Religious belief

[Mart]

...
A belief that there's nothing is, QED, a religious belief, but I've never heard an atheist admit it.  If some do, I'll classify it a religion and cost it at €0 like the religions, QED.

Quantum physics, that we might consider scientific, (although can we truly be 100% scientific?) tells us for already decades, that there is something to the reality we live in, that is not exactly what we commonly perceive. I will give these keywords:
- double slit experiment
- Wheeler's delayed choice experiment
- delayed choice quantum eraser
- quantum entanglement

Further things involve time and time flow, causality, event sequences. Personally, I think that in larger scope, containing the reality outside of our reality, time is stationary. I have read about some cosmological considerations on that, from outside our time-space continuum, our universe time is stationary. So all events are simultaneous, and then such effects like entanglement are not weird. It is us, that we perceive a sequence of events, or in other words, sequence of quantum states.

Note here, recent such findings suggest, there is something outside of our reality and it is above time.
So for me, sorry to all people, that declare themselves atheists or materialists, that is a religious belief for me, that accordingly to recent science, is not true. Materialism seems to me equal to a sectarian cult of something. (That may be a strong statement here). Science is also being open to possibilities and to realize: "I still do not know everything, and maybe I know only little."

[Buster's Uncle]

I want a sit-down with God, and I have some hard questions if I get it.

This is worthy of its own thread, no?

[Mart]

I guess so

[Buster's Uncle]

Mart do you recall a WPC OT thread where I commented on a good layman's video about the double slit effect, where I commented that if magic was real, the quantum observer effect might be how it worked?

[Mart]

no I don't remember, I need to look for it.

[Buster's Uncle]

I agree that it could be how God works, too, along with the external time frames stuff...

[Elok]

While I am religious, I've never understood some of the quantum-theory type arguments for God.  Especially the fine-tuning one; how do we know that the values of gravity and various other important forces could have been significantly different than they are?

Then again, it's not like I properly understand quantum theory, either.

[Buster's Uncle]

The idea is that it might provide a mechanism for altering reality, something God should be able to do...

God and quantum theory seem to have in common that we're not supposed to be capable of understanding.


Hey - any atheists want to come in and discuss?  The internet has taught me that arguing for fun is highly overrated, but conversations between people who do not agree can still be stimulating and edumacational...  (Also, I believe I can demonstrate that it's a categorical logical fallacy.)

[Eadee]

Well, I'm neither an atheist nor religious at all. I do study sciences where I have to learn about quantum mechanics and all that stuff and yes, I have to say I don't see any contradiction in things like the big bang theory and genesis if you interpret the words right it fits well.

I think its sure there was one allmighty elemental force in the beginning from wich all others derived. And if you personify this force you have something you can call god. And if I'm not sure I can believe in such a personification being a sentient being, I can't be sure that humans are anything else than biological machines as well.

But this elemental force is only observable by the forces it created. And also we can't see god directly we can only see what his creations do. So whatever I believe, it doesn't change anything about the universe. It only does change my own mind and how I feel about the universe. This is the reason why I choose to believe in "something" I don't know what it is, and I don't care or have any intend finding out. I'm just happy that there is/was an elemental force or supernatural being that created the worlds as we know it, and gave this world a static set of rules, so we can experiment with them and use them to our advantage. I'm actually happy that this "higher force" doesn't actively intervene with our lives, since this would break all those rules we depend on and summon a lot of chaos to our world. Also if God interfered in any way with ourt lives he would rob us of the only thing he can give us to show he really loves us, our own free will and freedom. Everything else he gives us is "worthless" because if he is allmighty it would be no sacrifice for him. However if I believe in him he seemed to choose not to use his power so WE are free to do what we want. And not using his allmighty powers is therefore the best gift he could give us.

At least that are my thoughts on it.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmm.  That's not even agnostic - I think you'd call that Deist...

[Eadee]

Hmm.  That's not even agnostic - I think you'd call that Deist...

Had to look that up, but yeah. I seem to be something like that.

[Valka]

...
A belief that there's nothing is, QED, a religious belief, but I've never heard an atheist admit it.  If some do, I'll classify it a religion and cost it at €0 like the religions, QED.

Note here, recent such findings suggest, there is something outside of our reality and it is above time.
So for me, sorry to all people, that declare themselves atheists or materialists, that is a religious belief for me, that accordingly to recent science, is not true. Materialism seems to me equal to a sectarian cult of something. (That may be a strong statement here). Science is also being open to possibilities and to realize: "I still do not know everything, and maybe I know only little."

Hey - any atheists want to come in and discuss?  The internet has taught me that arguing for fun is highly overrated, but conversations between people who do not agree can still be stimulating and edumacational...  (Also, I believe I can demonstrate that it's a categorical logical fallacy.)

Okay, the only reason I'm posting is because BUncle asked nicely. I've already been part of a lot of discussions on CivFanatics and various YouTube pages as to whether or not atheism is a religion, and they can range from partial agreement to amusement, bemusement, to really vile things being said and people ending up on the ignore list. I don't want things to get anywhere near that far here.

I won't be a hypocrite and say I've never done my share of mockery... because when some woman makes a YouTube video claiming that dinosaurs are a hoax because a kite won't fly on its own if you drape a leather jacket over it and throw it off a tall building, someone else scampers around "auditing" museums and completely believes in dragons but thinks the hominid fossil record is fantasy and that anything remotely "sciencey" is a religion and "please recycle your pop cans" is some kind of insidious religious doctrine preached by (shudder) environmentalists...  well, I don't consider nonsense like that deserving of anything but mockery.

The following is most of a quote of a PM I sent, and while I'm not normally someone who quotes PMs in public, these are my own words, so in this instance I will give myself permission to quote them:

Atheists are people who don't believe in any deity or other supernatural being, and don't believe that natural events have supernatural causes (the prime one being that no deity/supernatural being was responsible for creating the universe). We also don't believe in the divinity of Jesus, Mohammed, or any other religious figure (including Thor, Amon-Ra, Zeus, and name any other god/dess or supernatural being).

It frankly offends me when people insist atheism is a religion. What is it that I supposedly worship? How do I supposedly express that alleged worship? I've gone through these arguments time and again on CFC, where people <specific usernames redacted> insist that atheism is a religion, evolution is a religion, science is a religion... they're just not.

And then there are the similar arguments on YouTube... somebody on CFC told me that Richard Dawkins is such an awful person - so I said, link me to some of his videos so I can see for myself - and they didn't. So I've been doing my own research, and finding someone who is very emphatic in his views, very passionate about science, very impatient with people who refuse to acknowledge the scientific method, how it works, and the wealth of evidence that already exists to support evolution... I guess some people would consider that to be an arrogant attitude to have, but actually he's far milder in many ways than Lawrence Krauss (just started watching some of his cosmology videos).

So: Atheism is not a religion. Science is not a religion. Evolution is not a religion. The scientific method is not a religion. I don't pray to God, Mohammed, Jesus, Yahweh, Odin, Zeus, Demeter, Juno, Amon-Ra, Changing Woman, Raven, or any other of the myriad gods, goddesses, saints, or other supernatural beings humans have created over the millennia.

I don't have a shrine to Carl Sagan or any other scientist. I may respect them greatly, but I don't worship them. I don't hold weekly "science services." I've never read any books by Dawkins, or even Darwin, and quite honestly, any scientist who would want to be worshiped isn't worthy of the designation.
 

[Mart]

It is a bit like zero in ancient world.
Romans had no "zero" numeral notion. And they were living with it, quite ok.
Now, we can say, zero is different from all the other numbers, but isn't 1 also very different from 2, 3, 4 and so on, from all the other numbers?
And presently we do recognize zero as a number.

Each case is different in some way, so saying religion A is the one I choose as the only true, then contradicting religions B, C, D and so on I need to recognize as false. Another person says religion B is true and I recognize A, C, D and all other as false. these are choices people make, assumptions. Someone who recognizes all religions as false also makes some choice, it is an assumption.
These things would not be assumptions if someone knew all and everything, so effectively be alpha and omega. Are we such beings?

Religion as a way of looking for truth should not be considered supernatural, in my opinion. Can truth be supernatural? In a sense of something strange and weird?

And what is supernatural? What is supernatural for one person/being is common for another person/being.
There was this photo of New Guinea people making a grass and stick "temple" of a plane. I cannot find it now, but these tribal people viewed planes as god-like machines or beings? That's the idea.

[Lorizael]

I'm kind of in Valka's boat here. I find these sorts of discussions to be frustrating and largely fruitless, so instead I'm just going to quote myself! Here's a blog post I wrote earlier in the year that is at least tangentially related to what I think are the vital differences between science and religion.

http://anomalous-readings.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-think-i-think-therefore-i-might-be.html

And here's the conclusion for those who don't want to pour through my long-winded prose.

The story of science as I see it is of believing that it’s worth it to try to figure things out. From that stance alone we admit our own ignorance. The world might not be only what it appears to be, so let’s try to figure out what it actually is. Our brains might be fallible, so let’s try to account for those failures when we seek answers. We might be ill-equipped to solve some mystery on our own, so let's share our findings and see what others discover, too.

Science done right is the deconstruction of hubris.

[Elok]

I don't believe it makes sense to classify atheism as a "religion"--strictly speaking it's not even a belief system, it's a simple opinion that can have belief systems such as secular humanism built around it.  I guess you can argue whether secular humanism is a religion, then, but that doesn't lead the discussion anywhere profitable in my experience, either.  It's like "are Mormons Christian"; one side really wants the label applied, the other really doesn't, and there's no commonly-agreed definition for it so the argument goes in circles.