidence when I was a child." — Artemis

How sad. Even as a child, when your imagination and creative-learning ability was at its peak? What a shame. :fear:

How sad. Even as a child, when your imagination and creative-learning ability was at its peak? What a shame. — Pattern-chaser

Fantasizing is different than believing.

Have you never heard someone, describing a good story, say "you have to suspend your disbelief"? That's what you do when you're experiencing a story: you suspend disbelief. For the moment, you believe. That's what fantasy is about. And this applies to solving problems too. First we imagine, pretend and create. Then we bring it into the real world, if we can, and make it work. We don't have to do that last bit for stories, though. Stories are just for fun, even if we can learn from them, sometimes.

A good point is a good point, irrespective of where it has come from or what category it falls under, whether that be new atheism or otherwise.

You could tell a kid that there is a dimension that Harry Potter magic exists but not our dimension. Then you could make it plain that it is completely up to the kid whether to believe this or not. It would have no bearing on the practical matters of life. Kind of like the multiverse. — Noah Te Stroete

It's alarming that you'd say that. I hope you're never in such a real world scenario with any vulnerable person, because you could do real harm.

He has said "Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read the Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about Nazism." — thewonder

But that's a good point.

Have you never heard someone, describing a good story, say "you have to suspend your disbelief"? That's what you do when you're experiencing a story: you suspend disbelief. For the moment, you believe. — Pattern-chaser

You don't believe it. What you do is not be a realism fetishist, because that's not pertinent to fiction. You enjoy the fantasy for what it is rather.

None of this changes the fact that not believing things that are impossible, illogical, etc. doesn't amount to not having an imagination, and none of it amounts to you even commenting on me pointing this out.

How sad. Even as a child, when your imagination and creative-learning ability was at its peak? What a shame. :fear: — Pattern-chaser

Terrapin already pointed this out, but I'll reiterate: creativity and imagination have nothing to do with actually believing. I still very much enjoy Tolkien, but was unaware that I therefore believe in Ents and the Dark Lord!

How, then, is the supposed God Fundamental as a system of Mind and Emotion as a Person? Even a proton cannot be fundamental, for quarks are its parts. All that we see proceeds from the very simple to the more composite and complex, even into our future, where we can expects beings higher than ours.

Well, that's a tough one, even fatal, but our life, to be so, appears to require a Higher Life to make it.

This Golden Template fails instantly after its first and only usage, requiring God's Life to have to come from a HIGHER LIFE, and so forth.

Damn, it doesn't work!

And for the fine-tuning, I'll give you that it seems so, but how does your not all smart Scientist God foresee enough to make the tunes, or at least some?

Well, as said, He didn't really know All, but probably threw stuff together time and time again until one universe went along much further than the others.

You have just defined the multiverse.

Yeah.

And your God seems to be constrained to operate identical to the way nature would if there were no God, such as that extinctions could be natural, and more.

Back to the drawing board.

Have you never heard someone, describing a good story, say "you have to suspend your disbelief"? That's what you do when you're experiencing a story: you suspend disbelief. For the moment, you believe. — Pattern-chaser

You don't believe it. What you do is not be a realism fetishist, because that's not pertinent to fiction. You enjoy the fantasy for what it is rather. — Terrapin Station

Terrapin already pointed this out, but I'll reiterate: creativity and imagination have nothing to do with actually believing. I still very much enjoy Tolkien, but was unaware that I therefore believe in Ents and the Dark Lord! — Artemis

First, this point is worth pursuing because it doesn't only apply to the appreciation of fiction. Whenever we think with the aims of discovery and exploration, there is an imaginative phase where we deliberately suspend disbelief. Edward de Bono's hats describe this well. [ And yes, there is a more formally critical hat that succeeds the imaginative one, so there's no need to point this out. ]

When we accept a new fact (or something close to that), once we have considered it and found it acceptable, we believe it until new evidence comes along. In the case of fiction, we believe it for a shorter time, equally well defined: until we are finished with looking at it, or enjoying it. But we do believe it.

None of this changes the fact that not believing things that are impossible, illogical, etc. doesn't amount to not having an imagination — Terrapin Station

Agreed. But when we're looking for new understanding, we need to be cautious of dismissing something that could have value without proper consideration. Throwing the baby out with the bath-water, that kind of thing. Too often new ideas are dismissed simply because they contradict current orthodoxy. In this case, we risk missing out on new discoveries, which (by definition) contradict current orthodoxy. :chin: [ And yes. of course, this can be hard work. How do we know which ideas to pursue, and which to disregard? We don't. We have to guess. And it can be difficult and tedious work. That's life. ]

In the case of fiction, we believe it for a shorter time, equally well defined: until we are finished with looking at it, or enjoying it. But we do believe it. — Pattern-chaser

Maybe you literally believe fictions when you're engaging with them, but I sure do not. It seems to me that literally believing them would be unusual (but no problem with being unusual there).

Maybe you literally believe fictions when you're engaging with them, but I sure do not. It seems to me that literally believing them would be unusual (but no problem with being unusual there). — Terrapin Station

Because the aim here is to enjoy the story, our belief is passive. We even express it as "suspending disbelief" to emphasise this. So our belief in the story-line is not active, or at the forefront of our experience, because it's the story which is important. Disbelief and belief fade into the background, as they should. Until the story's over, that is. :wink:

I suspect that many people, believers and atheists alike, actually (dis)believe in something like Jupiter, a name which is derived from the Indo-European root, dyaus pitar, meaning Sky Father.

As it was necessary in various cultures to depict the One in terms a child could understand, then ‘heavenly father’ easily assumes the persona of Jupiter. This is why atheists will sometimes say that they simply believe in ‘one less god’. The difficult point, however, is that God is not ‘a God’. I sometimes think that monotheism had to assume the language and tropes of the mythical religions it displaced, because those are the only terms that were meaningful in the culture of the day but that the profound truth of monotheism was something very different from the religions it displaced. But now we can only see it through that perspective, which is why it seems archaic.

the profound truth of monotheism was something very different from the religions it displaced — Wayfarer

Was it, really? I think in this sense that all religions are the same. I believe in God, and I'm as happy to call Him Jupiter or Jesus as any other name. All of them - yes, every one - represents one or more aspects of the one too-big-for-us-to-understand God. I think of Her as Gaia, but Cthulhu will do just as well, if that's your thing. God is God ... maybe in the sense that "Brexit is Brexit"? :wink:

Because the aim here is to enjoy the story, our belief is passive. — Pattern-chaser

What would you say is the difference between a passive belief and an active belief.

Or maybe I'm just asking for a better explanation of how passive belief is belief. If you passively believe that Alice entered Wonderland, what does that involve exactly?

What would you say is the difference between a passive belief and an active belief. — Terrapin Station

In this context, rather than as a bold and universal (objective? :gasp: ) statement, I would say that passive belief remains in the background, largely ignored (because its relevance is small), while active belief stays in the foreground, a significant player in whatever it is that we're thinking about.

If you passively believe that Alice entered Wonderland, what does that involve exactly? — Terrapin Station

It doesn't involve anything "exactly". This is not a precise and measured discussion of trivial scientific facts, this is a vague discussion about thinking habits and stories. You're just being awkward now. :razz:

God is God . — Pattern-chaser

Curiously, I wrote a very early essay called 'God is not God'. It was about the idea that the reality of what is meant by 'God' (especially in the inner traditions) is vastly different from everything that is said about God - all of the aggregate of opinions, myths and ideas - in other words, just about everything people argue about. I have never not believed in God, but I have also never wanted to be just a believer. To me, the reality was always something that had to be discovered and understood through inner experience. Now I feel as though we're always approaching it, but never arriving there (although maybe it's a case of the journey being the destination). But to me it's still a matter of a real inner conviction, a sense of a wellspring, or of an inner source, like an elixir (the 'wellspring of joy'.) Whereas mostly what people argue about is a projection, a concept, nearly always focused on their negative experiences of religion (which I perfectly understand, the external phenomenon is often petty and distorted.)

In this context, rather than as a bold and universal (objective? :gasp: ) statement, I would say that passive belief remains in the background, largely ignored — Pattern-chaser

What does that refer to, though? You're saying a belief you're not aware of?

What does that refer to, though? You're saying a belief you're not aware of? — Terrapin Station

If you don't know how to 'suspend disbelief' and enjoy a good story, this is not the place to find out about it. Too often you retreat from the topic under discussion into time-wasting and unnecessary quibbling. At your request, I have described and explained passive and active belief, even though I think my intended meaning was already fairly clear. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But now you're just baiting me, I think. These matters do not require or justify formal and logical consideration. :razz:

If you don't know how to 'suspend disbelief' and enjoy a good story, this is not the place to find out about it. — Pattern-chaser

As I noted, I love engaging with fiction, I love imagination, fantasy, etc.--and a lot of what I've done for work involves that, too. I just don't believe fantastic/imaginative things. In my view, "suspension of disbelief" amounts to not being a realism fetishist--you know, those folks who think that fiction is making an "error" if a film shows you Vancouver and says that it's New York for example. But you're stressing that you actually believe fictions, and maybe you do when you engage with fictions. So I'm curious about that and I'm trying to find out just what it amounts to for you.

But you're stressing that you actually believe fictions — Terrapin Station

No, not "stressing". That's what "passive belief" is intended to communicate. Something that happens in the background. Something that makes no significant contribution to the experience, which is the story, in this case.

No, not "stressing". That's what "passive belief" is intended to communicate. Something that happens in the background. Something that makes no significant contribution to the experience, which is the story, in this case. — Pattern-chaser

Stressing in that you're still saying that it's belief.

Stressing in that you're still saying that it's belief. — Terrapin Station

Of course it's belief. It's acceptance of the story, and the world wherein it takes place, for the duration of that story. This is NOT worth disputing to this degree. It's a side-point of a side-point. Let's leave it here.

Of course it's belief. It's acceptance of the story, and the world wherein it takes place, for the duration of that story. This is NOT worth disputing to this degree. It's a side-point of a side-point. Let's leave it here. — Pattern-chaser

Again, I'm just curious about what you have in mind.

It seems like maybe we're using "belief" differently.