What were you before you became and atheist?

Holy Crap!
Post Reply
User avatar
Geoff
Pouncer
Posts: 9374
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2009 4:39 pm
Location: Wigan, UK
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Geoff » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:15 pm

Exi5tentialist wrote: So many unanswered questions.
That should be your forum rank. :hehe:
Image
"...anyone who says it’s “just the Internet” can :pawiz: . And then when they come back, they can :pawiz: again." - Tigger

User avatar
Exi5tentialist
Posts: 1868
Joined: Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:55 pm
Location: Coalville
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Exi5tentialist » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:16 pm

Zombie Gawdzilla wrote::blah:
Beyond a second sentence, Zilla can only communicate in pictures, lest he stumble headlong into the quagmire of his own fauxlosophy.

User avatar
Jason
Destroyer of words
Posts: 17782
Joined: Sat Apr 16, 2011 12:46 pm
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Jason » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:16 pm

Exi5tentialist wrote:
Geoff wrote:
Exi5tentialist wrote: Only God is eternal. To deny something into eternity is to make an alliance with God. Therefore 'never' is a deeply, deeply religious idea. I would never use the word, personally.
Fail. No mention of eternity is necessary. I've been in existence 56 years, and have been an atheist all that time. Therefore I've "never been anything but an atheist".

You really aren't very good at this, are you?
You only need to mention the last 56 years then. To bring in the whole of eternity and everything that preceded it is not only unnecessary but profoundly religious. But given what you said, I doubt you'd ever understand that.
There is an eternity in each moment. Within each division of a measure of time there exists an infinite span. Time is not some particulate conglomerate of matter, it is not made up of protons, neutrons and electrons or quarks. There is an infinite span from one division to the next which cannot be quantified. We impose a measure on time which suits us and our perception of it, but time is not constrained by these measures. Everything is relative. Eternity for one person may well be their life. Is our measure of time a meaningful concept applied in the absence of consciousness? What is time to the universe? The measure is imposed by us. It not an absolute, simply a convenient and subjective way for us to quantify the time passed between one event and another. We often project our subjective quantification far into the future in an attempt to make plans or predict the sequence of events, and it serves us whether our plans do or our predictions are accurate or not. It is, however, an error or misconception of the true nature of time to suggest that 'eternity' is an absolute. That it has any meaning beyond what we are here to impose upon time with it. Thus just as time is fluid, so is are the applications of the concept of eternity. It is not incorrect then to say that "I have always been an atheist", as eternity applies equally well to the span of time that one person has been living as it does to the most infinitesimal measure of time you care to quantify.

With that in mind I could also refute your argument on the basis of the existence of the self - a finite span of time when an arrangement of particles which comes into being and then dissolves. As eternity is not an absolute, but rather a subjective conceptual projection, it applies to this span of time. Furthermore, one could not claim to have always been in existence because, while the particles composing your entire body may have existed for many billions of years, they not before in the configuration which gives you form, function and consciousness. In fact, it is problematic to claim one exists at all as the particles of which you are composed are constantly replaced. So it is that eternity may not only be objectively found in the most infinitesimal measure of time, but also subjectively. The concept of eternity is neither an absolute, nor is it objective nor does is it founded upon a divinity of any sort. Your argument fails.

User avatar
Exi5tentialist
Posts: 1868
Joined: Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:55 pm
Location: Coalville
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Exi5tentialist » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:18 pm

Zombie Gawdzilla wrote:You assume atheists are really closet believers. That's absurd.
Don't you think 'suggest' is a better word than 'assume'? Perhaps if you were to say, "you suggest most atheists are really closet believers in the residual cultural ruins of christianity," you might be closer to the mark. But absurd? Surely that's an unnecessary exaggeration?

User avatar
FBM
Ratz' first Gritizen.
Posts: 45327
Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:43 pm
About me: Skeptic. "Because it does not contend
It is therefore beyond reproach"
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by FBM » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:21 pm

I remember the moment I became an atheist. I was in undergrad studying to get into seminary to become an Episcopal priest. From Episcopalianism to atheism isn't that great of a leap, actually.
"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken

"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."

User avatar
Rum
Absent Minded Processor
Posts: 37285
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2009 9:25 pm
Location: South of the border..though not down Mexico way..
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Rum » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:22 pm

FBM wrote:I remember the moment I became an atheist. I was in undergrad studying to get into seminary to become an Episcopal priest. From Episcopalianism to atheism isn't that great of a leap, actually.
You are a believer and a potential priest according to Exi. So there.

User avatar
Jason
Destroyer of words
Posts: 17782
Joined: Sat Apr 16, 2011 12:46 pm
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Jason » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:24 pm

Exi5tentialist wrote:
Zombie Gawdzilla wrote:You assume atheists are really closet believers. That's absurd.
Don't you think 'suggest' is a better word than 'assume'? Perhaps if you were to say, "you suggest most atheists are really closet believers in the residual cultural ruins of christianity," you might be closer to the mark. But absurd? Surely that's an unnecessary exaggeration?
Do you apply anything resembling the scientific methodology in formulating these ideas? If so then your suggestion may be reclassified as a hypothesis. A hypothesis is created through the application of inductive reasoning to acquired data, or evidence if you like.

So what is your evidence that led you to this hypothesis?

User avatar
FBM
Ratz' first Gritizen.
Posts: 45327
Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:43 pm
About me: Skeptic. "Because it does not contend
It is therefore beyond reproach"
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by FBM » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:27 pm

Zombie Rum wrote:
FBM wrote:I remember the moment I became an atheist. I was in undergrad studying to get into seminary to become an Episcopal priest. From Episcopalianism to atheism isn't that great of a leap, actually.
You are a believer and a potential priest according to Exi. So there.
But what if I don't believe Exi5? And what if I don't have any urge to rape choirboys? That ought to disqualify me right there.
"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken

"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."

"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."

User avatar
Exi5tentialist
Posts: 1868
Joined: Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:55 pm
Location: Coalville
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Exi5tentialist » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:29 pm

PordFrefect wrote:There is an eternity in each moment. Within each division of a measure of time there exists an infinite span. Time is not some particulate conglomerate of matter, it is not made up of protons, neutrons and electrons or quarks. There is an infinite span from one division to the next which cannot be quantified. We impose a measure on time which suits us and our perception of it, but time is not constrained by these measures. Everything is relative. Eternity for one person may well be their life. Is our measure of time a meaningful concept applied in the absence of consciousness? What is time to the universe? The measure is imposed by us. It not an absolute, simply a convenient and subjective way for us to quantify the time passed between one event and another. We often project our subjective quantification far into the future in an attempt to make plans or predict the sequence of events, and it serves us whether our plans do or our predictions are accurate or not. It is, however, an error or misconception of the true nature of time to suggest that 'eternity' is an absolute. That it has any meaning beyond what we are here to impose upon time with it. Thus just as time is fluid, so is are the applications of the concept of eternity. It is not incorrect then to say that "I have always been an atheist", as eternity applies equally well to the span of time that one person has been living as it does to the most infinitesimal measure of time you care to quantify.

With that in mind I could also refute your argument on the basis of the existence of the self - a finite span of time when an arrangement of particles which comes into being and then dissolves. As eternity is not an absolute, but rather a subjective conceptual projection, it applies to this span of time. Furthermore, one could not claim to have always been in existence because, while the particles composing your entire body may have existed for many billions of years, they not before in the configuration which gives you form, function and consciousness. In fact, it is problematic to claim one exists at all as the particles of which you are composed are constantly replaced. So it is that eternity may not only be objectively found in the most infinitesimal measure of time, but also subjectively. The concept of eternity is neither an absolute, nor is it objective nor does is it founded upon a divinity of any sort. Your argument fails.
Does any of that work in Christianity, though? That is after all the cultural root of our civilisation, and it is the cultural overhang of Christianity that I was referring to when I challenged Zilla's supposedly atheist statement, "Never been anything but an atheist. Live with it." By the way, he didn't say, "I have always been an atheist," which I would have agreed might be seen to be more limited to the span of time that one person has been living.

User avatar
Exi5tentialist
Posts: 1868
Joined: Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:55 pm
Location: Coalville
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Exi5tentialist » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:32 pm

PordFrefect wrote:Do you apply anything resembling the scientific methodology in formulating these ideas?
No, it's a philosophical discussion. Science cannot address such questions.

User avatar
Hermit
Posts: 25806
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:44 am
About me: Cantankerous grump
Location: Ignore lithpt
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Hermit » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:33 pm

Exi5tentialist wrote:Is a religious culture without a religious heart any different from a religious culture with a religious heart?
What exactly is religious about the religious heart? If you approach religion from the angle that it is stuff made up by humans, "religious culture" is no more than a subset of anthropology, history, sociology and perhaps psychology. There is nothing religious about the religious heart.
Exi5tentialist wrote:When does that hard work begin?
It begins, like any journey, with the first step. Lacking a belief in the existence of a supernatural power does not, of course, mean that one has shed all the overburden one's local "religious" institutions has covered one with, but it means one is an atheist in the central meaning of that word. Then one can take another step.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

User avatar
Geoff
Pouncer
Posts: 9374
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2009 4:39 pm
Location: Wigan, UK
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Geoff » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:34 pm

Exi5tentialist wrote:
Does any of that work in Christianity, though? That is after all the cultural root of our civilisation, and it is the cultural overhang of Christianity that I was referring to when I challenged Zilla's supposedly atheist statement, "Never been anything but an atheist. Live with it." By the way, he didn't say, "I have always been an atheist," which I would have agreed might be seen to be more limited to the span of time that one person has been living.
So what, in your opinion, was he, before he existed?
Image
"...anyone who says it’s “just the Internet” can :pawiz: . And then when they come back, they can :pawiz: again." - Tigger

User avatar
Jason
Destroyer of words
Posts: 17782
Joined: Sat Apr 16, 2011 12:46 pm
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Jason » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:36 pm

Exi5tentialist wrote:Does any of that work in Christianity, though?
Christianity is itself internally inconsistent and doesn't 'work', but yes it is applicable as a rationalization of their concept of eternity.
Exi5tentialist wrote:That is after all the cultural root of our civilisation, and it is the cultural overhang of Christianity that I was referring to when I challenged Zilla's supposedly atheist statement, "Never been anything but an atheist. Live with it." By the way, he didn't say, "I have always been an atheist," which I would have agreed might be seen to be more limited to the span of time that one person has been living.
never been ... is equivalent to I have always been. I guess you missed the point.

User avatar
Exi5tentialist
Posts: 1868
Joined: Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:55 pm
Location: Coalville
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Exi5tentialist » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:37 pm

Geoff wrote:So what, in your opinion, was he, before he existed?
If he was anything, he wasn't an atheist.

User avatar
Jason
Destroyer of words
Posts: 17782
Joined: Sat Apr 16, 2011 12:46 pm
Contact:

Re: What were you before you became and atheist?

Post by Jason » Thu Oct 27, 2011 2:39 pm

Exi5tentialist wrote:
PordFrefect wrote:Do you apply anything resembling the scientific methodology in formulating these ideas?
No, it's a philosophical discussion. Science cannot address such questions.
Nonsense. It can fully address the question of whether atheists are closet believers or not. In fact it can do so far better than philosophy.

Regardless, you still need grounds for your 'suggestion' as you call it or else you're just pulling things out of the aether and arguing them to no apparent purpose and with no apparent reason.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests