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what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. I'm not a religious person and demand scientific facts for anything I want t

what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. I'm not a religious person and demand scientific facts for anything I want to understand and believe that there is a rational explanation for everything even we do not yet agree on the science behind it. While different religions all still agree on the idea of a higher power to explain the unexplained, my believe system is the most radical of all. Because it leaves no room for any other gods except science. I don't just dismiss their gods as false, but also dismiss the whole underlying structure all religions are built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm dismissing it) that my belief is just another religion.

mattnewton 5y ago
I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact that the majority of people historically identified as religious, without examining the number of confounding reasons for that (like it being the best theory previously, or the threat of being put to death for not identifying as the regions majority religion, etc). I think this is basically an appeal to authority argument no?
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  > I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact yes totally (in this argument) ignoring anyone that might have been historically or currently been agnostic, atheist, or anti-theist. > this is basically an appeal to authority argument no? I think so. And I couldn't think of a better example then what you just gave with mentioning "appeal to authority". The fact that we deconstruct language the way we do in order to decide the validity of the argument is already a scientific process. Sibling comment just mentioned trust which I also agree would be an important element of religious belief systems. In scientific process this trust is only temporary until we either managed to learn enough about this subject to see the truth for ourselves, or gave up on it and trust that those specialists who know (your appeal to authority argument) are qualified to know it for us.
adventured 5y ago
> what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. I can't. It's self-contradictory. Religion is wholly based in faith: believing when you have no concrete, demonstrable, scientific reason to. No religion can exist without that core concept, you have to be willing to believe when you have no proof. More broadly all mysticism is based on faith, and all mysticism (ghost hunters! magic rocks! miracles!) similarly runs counter to science accordingly. So non-religious scientifically-oriented people have more faith (willingness to base their lives and beliefs around things they can't prove exist) than religious people do? No. In terms of religion, asking for proof, requiring evidence, is the true first sin: thou shalt not! Religion builds upon that first step, you must first suspend your rational mental self and then turn your brain over to someone else's opinions as fact (which you then must accept as true, even if there's no way to prove such; religion is always based on subservience to someone else's faith-based opinions; religion begins at the point where you turn off your brain and hand it to someone else who says: because I say so, and you must believe what they're saying and specifically not let reason interfere). Here's how religion begins for everyone: someone tells you a (typically fantastical) story, with absolutely no evidence to support it, and then you believe it; to believe it you have to shut down inspection, debate, skepticism, reasoning, and so on. One of the core tenets of all religion is: don't ask such questions; who are you to question; etc. Even the more docile religions fold at those corners eventually and require that you stop asking questions or challenging (aka shut your brain off and just believe on faith). Science is contrary to faith. People occasionally try to worm around that in touchy-feely ways, you'll run across historical quotes by famous scientists saying dumb things like: my science is rooted in a powerful faith, dur dur dur. But that's just someone smart (at a thing) saying something exceptionally stupid about a different realm of thought and should be regarded as such. Like putting much stock into the dumb things Stephen Hawking used to say in the political or economic realm; geniuses are quite typically gifted at one thing, very rarely at two things, and people commonly seem to make the mistake of thinking that translates widely, when the opposite is true and it very rarely translates widely. Science grows stronger through questioning, debate, inquiry, challenging notions, requiring evidence to believe. Religion - and all faith based systems - wither when confronted by such, without exception. They react in such opposite manners, because they are indeed opposites.
- 5y ago
malfist 5y ago
This is often described as "God of the gaps" if you're curious about the argument you're making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps "Science" isn't a god. You don't believe in science, you don't have faith in science. You might have faith, or believe in people or textbooks that describe the current state of "science" but they're not divine. Science doesn't "leave no room for any gods", if there was evidence of a god (or gods), then that would be science too. There just isn't any evidence to support such a thing.
xboxnolifes 5y ago
> I don't just dismiss their gods as false, but also dismiss the whole underlying structure all religions are built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm dismissing it) that my belief is just another religion. Assuming the "my belief" here is still talking about science, I think it would be wrong to say that it dismisses gods as false. Instead, it dismisses most arguments of the existence of a god as unfalsifiable, and thus cannot be reasoned one way or the other. There is no proof one way or the other for something unfalsifiable, and instead time can be spent on what is. There are certainly religious scientists who maintain their faith and scientific contribution without compromising one or the other.
honkycat 5y ago
> what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. Atheism is not an assertion that there is no god. It is the understanding that we cannot with our current level of technology prove there IS a god. Therefore, we cannot believe in a god. That is the baseline argument: Prove it. You can't. That is the end of the conversation. In other words, the assertion you make here is one of the very few things we CAN prove and DO know. We CANNOT prove there IS a god. We CANNOT prove there is NO god. Therefore, we abstain from believing in a religion until sufficient evidence is provided. That is why atheism is not a religion. There is no belief involved. Because we do not pretend to know. We assert that we do not, and currently can not, know.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  You're thinking of agnosticism. Atheism is the assertion there is no God. A-theism. But it's a highly debated topic itself (as most things are in this realm). In general though, people mean it as they don't believe in God, and use agnosticism to indicate they do not believe one way or another.
  - honkycat 5y ago
    People can interpret Athiesm in different ways, and I was a bit clumsy by asserting anything about Athiesm in a broad sense, since there is no category or group of people who all have the same opinions and interpretations of Athiesm. However, by dictionary definition and from citing Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities." Anti-theism is the assertion there is no god. The prefix "a" can mean "not" or "without." "anti" means "against", "opposite of." So no, it is not the assertion there are no deities. It is an absence of the belief in any deities. The perspective I am arguing from is that there is no other coherent argument to be made about the existence of deities. We cannot currently prove there is no god. We cannot currently prove there is a god.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      As I said it's a debated topic, you have to use the interpretation of what people mean, not the broadest one. Wikipedia's first sentence is the broadest definition but not the de-facto, the second sentence you left out shows that. If you don't want confusion you'd want to use atheism for belief no God exist and agnosticism to indicate you don't feel one way or another. Which I believe is what most people do. Otherwise you start a semantic debate which is as pointless as a religious one. If you want to communicate the nuance of your beliefs without much explanation, use the two different words, otherwise use atheism as an umbrella term, which is what the "broadest sense" wikipedia is hinting at.

mattnewton 5y ago

I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact that the majority of people historically identified as religious, without examining the number of confounding reasons for that (like it being the best theory previously, or the threat of being put to death for not identifying as the regions majority religion, etc). I think this is basically an appeal to authority argument no?

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
> I think this framing gives undue weight to the fact yes totally (in this argument) ignoring anyone that might have been historically or currently been agnostic, atheist, or anti-theist. > this is basically an appeal to authority argument no? I think so. And I couldn't think of a better example then what you just gave with mentioning "appeal to authority". The fact that we deconstruct language the way we do in order to decide the validity of the argument is already a scientific process. Sibling comment just mentioned trust which I also agree would be an important element of religious belief systems. In scientific process this trust is only temporary until we either managed to learn enough about this subject to see the truth for ourselves, or gave up on it and trust that those specialists who know (your appeal to authority argument) are qualified to know it for us.

adventured 5y ago

> what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. I can't. It's self-contradictory. Religion is wholly based in faith: believing when you have no concrete, demonstrable, scientific reason to. No religion can exist without that core concept, you have to be willing to believe when you have no proof. More broadly all mysticism is based on faith, and all mysticism (ghost hunters! magic rocks! miracles!) similarly runs counter to science accordingly. So non-religious scientifically-oriented people have more faith (willingness to base their lives and beliefs around things they can't prove exist) than religious people do? No. In terms of religion, asking for proof, requiring evidence, is the true first sin: thou shalt not! Religion builds upon that first step, you must first suspend your rational mental self and then turn your brain over to someone else's opinions as fact (which you then must accept as true, even if there's no way to prove such; religion is always based on subservience to someone else's faith-based opinions; religion begins at the point where you turn off your brain and hand it to someone else who says: because I say so, and you must believe what they're saying and specifically not let reason interfere). Here's how religion begins for everyone: someone tells you a (typically fantastical) story, with absolutely no evidence to support it, and then you believe it; to believe it you have to shut down inspection, debate, skepticism, reasoning, and so on. One of the core tenets of all religion is: don't ask such questions; who are you to question; etc. Even the more docile religions fold at those corners eventually and require that you stop asking questions or challenging (aka shut your brain off and just believe on faith). Science is contrary to faith. People occasionally try to worm around that in touchy-feely ways, you'll run across historical quotes by famous scientists saying dumb things like: my science is rooted in a powerful faith, dur dur dur. But that's just someone smart (at a thing) saying something exceptionally stupid about a different realm of thought and should be regarded as such. Like putting much stock into the dumb things Stephen Hawking used to say in the political or economic realm; geniuses are quite typically gifted at one thing, very rarely at two things, and people commonly seem to make the mistake of thinking that translates widely, when the opposite is true and it very rarely translates widely. Science grows stronger through questioning, debate, inquiry, challenging notions, requiring evidence to believe. Religion - and all faith based systems - wither when confronted by such, without exception. They react in such opposite manners, because they are indeed opposites.

5y ago

malfist 5y ago

This is often described as "God of the gaps" if you're curious about the argument you're making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps "Science" isn't a god. You don't believe in science, you don't have faith in science. You might have faith, or believe in people or textbooks that describe the current state of "science" but they're not divine. Science doesn't "leave no room for any gods", if there was evidence of a god (or gods), then that would be science too. There just isn't any evidence to support such a thing.

xboxnolifes 5y ago

> I don't just dismiss their gods as false, but also dismiss the whole underlying structure all religions are built on, but without being aware (or if so I'm dismissing it) that my belief is just another religion. Assuming the "my belief" here is still talking about science, I think it would be wrong to say that it dismisses gods as false. Instead, it dismisses most arguments of the existence of a god as unfalsifiable, and thus cannot be reasoned one way or the other. There is no proof one way or the other for something unfalsifiable, and instead time can be spent on what is. There are certainly religious scientists who maintain their faith and scientific contribution without compromising one or the other.

honkycat 5y ago

> what if non-religious people are actually the most religious of them all. humor me. Atheism is not an assertion that there is no god. It is the understanding that we cannot with our current level of technology prove there IS a god. Therefore, we cannot believe in a god. That is the baseline argument: Prove it. You can't. That is the end of the conversation. In other words, the assertion you make here is one of the very few things we CAN prove and DO know. We CANNOT prove there IS a god. We CANNOT prove there is NO god. Therefore, we abstain from believing in a religion until sufficient evidence is provided. That is why atheism is not a religion. There is no belief involved. Because we do not pretend to know. We assert that we do not, and currently can not, know.

hunterb123 5y ago
You're thinking of agnosticism. Atheism is the assertion there is no God. A-theism. But it's a highly debated topic itself (as most things are in this realm). In general though, people mean it as they don't believe in God, and use agnosticism to indicate they do not believe one way or another.
- honkycat 5y ago
  People can interpret Athiesm in different ways, and I was a bit clumsy by asserting anything about Athiesm in a broad sense, since there is no category or group of people who all have the same opinions and interpretations of Athiesm. However, by dictionary definition and from citing Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities." Anti-theism is the assertion there is no god. The prefix "a" can mean "not" or "without." "anti" means "against", "opposite of." So no, it is not the assertion there are no deities. It is an absence of the belief in any deities. The perspective I am arguing from is that there is no other coherent argument to be made about the existence of deities. We cannot currently prove there is no god. We cannot currently prove there is a god.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    As I said it's a debated topic, you have to use the interpretation of what people mean, not the broadest one. Wikipedia's first sentence is the broadest definition but not the de-facto, the second sentence you left out shows that. If you don't want confusion you'd want to use atheism for belief no God exist and agnosticism to indicate you don't feel one way or another. Which I believe is what most people do. Otherwise you start a semantic debate which is as pointless as a religious one. If you want to communicate the nuance of your beliefs without much explanation, use the two different words, otherwise use atheism as an umbrella term, which is what the "broadest sense" wikipedia is hinting at.