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It's fairly common for people to respond to this sort of question by saying something along the lines of "I disapprove of organized religion, but have spiritual

by Gormo 16y ago

It's fairly common for people to respond to this sort of question by saying something along the lines of "I disapprove of organized religion, but have spiritual faith." My own view is exactly the opposite. I see the value in the ritual, community, and psychological "anchor" that organized religion can provide. But spiritual faith seems absurd; why mix your emotional security and your sense of identity up with a bunch of conceptual abstractions, or delude yourself into thinking that the subjective and particular is really objective and universal? I respect religion, per se, and hold no grudge against religions that use theology and mythology as part of their symbolic repertoire. So when I say "I do not believe in God", I'm not so much rejecting God as rejecting belief. Whether or not God exists objectively isn't really something I think about or care about answering.

MikeCapone 16y ago
> Whether or not God exists objectively isn't really something I think about or care about answering. I think that you could fairly be described as an agnostic, then.
- Gormo 16y ago
  Apathetist is a better description. An agnostic says he doesn't know the answer; I'm saying the question is meaningless.
  - MikeCapone 16y ago
    To elaborate a little, would you say it's "meaningless" to you personally, or in general? Just curious.
    - Gormo 16y ago
      I don't see how the concept of meaning can be discussed in general terms at all. It seems to inhere in the relationship between a person and the ideas he considers. I've certainly encountered other people who behave and speak in ways that indicate that they attribute a great deal of meaning to this question (often ironically because they insist on asserting an empirical basis for their faith), so I would not presume to speak for them. (BTW, note that I'm being pedantic in this thread in order to discuss this topic with a high degree of precision. I'm not trying to create a semantics rathole, honest. But oftentimes clarifying the semantics is necessary to have a productive conversation.)
  - hakl 16y ago
    That sounds vaguely like ignosticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
  - rokhayakebe 16y ago
    I'm saying the question is meaningless Why? Is it because we have not been able to answer it yet?
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Can it be answered in any uncontroversial way?
      - cema 16y ago
        Or perhaps "can it be answered in a scientific way"?
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Or just "answered". OTOH, I can always answer that 2+2 is 5. And no amount of faith will make me right.
        cema 16y ago
        "2+2 is 5" is a mathematical statement. Mathematics is different from the rest of science in that it is not an experimental science, so that a (theoretical) statement does not need an experimental confirmation, just a (theoretical) proof.
  - baddox 16y ago
    Isn't the question only meaningless if the answer is No? Assuming you're talking about the traditional Judeo-Christian God, then you would certainly be missing out on a lot of good (both in this life and the next) if the answer is Yes.
    - Gormo 16y ago
      If the question is meaningless, it has no meaningful answer; the answer cannot be "no", so... no. Your line of thinking is begging the question; you pre-suppose that the question is meaningful before you address its meaning.
      - baddox 16y ago
        OK then, what does it mean to say a question is meaningless? If an answer to the question is important, how is the question meaningless?
        Gormo 16y ago
        When I say "the question is meaningless", I'm saying that the question doesn't identify a gap in useful knowledge of the world. It might be a purely definitional question for which the answer boils down to a tautology, or it may identify a trick of logic that appears to be knowledge but is not, e.g. a paradox, or it might simply be nonsense. I say the question "does God exist?" is meaningless because: (a) it is a simple Boolean yes/no question, but its is asking about the relationship between two incredibly abstract concepts: "God" and "existence". To address the question, these concepts must be defined in precise terms; but being abstract, there is no suitably objective metric to measure their precision against. Therefore, in practice, any logically consistent answer to this question will be a tautology. (b) the validity of religion is not actually dependent upon the answer to this question; the concept of "faith" precludes the necessity of empirical validation. If you are religious, you may consider it important to believe in God, but this is not the same thing as it being important that God objectively exist. (c) formalities of thought aside, my underlying metric is how useful answering the question is, not how true it is, and I do not see useful value in answering the question. Asking the question, on the other hand, opens the door to interesting conversations like this one, which give us an opportunity to analyze, exercise and improve our thought processes, which is why I'm participating in the discussion so extensively. :)
  - chanakya 16y ago
    Studies have been done on the effect of (other people's) prayers in curing a patient. They've all shown no effect, but let's say the experiment had shown convincingly that prayers of the followers of a specific religion result in major improvements to the patients' health. Would you still say the question was meaningless? If not, how can a question be meaningless if it depends on the result of an experiment?
    - elliottkember 16y ago
      It's still jumping to an unrealistic conclusion. Interesting, for sure - but it'd just mean better scientific explanation is required, otherwise it's the very definition of superstition.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      What you ask is whether the question remains meaningless when confronted by strong evidence towards the existence of a godlike supernatural being that answers to prayers of a given group. I guess the question will remain meaningless until such evidence is uncovered.
      - cema 16y ago
        I guess the question will remain meaningless until such evidence is uncovered I doubt people who think the question is meaningless will be looking for answers. This is one reason such "evidence" may never be available. Another reason (a stronger one, in my opinion) is that this question is purely a matter of belief and therefore outside of the realm of science. Which may be another explanation why some people refuse to consider the question.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        If it's outside the realm of science, it's no longer a question. The believer already has an answer. In fact, any answer that makes the believer happy will do, for it cannot be neither proved nor disproved. Science folks my return to the question in the future, when there is a hypothesis to test. Right now, it can't. Trying to answer a question by throwing reason out the window cannot be called trying very hard...
indiefan 16y ago
This is actually a faith claim In and of itself. Your basically saying you don't believe there is a God who desires (or worse, requires) anything from you. Otherwise it would be in your best interest to care. You're completely entitled to your own beliefs, but passing it off as a position of "non-belief" is illogical. It's the same paradox as "there is no truth" being a truth claim. You sound like a person of great dedication to your belief, despite (and actually because of) your statements to the contrary.
- Gormo 16y ago
  That's an excellent point. I'd agree that I have a somewhat Kantian conceptualist worldview, in that I consider that I have access only to my own experience of the world, not to the world itself, so all knowledge is inherently subjective and particular. But thinking this way, "there is no truth" is only a synthetic claim of truth, not an analytic one; that is, it is "true" because the terms are logically consistent with each other given the rules that define their context (i.e. language), not because it expresses an objective representation of reality. In other words, given the subjective and particular nature of my experience of the world, I have no basis on which to construct a universal understanding of the world, so I am therefore incapable of making any analytical claim of truth in any universal sense. More practically, I'd say that ideas, including the idea of God, and including the processes of science, are useful tools that enhance our experience of the world, not objective and "true" representations of the world, and are best judged on how useful they are, not whether they are "true".
- djacobs 16y ago
  "Not believing" is not the same as "believing against". The first involves no claim, positive or negative, about religion except in response to a question or prompt. The second is an active disbelief or truth claim. Most atheists do not go around saying "I know there is no god" but, if asked "do you believe in a god/something supernatural/things you can't see", they would answer "no". Not many atheists are strong atheists (those who "believe against god", who believe the existence of god is objectively disproven). Rather, they are not convinced by anything they experience that there is a god and so do not believe in one, just as they do not believe in unicorns or pots o' gold at the end of the rainbow. (Surely you wouldn't say they are making a faith claim about unicorns just because they don't happen to acknowledge their existence.) However, they often actively push back against encroaching beliefs that they have not, themselves, claimed as their own. This distinction between "nonbelief" versus "disbelief" is subtle but important. EDIT: The only faith claim I could possibly agree atheists have is a general statement about the nature of faith as it relates to them. Namely, most say "I will not have faith. I will only accept as true that which can be demonstrated."
apinstein 16y ago
Mine, too. It's called secular humanism.
- drlisp 16y ago
  ANTI-theism != atheist
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tybris 16y ago
A Dutch comedian once described this as the church of Aliquid, for people who believe there is "something". Despite most people calling themselves non-religious, Aliquid turned out to be the most popular faith in the Netherlands.
- tybris 16y ago
  For those interested (Dutch speakers) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcb5hJuEgU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcb5hJuEgU

by Gormo 16y ago

MikeCapone 16y ago

> Whether or not God exists objectively isn't really something I think about or care about answering. I think that you could fairly be described as an agnostic, then.

Gormo 16y ago
Apathetist is a better description. An agnostic says he doesn't know the answer; I'm saying the question is meaningless.
- MikeCapone 16y ago
  To elaborate a little, would you say it's "meaningless" to you personally, or in general? Just curious.
  - Gormo 16y ago
    I don't see how the concept of meaning can be discussed in general terms at all. It seems to inhere in the relationship between a person and the ideas he considers. I've certainly encountered other people who behave and speak in ways that indicate that they attribute a great deal of meaning to this question (often ironically because they insist on asserting an empirical basis for their faith), so I would not presume to speak for them. (BTW, note that I'm being pedantic in this thread in order to discuss this topic with a high degree of precision. I'm not trying to create a semantics rathole, honest. But oftentimes clarifying the semantics is necessary to have a productive conversation.)
- hakl 16y ago
  That sounds vaguely like ignosticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
- rokhayakebe 16y ago
  I'm saying the question is meaningless Why? Is it because we have not been able to answer it yet?
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Can it be answered in any uncontroversial way?
    - cema 16y ago
      Or perhaps "can it be answered in a scientific way"?
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        Or just "answered". OTOH, I can always answer that 2+2 is 5. And no amount of faith will make me right.
        cema 16y ago
        "2+2 is 5" is a mathematical statement. Mathematics is different from the rest of science in that it is not an experimental science, so that a (theoretical) statement does not need an experimental confirmation, just a (theoretical) proof.
- baddox 16y ago
  Isn't the question only meaningless if the answer is No? Assuming you're talking about the traditional Judeo-Christian God, then you would certainly be missing out on a lot of good (both in this life and the next) if the answer is Yes.
  - Gormo 16y ago
    If the question is meaningless, it has no meaningful answer; the answer cannot be "no", so... no. Your line of thinking is begging the question; you pre-suppose that the question is meaningful before you address its meaning.
    - baddox 16y ago
      OK then, what does it mean to say a question is meaningless? If an answer to the question is important, how is the question meaningless?
      - Gormo 16y ago
        When I say "the question is meaningless", I'm saying that the question doesn't identify a gap in useful knowledge of the world. It might be a purely definitional question for which the answer boils down to a tautology, or it may identify a trick of logic that appears to be knowledge but is not, e.g. a paradox, or it might simply be nonsense. I say the question "does God exist?" is meaningless because: (a) it is a simple Boolean yes/no question, but its is asking about the relationship between two incredibly abstract concepts: "God" and "existence". To address the question, these concepts must be defined in precise terms; but being abstract, there is no suitably objective metric to measure their precision against. Therefore, in practice, any logically consistent answer to this question will be a tautology. (b) the validity of religion is not actually dependent upon the answer to this question; the concept of "faith" precludes the necessity of empirical validation. If you are religious, you may consider it important to believe in God, but this is not the same thing as it being important that God objectively exist. (c) formalities of thought aside, my underlying metric is how useful answering the question is, not how true it is, and I do not see useful value in answering the question. Asking the question, on the other hand, opens the door to interesting conversations like this one, which give us an opportunity to analyze, exercise and improve our thought processes, which is why I'm participating in the discussion so extensively. :)
- chanakya 16y ago
  Studies have been done on the effect of (other people's) prayers in curing a patient. They've all shown no effect, but let's say the experiment had shown convincingly that prayers of the followers of a specific religion result in major improvements to the patients' health. Would you still say the question was meaningless? If not, how can a question be meaningless if it depends on the result of an experiment?
  - elliottkember 16y ago
    It's still jumping to an unrealistic conclusion. Interesting, for sure - but it'd just mean better scientific explanation is required, otherwise it's the very definition of superstition.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    What you ask is whether the question remains meaningless when confronted by strong evidence towards the existence of a godlike supernatural being that answers to prayers of a given group. I guess the question will remain meaningless until such evidence is uncovered.
    - cema 16y ago
      I guess the question will remain meaningless until such evidence is uncovered I doubt people who think the question is meaningless will be looking for answers. This is one reason such "evidence" may never be available. Another reason (a stronger one, in my opinion) is that this question is purely a matter of belief and therefore outside of the realm of science. Which may be another explanation why some people refuse to consider the question.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        If it's outside the realm of science, it's no longer a question. The believer already has an answer. In fact, any answer that makes the believer happy will do, for it cannot be neither proved nor disproved. Science folks my return to the question in the future, when there is a hypothesis to test. Right now, it can't. Trying to answer a question by throwing reason out the window cannot be called trying very hard...

indiefan 16y ago

This is actually a faith claim In and of itself. Your basically saying you don't believe there is a God who desires (or worse, requires) anything from you. Otherwise it would be in your best interest to care. You're completely entitled to your own beliefs, but passing it off as a position of "non-belief" is illogical. It's the same paradox as "there is no truth" being a truth claim. You sound like a person of great dedication to your belief, despite (and actually because of) your statements to the contrary.

Gormo 16y ago
That's an excellent point. I'd agree that I have a somewhat Kantian conceptualist worldview, in that I consider that I have access only to my own experience of the world, not to the world itself, so all knowledge is inherently subjective and particular. But thinking this way, "there is no truth" is only a synthetic claim of truth, not an analytic one; that is, it is "true" because the terms are logically consistent with each other given the rules that define their context (i.e. language), not because it expresses an objective representation of reality. In other words, given the subjective and particular nature of my experience of the world, I have no basis on which to construct a universal understanding of the world, so I am therefore incapable of making any analytical claim of truth in any universal sense. More practically, I'd say that ideas, including the idea of God, and including the processes of science, are useful tools that enhance our experience of the world, not objective and "true" representations of the world, and are best judged on how useful they are, not whether they are "true".
djacobs 16y ago
"Not believing" is not the same as "believing against". The first involves no claim, positive or negative, about religion except in response to a question or prompt. The second is an active disbelief or truth claim. Most atheists do not go around saying "I know there is no god" but, if asked "do you believe in a god/something supernatural/things you can't see", they would answer "no". Not many atheists are strong atheists (those who "believe against god", who believe the existence of god is objectively disproven). Rather, they are not convinced by anything they experience that there is a god and so do not believe in one, just as they do not believe in unicorns or pots o' gold at the end of the rainbow. (Surely you wouldn't say they are making a faith claim about unicorns just because they don't happen to acknowledge their existence.) However, they often actively push back against encroaching beliefs that they have not, themselves, claimed as their own. This distinction between "nonbelief" versus "disbelief" is subtle but important. EDIT: The only faith claim I could possibly agree atheists have is a general statement about the nature of faith as it relates to them. Namely, most say "I will not have faith. I will only accept as true that which can be demonstrated."

apinstein 16y ago

Mine, too. It's called secular humanism.

drlisp 16y ago
ANTI-theism != atheist

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

tybris 16y ago

A Dutch comedian once described this as the church of Aliquid, for people who believe there is "something". Despite most people calling themselves non-religious, Aliquid turned out to be the most popular faith in the Netherlands.

tybris 16y ago
For those interested (Dutch speakers) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcb5hJuEgU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcb5hJuEgU