I forgot the muslim + Jesus --- look here are loads of these: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=muslim+convert+to+christian

so a believer that is poor and sick still has purpose?

I forgot the muslim + Jesus --- look here are loads of these: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=muslim+convert+to+christian — Iris0

I don't need to see this I already assumed it was converts. Just as there are Christians who convert to Buddhism following an 'experience'. And Christians who convert Islam.

So I do understand that atheism seems to be logical - when and if you only (as did the logical positives think and they failed to prove their point ...) believe in what you are able to take in with your senses.
But the world of the invisible is larger for us than the world of visible - because all our feelings and thoughts and such are - invisible... and we make them real. We talk about them we show them and we actualize them...

so a believer that is poor and sick still has purpose? — Iris0

I don't know. Do they?

- yes but the difference is that many of these muslims (listen to them) had dreams about Jesus... before they converted or started looking...and as far as I know christians or secular people or who ever who reads about something that they find fascinating and go for it cannot be compared with the muslims - because they are under death penalty for converting. According to Islam they should all be killed.

why ask me - I live in a land of prosperity and with a free healthcare system :rofl:

The death penalty is irrelevant, converting to a religions happens regardless.

By the way the numbers of Muslims who convert to atheism is significant also. They also are threatened by death. What do we conclude here?

Visions and dreams? Big deal. I have heard many of these stories from Christians who have converted to other religions too. Some of them I have met and interviewed.

so if humans (I have posed this question before in this thread) convert to religion when secuarlism has all the answers - what are they after? When they have everything and loose all just because they start believing?
Tell me if you know the answer...

What do you mean - define - spirituality... what is that! — Iris0

It’s a big term. Try googling it.

You can absolutely accept that our existence is basically meaningless, absolutely pointless, but still invent a why your existence is meaningful to you rooted in what already exists, in of itself. — Christoffer

‘inventing a why’ is a precise definition of subjectivism.

All I said was, what you mean by ‘rationalism’ is really ‘positivism’, and nothing you’ve said there really defrays that.

Tell me if you know the answer... — Iris0

That is a question that assumes there's one answer when you must realise that people do things for many reasons. Conversion stories seem to have a hold on you - why would that be?

Firstly, many people who are secular have no real scientific knowledge or interest and are not well educated and in fact do not have the answers. They often don't even have the right questions. They hold their secular views because of socialization rather than hard won knowledge. Such people can be easily swayed.

People change their beliefs in every direction all the time. From religion to atheism. Form homophobia to tolerance. From left wing to right wing. From making money to giving back. So what?

well now - does Goole give my your mindset on that concept? Or why do you mean I do not know the meaning I give that very concept should not be different as yours or the definition of google? You see my point?

but knowing - really knowing science - does not sway people? Why would that be - do you have a theory? I myself have spent - at the uni of Lund - from 2002 until 2008 in studies of metaphysics, logic and epistemology and semantics and ethics - so... you have the millon dollar answer? Give it to me... because the studies of the thoughts that underpin science, the scientific method and the rest of the shabang only begged more questions as to what we perceive - given the preconceived views on reality - as reality ---- in my humble case.
I do not state I know all and thus I can rule out something --- as the rest of humans regardless they are godbesivers of some sort or not.
Give me what science at the core has that I have not studied and found circular - and I will give you right.

I will sum up what I have go out of the answers up until now:
if the life of mankind is just a joke of meaningless endlessness of doing what enters the eyes and our mouth (nature)- why are we not still apes - they are much better adapted to just - being (the core of most religion = learn just to be in the fleeing now) and why do we have this endless search for meaning when it is meaningless? And what goal is there if there is no goal given that humans seem to need goals.
The scientific method preconceives of what we know, and what we know is preconceived in what we have learned in regard to ourselves and the universe - and how to understand it. Who comes out of that circle?

— Iris0

Give me what science at the core has that I have not studied and found circular - and I will give you right. — Iris0

You seem to be swerving all over the place with your ideas. Are you ok?

If you are looking for certainty you'll readily find it if you can accept fundamentalism. I suspect this is why many religions are attractive - they can also function as the last bastions of certainty and comfort in an uncertain world. Sounds like you gave scientism a try and found it wanting.

well now... am a philosopher ... are you not? :rofl:
And as such you must always follow all thread out there and see where they lead you. And thus you must give voice to what you found.
For me the horizon of God is intriguing so I have studied the Quran, books from Dala Lama, the Bible, listen to sages in judaism and I simply do not rule them out as ways to find the core of the Ultimate Good - and science is our way of handling and understanding what surrounds us.
I came into this earth hungry to understand - and that gives me more questions even if I also have a stand where I part.
But know?
hmmmmm --- this Journey is one that gives more questions than answers and I always doubt persons that think they have them all - including my old good self...

OK. Sounds like you're one of millions of people who are dissatisfied and are searching. That's fine. This can either lead you to philosophy or to move away from it.

second that...

But...

Where is the logic of atheism --- anyone?

You mention Darwin and how he lost his faith in God. This is a good example of someone losing faith in a demigod (whom he previously mistook for God). — baker

Yes, that is along the lines of what I was thinking. Darwin could have simply changed his god to be ambivalent about suffering.

so I understand (correct me if I am wrong here) that Darwin lost his own image of who his own god was?
Or are you saying that Darwin actually knew God directly and better than those that do believe in God (learned jews and Jesus) who said: no one knows God?

See you in the gutter, we'll see if then you can still be so smugly satisfied with pointlessness. — baker

No, I'm saying I want to see if the other poster can still be so calm and confident even when he is in the gutter.

People sometimes brag that they can handle the meaniglessness of life and that they don't need crutches like religion. Sure, as long as their health and wealth are still relatively intact, that long it's fun to be a nihilist. But what happens to those people when, for one reason or another, they lose that health and wealth? — baker

This is irrelevant to the point I made, is it not? You are saying that because someone lives in the worst conditions, they will find it hard to feel meaning in anything. This is true and not something I argued against. What I said was that it is possible to accept life, nature, the universe, as it is, no more or less, and any meaning in life or to existence, can be built upon that, rather than delusions that come out of a life crisis.

So, you say that poverty and living in the gutter will make people turn to things like religion easily. This I agree with, but I'm not talking about the psychology of religious people or how people turn to it, but that it is possible to accept the pointless existence of life and the universe and still feel meaning without adding religious delusions. And people who fight against these kinds of very human tendencies (to invent unsupported explanations for things they can't explain), I find have much more strength than others to cope with life's challenges, as religious thoughts often spiral things into the nonsense that rarely pushes people out of misery. It takes a lot of willpower to not fall into delusions as a way to flee from the harsh reality of the universe and of course, that is harder the worse someone's life situation is, that is not the point.

But - if everything is (because we can imagine it to so) without goal and without any sort of meaning, and all is just due to a stochastic variable - why did we not stay apes? They do actually walk on two legs but do still not have (nor do ravens - the smartest bird (animal) alive) the capacity of abstract thought and written language what will enable them to give their knowledge to their offsprings - and they cope and live in reality - MUCH BETTER than we humans do. — Iris0

Because self-reflection and the way human psychology works make us prone to depression in entirely more complex ways than them. That things are without a goal isn't something we imagine, it's what is the most logical observation of our existence, it's a hypothesis that is the most likely because there's no evidence for there being any further meaning. Any kind of applied meaningfulness that isn't an invented meaning by us (like, the pleasure of eating ice cream during a warm day) and rather a meaning that we invent as being cosmic and outside of ourselves, is the imagination, the delusion.

We didn't stay apes because evolution developed a highly adaptable intelligence for us in order for us to survive better and hunt in packs. We developed our advanced intelligence just like a predator develops extremely sharp and clear vision in order to hunt. Our intelligence is just a fluke of evolution, nothing more. What comes after that, i.e that our intelligence starts to invent concepts of reality that can have profound effects on us, good or bad, is just the side effect of this evolutionary trait. Just like the advanced night sight of the owl doesn't work well during the day, so does our intelligence fail to work well when we are pressured into explaining something unexplainable at the time. Like when our ancestors fleed a predator and they tried to explain between them why the animal did the things they did. They could then predict what that animal would do the next time they were being hunted and easily evade it. But when a lightning strike hit and killed one in the tribe, they couldn't explain why, but their intelligence forced them to do so because that's the point of that evolutionary trait, they started forming explanations that were far away from the truth of how lightning and thunder works, because it was too complex of an event to be explained at that time and with the resources they had.

So does intelligence work today as well. People tend to be extremely biased and explain with a lot of fallacies. We have over the course of thousands of years developed methods to bypass our thought process shortcomings, this is essentially what philosophy has been doing, bypassing our tendency for jumping to conclusions. And we've felt it in the world, we can see it all around. The very existence of the technology we have is a result of us being able to figure things out instead of jumping to conclusions. Using tools of thought to help explain something past our biases and fallacies. The very fact that we write on computers right now is because of this, not because we are intelligent and could figure it out. Without any tools of thought, developed through philosophy and science, we would never have come this far as a species.

So then, why should we live life through delusions that have their roots in primal thinking, biases, and fallacies? And not find meaning through ways of bypassing delusions and our intelligence shortcomings? This is what I'm talking about, that delusions are for people who give up on finding meaning in things as they are and instead need to apply fantasy to the universe in order to feel happy. Religion and belief is a drug to block the truth of reality. It takes effort and willpower to see things purely as they are, and even more to find meaning in the pointlessness of everything. But the opposite is just opium for the mind and soul, it can comfort, but is essentially a lie.

Why can there be no credibility for this? — Iris0

Because after a few thousand years of looking, no evidence found. If I insist there is a hippopotamus in your closet, does that make it so? Is the credibility of that claim only a function of my apparent sincerity or insistence? Sometimes a lack of evidence is evidence.

God, a matter of fact or a matter for belief, which?

You wrote of the need to have an open mind. Having an open mind is more than just being a girl who can't say no. Sometimes you have to say no - that part of what having a mind is about, and distinguishing between fact and belief/fiction.
.

ah, finally... well now.
No evidence found?
Am not so sure about this because what I found after having read and tried to understand the issue is that the development in the ex christian countries are all towards personal freedom and democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and thoughts and opinion (in public) and the Christian thoughts were from the beginning: Freedom. That is smack in the center of this particular religion.
You can check that out and you will find it.
This in turn - when humans from all cultures and countries (in the beginning most women and slaves) saw their opportunity they took it and this movement grew as a grassroots movement until it took over governments and rulers. And so the laws changed. And the minds of people changed.

You will find the evidence of this when you make an honest comparison with the worlds where Islam has been and is still operative - government, personal freedom etc. Or countries where hinduism or buddismen have been operative.
The effects of the beliefs human have had have in fact formed the societies they have been active in.

Why?
Well what you think is how you will act and what you do is what later will become the result of what you where taught to believe and hold true.
Right?

thank you for you long and very well thought post - and I do agree in parts but... just because we can state:

Because self-reflection and the way human psychology works make us prone to depression in entirely more complex ways than them. That things are without a goal isn't something we imagine, it's what is the most logical observation of our existence, it's a hypothesis that is the most likely because there's no evidence for there being any further meaning. Any kind of applied meaningfulness that isn't an invented meaning by us (like, the pleasure of eating ice cream during a warm day) and rather a meaning that we invent as being cosmic and outside of ourselves, is the imagination, the delusion — Christoffer

Does still not make us understand why we have this sort of self-reflection --- what is if for? Giving us depressions? Seems very un-useful to me.
Why have we developed this faculty and this feature?

It is precisely the view advocated by Dawkins & Dennett to liberate mankind from the delusion of spirituality. — Wayfarer

You'll be rewarded in Heaven for pointing that out! Hopefully, quite soon!

so in short - then atheism is all about repeating what some guru said and no ability to think or find reasons on who or what one in reality is refuting?

Good point there then...

Does still not make us understand why we have this sort of self-reflection --- what is if for? Giving us depressions? Seems very un-useful to me.
Why have we developed this faculty and this feature? — Iris0

In order to reflect upon decisions. Nothing of this is really a mystery, just study some psychology and evolution and you will have the answers there. If we don't have self-reflection, we wouldn't be able to examine the choices we've made and adjust for the future. But depressions is even more basic, even animals show characteristics of depression.

And not all aspects of either evolutionary animal features or characteristics of our intelligence are useful. You can't take an example of something that doesn't make sense for us to have and conclude that in any pro or against evolution or religious beliefs. Evolution is slow, most of humanity right now still possesses characteristics of psychology that are basically still the things we had on the savanna. A lot of stress and mental disorders today have their roots in our modern lives not being very well suited for hunter/gatherer psychology.

I suggest you study psychology, evolution, history, etc. if you want longer and more thorough answers to these questions.

then atheism is all about repeating what some guru said and no ability to think or find reasons on who or what one in reality is refuting? — Iris0

???

The effects of the beliefs human have had have in fact formed the societies they have been active in.

Why?
Well what you think is how you will act and what you do is what later will become the result of what you where taught to believe and hold true.
Right? — Iris0

Is there a hippopotamus in your closet or not? If all you're about is that the idea of a hippo in your closet can be efficacious, then we're on the same page. On the other hand, if you need to have a hippopotamus in your closet before you might consider the good of it and enjoying its benefits, whatever they may be, then we part company. And if you insist that there is a hippo in your closet, then reasonable people will ask you for evidence to prove it's there. Belief is not constitutive of physical reality; instead it is in the province of ideas, wherein and from which it can be powerful, even in ways that as mere reality it could never be.

I do not understand your line of argument - as there is no line... of argument. If belief does not form how people act - so what do they act on? And if actions do not form and build physical reality - what does?

If you think that it is okey with murder - and you act on it then there will be a dead person in the physical reality and the police in the same physical reality will link you to this murder and will punish you. Don't you think?