Atheism: If Satan exists and is the master of deception, would the ultimate deception not be God doesn't exist?

Craytun · 2012-05-23T15:54:10.264966+00:00

Again, this statement lacks any meaning or explanatory power. Partly because it's circular but mostly because it assumes too many things.

What would you like me to know? How can we get back to a decent starting point, in order to achieve that goal?

engineer4prez · 2012-05-23T15:03:35.358749+00:00

I just don't see it. I'll keep an eye out I guess; I hope you try to see it differently as well.

The system of reddit reflects interest, but it's biased towards gratification. We can use that to assess how people are feeling about the relationship between gay rights and religion. Treat it like a heuristic and try to reassess the information you're seeing.

Craytun · 2012-05-23T15:03:02.201872+00:00

And the implications of such a point?

engineer4prez · 2012-05-23T14:29:48.260406+00:00

Sure, when it's complaints and personal experiences, these get old. Keep calm and carry on. When it's news, it might be news. When it's repeated news, downvote and move along. Where is the part that requires you to start an internal commentary about it? [Serious question]

engineer4prez · 2012-05-23T14:18:29.272382+00:00

Still disagree. The gay rights become relevant as long as scrutiny is on religion from this community AND the lives of gays are negatively impacted by ideas propagated through religion. They are related. The interest fits into the most common first and second order ideas of this community.

Craytun · 2012-05-23T14:10:10.248200+00:00

This makes no sense, and I urge you to reassess your ideas. I'd be more than happy to help where I can.

yakkers09 · 2012-05-23T13:36:06.968184+00:00

I would not be surprised if that person was having Pauline seizures.

Canipa09 · 2012-05-23T13:32:43.267656+00:00

I am very skeptical of that assessment. How would one quantify more intense?

I stand by my book suggestions.

Craytun · 2012-05-23T13:29:25.400754+00:00

I don't think this is necessarily correct either.

Each deception involves a reality, an understanding, and a potentially endless number of alternatives.

If the number of alternatives is endless, even if only a portion of them are viable it's still effectively infinite. Each deception that masks a reality is equally deceptive, so long as it can endure. But each deception that masks an understanding offers a different understanding, so each deception that masks an understanding is in effect just supplanting one understanding for another, with the assumption that since we are on a deceptive path, we are getting further from reality.

This means that satan, if such an antagonist exists still has human minds to work with. All humans get is an understanding. There's no evidence that we've ever been able to get more than an understanding. But there is evidence that we can model aspects of reality with accuracy, and this has a lot to do with science.

A deception, any deception, distances us from reality. There are not ultimate deceptions, or evil deceptions or benevolent deceptions or whatever. There are only functional deceptions and nonfunctional deceptions. Functional deceptions get selected, non-functional deceptions die out.

Canipa09 · 2012-05-23T13:19:55.459979+00:00

Yeah. I'm with hulk on this one. I can really relate to your ambition, but I am very critical about your reasoning. It's great to learn about the worlds religions, but among the many things atheists and theists have in common is that outside of the scope of supernatural (inherently difficult to observe) that one chooses to accept, there is a presumption of disbelief.

That presumption does not come from anything factual. It comes from our own borders of self-identity and we infuse it with reason and logic after the fact. But when you take that idea outside of the self, you can really look at it. Really look at implications of default atheism or default skepticism or default agnosticism. What the person is saying is that the book, the story, the notion, the indoctrination, the meme, the excessively fallible what-ever is insufficient for belief.

I wish you well on your intellectual journey, but I'd urge you to reconsider your motives, as hulk suggests, your assuming atheism is based on negative evidence of something that can be presumed plausible, when it's the exact opposite that helps you step outside of human patternicity and agency and maybe, just maybe, get a glimpse of a closer approximation of reality. Maybe you could start with Shermer's "The Believing Brain" or Newburg's "Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth."

Best Regards,

Albatross

Craytun · 2012-05-23T13:11:00.971638+00:00

Is it really a coherent to say ultimate deception. In what sense is deception finite, or at least discrete enough to say that deception isn't just relative to what truth is being supplanted.

ImApi · 2012-05-22T21:51:17.545977+00:00

Not sure I agree with every aspect, but yeah; general sentiment is on target.

Posts don't have to be atheism related, but when people wonder why this subreddit was chosen for a certain sentiment, it'd be nice if it made sense.

Gay rights and SSM I understand. A lot of the instant-grat pic-posts I don't understand.

ar92 · 2012-05-22T21:33:37.873288+00:00

The guy with the flag or the guy who looks like dracula?

Estranged_Noodle · 2012-05-22T14:15:09.754569-07:00

Why posted to atheism?

No you're not being racist. However they don't really mean your behaving as though one race is superior to another, they are saying your inability to differentiate between things, but still think it makes sense to implement those things in the punchline of a joke is distasteful. And yeah... it is, but it's not a big deal.

AnimatorSteve · 2012-05-22T20:48:18.879210+00:00

Question:

What differentiates cult behavior from normal religious behavior?
Is it a metric or a heuristic?
If the best we can do is a heuristic, what metrics can we get from a data-sample in hand, and can we compare them to eachother? For example: Can we get metrics from reviewing the behavior of a Christian doing Christian things and compare that to Scientologist doing scientologist things and compare them with any expectation of consistency?

sandw1tch · 2012-05-22T20:31:04.547814+00:00

Ok.

The point I was circling here is that Theism and Atheism, while each is marked with their opposing assertions, exist independent of the "knowledge" element.

Things brings us to the idea of modern gnosticism. The term gnostic hasn't always referred to knowledge of a God. It is more broad than that. It refers to special knowledge or ethereal knowledge. One can have theistic or atheistic sentiments without making a gnostic claim.

Agnosticism by contrast is also a very assertive claim. I like to sum up agnosticism like this:

Agnosticism is the impassioned I don't know. It's as though one is saying I don't know. I am not sure if it's even possible to know. And, I seriously doubt the honesty of anyone who claims to know.

To know what? To know something definitive about a world or a being who by definition is beyond us.

Is this take on agnosticism agreeable?

oneaccounttorulethem · 2012-05-22T11:58:26.682313-07:00

Ok, yeah I found the second post. I liked the post... but I'm a sucker for Y U No guy.

oneaccounttorulethem · 2012-05-22T18:36:02.500496+00:00

Yeah I thought so. Curious what the other one is.

I actually kinda liked that post, I just wondered why it was in this subreddit. I don't really understand OP's position.

oneaccounttorulethem · 2012-05-22T11:29:41.592612-07:00

Which posts?

sethpeck · 2012-05-22T10:39:26.867392-07:00

hsmith makes a good point. You might do well to think on it.

The_Limping_Coyote · 2012-05-22T17:34:07.377397+00:00

Rather than humor his questions say "You know, I'd like to the know that too. I'll research and maybe we can review it together."

Then go on to say "But it doesn't matter. These are not make-or-break questions for evolution and 'God did it' has no more or less explanatory power than 'evolution did it'. Let's go look at some fossils and learn about why we think we know what they are, and why they are the way they are."

sandw1tch · 2012-05-22T09:53:51.621653-07:00

Lets add a few more categories, but lets not bother giving them names. The names are just a semantic for later use, our current objective is seeing there are more nuances here.

The theistic assertion that there is a marble in the box is not the only assertion that can be made. One is making a theistic statement when they say: Without knowledge of the contents of the box, we can accept that there is a marble in that box. For this discussion it does not matter the reasons for doing this. Let's just assume they are good reasons.

There is a mirror atheistic assertion that can be made. One is making an atheistic statement when they say: Without knowledge of the contents of the box, we cannot accept that there is a marble in that box.

As long as we can agree on this, we've added 2 new categories to a gradient. Is this acceptable? Do you think I have crossed over into browbeating?

sandw1tch · 1 day

Alright, so we can fork our discussion a little bit. Let's try to nuance the idea of strong atheism a little bit.

Let's look at two, plenty trivial and plenty fallacious, examples so we can start nuancing the idea, then we'll see if the assessment has any bearing on the issue of gnosticism.

You enter a room with a box. The box is opaque. You tell me that the box has a marble in it.

It sounds like your understanding is:

Marble atheism says: There is no marble.

Marble agnosticism says: I don't know if there is a marble in that box.

Marble theism says: There is a marble in that box.

I know this sounds a little goofy, but are you still with me? Can you agree with this?

sandw1tch · 1 day

Well. I'm a strong atheist. I do, in a sense, not think of the existence of God in a probabilistic terms. It's not just that I don't think it's very likely. I reject it flatly.

I probably rejected it completely before I came up with my reasons, but there are several reasons I now really like and I'm glad I thought them up.

What do you think Agnosticism makes more sense than?
What do you think agnosticism is a position on? Do you think this is everything the term was always meant to imply?

AndAnAlbatross

TROPHY CASE

AndAnAlbatross

TROPHY CASE

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