Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. When you believe that elves cause it to rain, each time it rains, you'll see evidence of elves. If you believe that rain is caused by condensation of water vapor in rain clouds, each time it rains, you'll see evidence of condensation of water vapor in rain clouds. The thing is, when you stop believing in elves, you'll stop seeing evidence of elves. And when you stop believing in condensation of water vapor in rain clouds, you will still see condensation of water vapor in rain clouds.
That is why belief as a prerequisite of seeing evidence for something is obviously suspect.
Showing posts with label Belief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belief. Show all posts
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
It's not about proof, it's about evidence.
It's not about proof. It's about evidence. Is there evidence to believe in an an afterlife? If there is none, and I'm pretty sure that's the case. Then we should not live our lives with respect to that idea. Without an actual and existing belief in the afterlife, who would die for religion? If you are losing the rest of your life and if your life is all you have, then that decision is unreasonable. However, if you believe that by giving up your life it will slingshot you directly into paradise and you and your family will be saved, then it's the unreasonable choice not to do such a thing.
The fact that there's no evidence in favor of the proposition is entirely the reason why you shouldn't accept it. The heterodox nature of skepticism is that you should not believe a proposition for which you have no reasons to suppose that that proposition is true. Even with ideas like the afterlife, which on the surface seem to have no impact on our world, are actually sources for great mistakes and dire problems. You are mistaking the fact that there is no evidence in favor of them to conclude that, they have no effect in reality. For the actual thing this is true. There is no afterlife and therefore afterlives don't permeate our reality, by definition we are unaffected by the non-existent. However, belief in the afterlife does exist in our world and can do great harm.
Advocating for things because they do no harm, while the beliefs in them can do harm, and using that to justify the beliefs is a recipe for belief in a plethora of nothings. We should condone belief in leprechauns because there are no leprechauns, and therefore what can it matter? While some people might *really* believe in leprechauns and spend all their waking hours chasing rainbows to find a pot of gold.
While, this may see alien to us and amusing, it is no less absurd than spending 1/7th of a notably short life in church and a solid 1/2 of the days we tend to have free, praising non-existing self-sacrificing deities who died and rose from the dead fewer times than Xena: Warrior Princess. The beliefs themselves torture the minds of children and poison the minds of adults, they raise the specters demons, spread hate and bigotry and consume the lives of millions with superstitious nonsense.
The fact that believers have no proof is entirely the reason not to accept those claims.
The fact that there's no evidence in favor of the proposition is entirely the reason why you shouldn't accept it. The heterodox nature of skepticism is that you should not believe a proposition for which you have no reasons to suppose that that proposition is true. Even with ideas like the afterlife, which on the surface seem to have no impact on our world, are actually sources for great mistakes and dire problems. You are mistaking the fact that there is no evidence in favor of them to conclude that, they have no effect in reality. For the actual thing this is true. There is no afterlife and therefore afterlives don't permeate our reality, by definition we are unaffected by the non-existent. However, belief in the afterlife does exist in our world and can do great harm.
Advocating for things because they do no harm, while the beliefs in them can do harm, and using that to justify the beliefs is a recipe for belief in a plethora of nothings. We should condone belief in leprechauns because there are no leprechauns, and therefore what can it matter? While some people might *really* believe in leprechauns and spend all their waking hours chasing rainbows to find a pot of gold.
While, this may see alien to us and amusing, it is no less absurd than spending 1/7th of a notably short life in church and a solid 1/2 of the days we tend to have free, praising non-existing self-sacrificing deities who died and rose from the dead fewer times than Xena: Warrior Princess. The beliefs themselves torture the minds of children and poison the minds of adults, they raise the specters demons, spread hate and bigotry and consume the lives of millions with superstitious nonsense.
The fact that believers have no proof is entirely the reason not to accept those claims.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
How can religions be wrong? I mean there's so many people who believe them.
Remember back when Saddam had vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction? Everybody believed it? The news was on and on about how reliable it was? How this was an absolute truth? Skepticism was condemned as evil and wanting us to be killed? Then this brought us to war. We invaded Iraq to disarm them of their weapons of mass destruction only to find out that there weren't any. This is pretty much religion.
You have a large number of people talking about something, without evidence, in the most absolute of terms. This is religion. Not believing this will lead to eternal hellfire and damnation. This is religion. This unsubstantiated belief lead to war and death and killing on no real grounds. This is religion. The media, the government, the apologists all happened to be lock step though without discussing it. This is religion. The bad intelligence summed up to be group think. This is religion. Once proven wrong the apologists start making silly excuses such as 'God needs faith', or 'the WMDs were taken to Syria'. This is religion.
Really, if you want evidence that you can get vast number of people to believe a lie on no evidence and get that evidence to lead to war... look no further than the cradle of civilization. The source and destination for that kind of nonsense.
As a funny little side, somebody on some TV show made the comment that everybody believed that Iraq had WMD, while my sister was visiting from Washington. We both sort of raised our hands to signify our exemption to that statement. Though that was mostly because I had read Alternet at the time and came across some great arguments that it was all poppycock prior to the war, and she was the one who highly recommended Alternet to the rest of the family.
And as a side objection to this looking back and blaming people for believing what they were told. It's not as blame worthy to tell somebody something and have them believe it, than it is blameworthy to tell somebody something which is false.
You have a large number of people talking about something, without evidence, in the most absolute of terms. This is religion. Not believing this will lead to eternal hellfire and damnation. This is religion. This unsubstantiated belief lead to war and death and killing on no real grounds. This is religion. The media, the government, the apologists all happened to be lock step though without discussing it. This is religion. The bad intelligence summed up to be group think. This is religion. Once proven wrong the apologists start making silly excuses such as 'God needs faith', or 'the WMDs were taken to Syria'. This is religion.
Really, if you want evidence that you can get vast number of people to believe a lie on no evidence and get that evidence to lead to war... look no further than the cradle of civilization. The source and destination for that kind of nonsense.
As a funny little side, somebody on some TV show made the comment that everybody believed that Iraq had WMD, while my sister was visiting from Washington. We both sort of raised our hands to signify our exemption to that statement. Though that was mostly because I had read Alternet at the time and came across some great arguments that it was all poppycock prior to the war, and she was the one who highly recommended Alternet to the rest of the family.
And as a side objection to this looking back and blaming people for believing what they were told. It's not as blame worthy to tell somebody something and have them believe it, than it is blameworthy to tell somebody something which is false.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
How to see the world as an atheist...
1) Go to a UFO convention.
2) Each time somebody says "believe" replace it in your head with "have/has strong evidence for".
3) Avoid getting pissed.
2) Each time somebody says "believe" replace it in your head with "have/has strong evidence for".
3) Avoid getting pissed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)