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Post by FilmFlaneur on Jan 6, 2021 17:08:51 GMT
Religious people have a LOT more children. Ultra-religious Jews have 10 per woman. In an over-crowded planet, with dwindling resources, this is hardly a recommendation and in fact advertises selfishness. But I am sure you don't mean that.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Jan 6, 2021 17:18:59 GMT
The massive numbers of believers of higher powers among human beings for thousands of years doesn’t prove anything about a god. It shows the propensity of believing. It’s part of the human race’s characteristics. "The massive numbers of believers of higher powers among human beings for thousands of years doesn’t prove anything about a god." OK cool, so you're admitting argument ad pop is not a good way to make an argument and you're not gonna do it again, right? "It shows the propensity of believing." I would say the "propensity" is more about curiousity of the universe than some innate, natural tendency towards believing in God. For the longest time though we've had to fill that cuirousity with the "God hypothesis" since science had yet make a lot of discoveries (it's probably no coincidence religiousity dropped dramatically since things like evoluition and Big Band theory were discovered). And because of centuries of religious indoctrination and lack of scientific discoveries, many are still clinging on to the God Hypothesis, particularly in poorer countries where people don't have access to the best education. "It’s part of the human race’s characteristics." Well no, curiosity is part of the human race's characteristic and because we were largely ingorant towards science we used "God" as a means of satisyfing that curiosity. Here's an interesting hypothetical, let's say someone used a time machinesand brought back all the scientific information we currently know (atoms, Big Bang theory, evolution) and introduced it to primitive man, do you truly believe man would still be as religious as it is today?
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Post by movieliker on Jan 6, 2021 17:19:02 GMT
I agree. I've long been for legalized drugs. But until recently, most states said no. I've long been for universal healthcare. But the United States is one of the few 1rst world countries that doesn't have it. One reason I don't belong to any organized religion is I don't agree with their positions on many things. But still, many people need religion for morals, ethics, and spirituality. Because the Atheists and anti religious aren't teaching morals, ethics and spirituality. And people gotta go somewhere for a positive and constructive message. I agree with your post, except for the last line. And the next to last line is problematic as well IMO. There are plenty of ethical and moral frameworks that don't need the divine. Utilitarism is one, and the Golden Rule doesn't require a deity either. So saying that atheists don't teach morals or ethics is wrong. As for positive messages: Utilitarism teaches that the pursuit of happiness is a valid goal. How much more positivity can you get? As for many people needing religion for morals: If without religion they'd be people who do evil things, then maybe they are just bad people. I am an aware and informed person. How popular is Utilitarism? I Googled it, this is the first thing that came up; "While utilitarianism is currently a very popular ethical theory, there are some difficulties in relying on it as a sole method for moral decision-making.Aug 1, 2014"www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/calculating-consequences-the-utilitarian-approach/People have a natural propensity to believe in a higher power. Religion gives them that. Sounds like Utilitarianism doesn't. A big proponent of anti god philosophy is rebellion against authority. Most people don't have any problem with an authority figure. In fact, most people like it and want it. |
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Post by SciFive on Jan 6, 2021 17:19:13 GMT
Religious people have a LOT more children. Ultra-religious Jews have 10 per woman. In an over-crowded planet, with dwindling resources, this is hardly a recommendation and in fact advertises selfishness. But I am sure you don't mean that. Again, I was responding to the assertion that the number of believers will diminish. Not when believers keep having more children. |
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Jan 6, 2021 17:21:12 GMT
Irrationality and logical fallacies are literally defined as methods of thought that lead to beliefs that have nothing to do with the truth of that belief. Would a logical fallacy not be where the conclusion does not follow from the premises, regardless of whether either conclusion or premises are true? So this would be rational imo: Premise 1: I believe things that make me happy Premise 2: Believing in God makes me happy Conclusion: I believe in God I think the flaw in Movieliker's thinking is he doesn't actually hold Premise 1 in all instances, only on an ad-hoc basis when it comes to God (correct me if I'm wrong here, Movieliker). Yes, but the original "conclusion" under dispute was whether or not God exists. I suspect things got muddled when the issue shifted to "it's irrational to believe in God," which is somewhat vague; but given the original issue that statement should've been interpreted as "it's irrational to believe 'God exists' is true," which is a bit clunky but more accurate, and what I imagine most people would interpret that to mean anyway. You can certainly form a logical argument about believing in God with the premise of "I should believe in something if it makes me happy to believe in it," but that's a completely separate thing from the truth of the thing you're believing in, and I pointed this out the first time it was brought up. I think a more general point is that if we're going to claim that we can make anything rational merely by using personal desires as premises, then you might as well throw out the entire field of rationality, cognitive biases, epistemology, etc., which are all based around the goal of figuring out which modes of reasoning most reliably lead to truth and which do not.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Jan 6, 2021 17:21:53 GMT
In an over-crowded planet, with dwindling resources, this is hardly a recommendation and in fact advertises selfishness. But I am sure you don't mean that. Again, I was responding to the assertion that the number of believers will diminish. Not when believers keep having more children. That's only because poorer people tend to have more children. When third world countries start becoming more developed, the fertility rate will drop and so will the amount of religious people. For religion to continue to thrive, you would basically have to advocate for people to be poor and uneducated. Really think about that.
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Jan 6, 2021 17:27:49 GMT
I intentionally left that vague because the idea is that without listed priors you basically have to assign equal probabilities to each bag. If your prior odds for cases a - d are W : X : Y : Z (for example, 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 if you consider each to be equally likely) then after drawing one ball and observing that it is blue you update the odds to W : X/2 : Y/5 : Z /10 (equivalently, but without fractions, 10 W : 5 X : 2 Y : Z). If W : X : Y : Z is initially, say 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 (10% case a, 20% case b, 30% case c, 40% case, sum = 100%) then after drawing one ball and observing that it is blue you update the odds to 10 : 10 : 6 : 4 (probabilities 1/3, 1/3, 1/5, 2/15). The answers to the two questions depended on the prior. For equal prior probabilities of 25 % each, the posterior odds are 10 : 5 : 2 : 1 and so there is a probability of 10/18 = 5/9 that you have "type a" hairy blue balls. Good job! You're now the fifth person on the board to solve the problem. Here was the original thread: imdb2.freeforums.net/thread/211197/hairy-ballsy-problem
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Jan 6, 2021 17:28:54 GMT
In an over-crowded planet, with dwindling resources, this is hardly a recommendation and in fact advertises selfishness. But I am sure you don't mean that. Again, I was responding to the assertion that the number of believers will diminish. Not when believers keep having more children. I have certainly seen several islamophobic predictions about the high rate of Muslim births.
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Post by SciFive on Jan 6, 2021 17:30:15 GMT
If your prior odds for cases a - d are W : X : Y : Z (for example, 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 if you consider each to be equally likely) then after drawing one ball and observing that it is blue you update the odds to W : X/2 : Y/5 : Z /10 (equivalently, but without fractions, 10 W : 5 X : 2 Y : Z). If W : X : Y : Z is initially, say 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 (10% case a, 20% case b, 30% case c, 40% case, sum = 100%) then after drawing one ball and observing that it is blue you update the odds to 10 : 10 : 6 : 4 (probabilities 1/3, 1/3, 1/5, 2/15). The answers to the two questions depended on the prior. For equal prior probabilities of 25 % each, the posterior odds are 10 : 5 : 2 : 1 and so there is a probability of 10/18 = 5/9 that you have "type a" hairy blue balls. Good job! You're now the fifth person on the board to solve the problem. Here was the original thread: IMDB2.freeforums.net/thread/211197/hairy-ballsy-problem Thanks!! Ok, a positive way to part. Take care - I enjoyed working on the problem. |
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Jan 6, 2021 17:35:01 GMT
The massive numbers of believers of higher powers among human beings for thousands of years doesn’t prove anything about a god. It shows the propensity of believing. I recognized this way back on page one.It's also a human tendency to be racist. Not all human tendencies are to be celebrated.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Jan 6, 2021 18:28:10 GMT
1. Yes you're presenting facts, but you're using them in a fallacious manner ("A lot of people believe in religion, therefore there must some truth to it") I've already addressed this. 2.) Did you not see the Pew article I sent you? Also the world is still majority religios only because so many countries are underdevoped and poor. Poor countries tend to be more religious (and yes the data is there to show that) because they have more children and they don't have access to the best education. Once these third world countries start to catch up, the religiosity of them will almost certainly drop. )1) But of course, that goes without saying. 2) I looked up statistics on my own. And "religious" and "believer" are two different things. Many people in 1rst world countries (like me) don't belong to any organized religion. But they still believe. Intelligent and educated people can think for themselves. They don't need a church to tell them what to believe, think or do. 1. Then I dunno what you're arguing with me about 2.) This doesn't really speak to the broader point, there is a undeniable correlation between poverty/education and religiosity: www.churchpop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/religiosity.png
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Post by movieliker on Jan 6, 2021 18:48:00 GMT
)1) But of course, that goes without saying. 2) I looked up statistics on my own. And "religious" and "believer" are two different things. Many people in 1rst world countries (like me) don't belong to any organized religion. But they still believe. Intelligent and educated people can think for themselves. They don't need a church to tell them what to believe, think or do. 1. Then I dunno what you're arguing with me about 2.) This doesn't really speak to the broader point, there is a undeniable correlation between poverty/education and religiosity: www.churchpop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/religiosity.png 1) I'm not arguing with you. You are arguing with me. 2) But of course. Religions do a better job of making themselves available to poor people than schools do. Believers in 1rst world countries are not in decline. Just those who belong to an organized religion. |
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Post by lowtacks86 on Jan 6, 2021 18:57:22 GMT
1) I'm not arguing with you. You are arguing with me. 2) But of course. Religions do a better job of making themselves available to poor people than schools do. Believers in 1rst world countries are not in decline. Just those who belong to an organized religion. 1) OK this is going no where 2) "But of course. Religions do a better job of making themselves available to poor people than schools do." That's probably because to have a decent education system requires more money (competent teachers, textbooks, etc), religion doesn't quite depend on money/capital as much to "open it's doors" to poor people. That in itself isn't really a good advocacy for religion though, if that's what you're arguing. "Believers in 1rst world countries are not in decline. Just those who belong to an organized religion." Believers and organized religion are pretty intertwined. Countries with high religiousity typically have a high amount of believers unless of course (for some bizarre reason) a bunch of those believers happen to be deists or something.
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Post by movieliker on Jan 6, 2021 19:25:36 GMT
1) I'm not arguing with you. You are arguing with me. 2) But of course. Religions do a better job of making themselves available to poor people than schools do. Believers in 1rst world countries are not in decline. Just those who belong to an organized religion. 1) OK this is going no where 2) "But of course. Religions do a better job of making themselves available to poor people than schools do." That's probably because to have a decent education system requires more money (competent teachers, textbooks, etc), religion doesn't quite depend on money/capital as much to "open it's doors" to poor people. That in itself isn't really a good advocacy for religion though, if that's what you're arguing. "Believers in 1rst world countries are not in decline. Just those who belong to an organized religion." Believers and organized religion are pretty intertwined. Countries with high religiousity typically have a high amount of believers unless of course (for some bizarre reason) a bunch of those believers happen to be deists or something. 2) No religions have lots of money. And they spend a lot on charity. Catholic Charities is all over the world. And they don't require recipients of charity to be Catholic, Christian or even religious. No, 1rst world countries have lots of highly educated independent thinkers who have religion. But don't need to belong to any church. |
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Post by lowtacks86 on Jan 6, 2021 19:32:41 GMT
1) OK this is going no where 2) "But of course. Religions do a better job of making themselves available to poor people than schools do." That's probably because to have a decent education system requires more money (competent teachers, textbooks, etc), religion doesn't quite depend on money/capital as much to "open it's doors" to poor people. That in itself isn't really a good advocacy for religion though, if that's what you're arguing. "Believers in 1rst world countries are not in decline. Just those who belong to an organized religion." Believers and organized religion are pretty intertwined. Countries with high religiousity typically have a high amount of believers unless of course (for some bizarre reason) a bunch of those believers happen to be deists or something. 2) No religions have lots of money. And they spend a lot on charity. Catholic Charities is all over the world. And they don't require recipients of charity to be Catholic, Christian or even religious. No, 1rst world countries have lots of highly educated independent thinkers who have religion. But don't need to belong to any church. "No religions have lots of money. " That's not really what I said, I said the effectiveness of spreading religion doesn't really depend on socioeconomics as much effective education does. That's preceisely why poorer people tend be more religious and less educated than richer people. Better, more effective schools require more funding, which typically means people with more money have access to better education. Religion doesn't really rely on the socioeconomic status of people in terms of who they "let in". "No, 1rst world countries have lots of highly educated independent thinkers who have religion. But don't need to belong to any church" Yes, there are individual examples of educated people have religion. But that doesn't speak to the overall broader trend (on average, people who are more educated tend to be less religious). This is pretty well substantiated by data.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Jan 6, 2021 20:23:49 GMT
Sorry, but this conversation is a bit ludicrous considering the effects of having faith in unproven “facts” is currently tearing up the US Capitol. This is the real 'cancel culture' in action. The mob want to cancel the election result.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Jan 6, 2021 20:30:01 GMT
Sorry, but this conversation is a bit ludicrous considering the effects of having faith in unproven “facts” is currently tearing up the US Capitol. This is the real 'cancel culture'. They want to cancel the election result. These people are completely brain dead and deranged, can't wait to see the look on their faces when their God Emperor leaves the White House.
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gw
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Post by gw on Jan 7, 2021 0:00:34 GMT
There are many possibilities of what may happen in the future, or at least we don't know what will happen. There are many things for which we have no evidence. People don't know how and when they're going to die, so that's a matter of faith. I can't speak for others but I have no faith at all in how and when I will die, although there are scenarios I would certainly prefer. Dying itself is not a matter of faith. I am not sure since it sounds confused. For one thing, you seem to be confusing 'faith' with 'belief'. This ignores the fact that faith in the workings of the natural world is not the same as faith in the supernatural when one considers evidence and the most reasonable understanding of the way things will be. Which is why I distinguish between faith and belief. [/quote] My point on death was that you could die at any moment but make plans which you may not be alive to experience under the hopeful assumption that you'll be alive to fulfill them. I don't know what to say on 'faith' versus 'belief' other then it seems that by your view that past belief gets proven wrong and becomes today's faith.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Jan 7, 2021 12:33:55 GMT
My point on death was that you could die at any moment but make plans which you may not be alive to experience under the hopeful assumption that you'll be alive to fulfill them. The difference is that one might make plans which one believes are reasonable in light of mortality; but to speak of one's faith in those plans implies more, a reliance on their success even. The distinction, at least in religious terms (where 'faith' can be used differently from the secular), is made here:
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gw
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Post by gw on Jan 8, 2021 4:57:29 GMT
My point on death was that you could die at any moment but make plans which you may not be alive to experience under the hopeful assumption that you'll be alive to fulfill them. The difference is that one might make plans which one believes are reasonable in light of mortality; but to speak of one's faith in those plans implies more, a reliance on their success even. The distinction, at least in religious terms (where 'faith' can be used differently from the secular), is made here: So faith has to do with dependence on something and committing to it beyond all doubt to a point where it will change your life heavily if you do it compared to if you don't? That's what I think that idea of faith means.
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