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No, you don't have any evidence whatsoever. That's the very definition of faith. If you had evidence for your beliefs, you wouldn't need or have "faith" in them, because you'd have...wait for it...EVIDENCE.
No, because atheism is a disbelief in the notion of a god or gods, while theism is a belief in a god or gods. One is stating a negative I don't believe i.e. no logical, reasoned, empirical evidence and the other,theism, is stating a positive, to believe something, without having actually experienced it using the five senses(sight, taste, hearing, touch, smell) or in other words to have blind faith. That's why it was important in the New Testament to tell the story of the doubting Thomas, because the scribes knew that the new believers would never experience the one called Jesus Christ, using the five senses, so they had to appeal to the more difficult/complicated faculty of feeling. Which is why there are so many schisms within Christianity and Islam and such, because feelings are and can be a lot of the time irrational.
This is incorrect . . . you are obviously not familiar with the concept of a transceiver. The either/or claim you are making is not supportable since there is no locus in the physical brain where the pure energy composite that is our consciousness can reside. Only recorded instances of its creation and transmission are stored there.
I think you may have misunderstood my post. I didn't say that our consciousness resides in our brains. I stated that our brain receives our consciousness (as in receives the signal/instructions). Our consciousness is pure energy and the physical world around us is the "hologram" that our consciousness interprets as the physical world. Without consciousness, none of "this" would exists. That's what I'm saying.
To make things clear, you would still have consciousness even with a dead brain (and a dead body). I think these are things you already know.
I think you may have misunderstood my post. I didn't say that our consciousness resides in our brains. I stated that our brain receives our consciousness (as in receives the signal/instructions). Our consciousness is pure energy and the physical world around us is the "hologram" that our consciousness interprets as the physical world. Without consciousness, none of "this" would exists. That's what I'm saying.
To make things clear, you would still have consciousness even with a dead brain (and a dead body). I think these are things you already know.
Citation desperately needed, but never forthcoming.
Citation desperately needed, but never forthcoming.
He has "faith" that it is true...Don't be "spectin" a citation...Faith is a great thing for theists, for atheists, not so much. I prefer to use the word confidence when dealing with reality, as in I'm confident that the tides come in and the tides go out...Never a miscommunication....
He has "faith" that it is true...Don't be "spectin" a citation...Faith is a great thing for theists, for atheists, not so much. I prefer to use the word confidence when dealing with reality, as in I'm confident that the tides come in and the tides go out...Never a miscommunication....
I love how Matt Dillahunty puts it:
"I have reasonable expectations based on evidence. I have trust that has been earned. I will grant trust tentatively. I don't have faith. Faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have evidence. If you can come up with something that I believe and don't have evidence for, guess what I'll do? I'll stop believing it! That's the nature of a rational mind. That is the goal."
He has "faith" that it is true...Don't be "spectin" a citation...Faith is a great thing for theists, for atheists, not so much. I prefer to use the word confidence when dealing with reality, as in I'm confident that the tides come in and the tides go out...Never a miscommunication....
Um, I was addressing Mystic, not my fellow atheist science book worshipers. The bottom line is that atheists do live by a code of faith. They have total faith in what is told to them by mainstream science. So much so that many can not interpret reality on their own. These folks often need a quote or a link from "credible peer reviewed science articles" much like a theist needs a quote from a religious book. Now if you guys can't see YOUR faith for what it is, then that puts you all even futher into the theistic category.
With that said, reality for some of us is not based on what we've been told or what we've read. It is based on our interpretations of our own experiences in life. There is absolutely nothing in my life that would suggest that my consciousness will end. Even if my consciousness did end, I would not be aware of it. Being that our life is in the present (and the present is an infinite concept), then it is obvious that consciousness is an infinite concept too (infinite enough to the person that is experiencing consciousness because we will never "experience" non-consciousness).
I think thats the problem with some atheists. Some of you guys (much like theists) are soooooooo sure about what will happen when you die. This is clearly a person trying to live in the future. Life/consciousness is NEVER in the future. It is always in the present. Just because you've seen someone die, does not mean that you know what happened to their consciousness. Personally, I've interacted with the consciousness of dead people many times during my dreams (and I was informed that they had just died after the dream occurred, not before the dream). That's my proof in my own personal life. The odds of dreaming about dead people before knowing they were dead are slim to none (based on our current understanding of science, which means our current science is probably false). In most of the dreams, the dead person is on Earth doing what they would normally be doing while alive. Also, they usually don't speak. I don't know why this is, but they just don't. There are no Gods, angels, or heavenly music or anything of that nature present. It is an experience that is so "real" that I often wake up wondering if the "dream" was the true reality and life as I know it is in actuality the true dream.
I don't share this information as a means to sway the hard core atheists. I share it so that others with similar experiences can read my posts and know that they are not alone. I know others have similar experiences, but we all interpret them differently (which is why I like sharing my interpretations because I would like to read others). FWIW, I have never felt that religion and God were actual real concepts. These are purely artificial concepts IMO simply because I've not witnessed any of these things. So for me, I am atheist for reasons very different from the average science worshiping atheist.
Last edited by urbancharlotte; 04-22-2011 at 12:27 PM..
Um, I was addressing Mystic, not my fellow atheist science book worshipers.
When you post in an open forum, it doesn't matter whom you were addressing, you stick your opinion out and you can expect it to be chopped off if you can't back it up with facts.
When you post in an open forum, it doesn't matter whom you were addressing, you stick your opinion out and you can expect it to be chopped off if you can't back it up with facts.
This thread is about atheists having faith. The argument here (from most atheists) is "we don't have faith, we go by the facts". The problem with this statement is that your "facts" come from peer reviewed published science articles (which is fine). Just know that posting the links to such "facts" is no different than a theists quoting the bible. Unless you have performed the experiments yourself, dug up the fossils yourself, or mixed the chemicals yourself, you are just a science book thumper (no different than a bible thumper).
Here's the problem with science book thumpers
At one point, the opinion of mainstream science was that nothing heavier than air could fly (this was obviously the pre-airplane opinion).
At one point, the opinion of mainstream science was that the Earth was a cube.
At one point, the Earth was the center of the universe.
At one point, space was a place humans couldn't go.
Whether we like it or not, science and religion have something in common. They both have a long history of being wrong. So to think that we have it "all right now" is the absolute height of human arrogance. Trust me, the people that said they could build a flying machine before the invention of the airplane were considered to be crack pots by mainstream science.
My point here is that it's out of the box thinking that bring about change and breakthroughs. Eventually, those folks that believe in an afterlife will be the ones that develop the technology to interact with the afterlife. Those that don't believe will not ever bother trying. This is why YOUR way of thinking is such a danger to humanity. It is thinking like yours that holds us back (which is very similar to theism if you ask me). Why put limitations on reality? Why can't reality have infinite possibilities? Why can't we search for ways of discovering these infinite possibilities?
This is why some of the greatest scientific minds were theists. It is NOT because theism is correct. It's because theism does require a level of out of the box thinking that helped their creative minds make breakthroughs. Atheism is great; but the current form of atheism that I am starting to see is a cancer to humanity. The level of dense thinking from many atheists will be the death of humanity much like our holy wars of the past. Be atheist; just don't close your mind off to the infinite possibilities of reality.
I think thats the problem with some atheists. Some of you guys (much like theists) are soooooooo sure about what will happen when you die.
I don't think any atheists are *sure* about what will happen when they die. It is true that many of us think that consciousness is unlikely to endure after death, but we are not *sure.* The thing is that there is no evidence for this possibility.
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The bottom line is that atheists do live by a code of faith. They have total faith in what is told to them by mainstream science. So much so that many can not interpret reality on their own. These folks often need a quote or a link from "credible peer reviewed science articles" much like a theist needs a quote from a religious book. Now if you guys can't see YOUR faith for what it is, then that puts you all even futher into the theistic category.
