The Glade 4.0

I suspect you didn't mean to say what you just said.

Spirituality has no relation to one's belief in a soul, any more than it does belief in a deity. It's about one's search for the sacred - for something worthy of veneration. If you listen to someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson speak about his passion for his field of discipline, there is no doubt that he's a deeply spiritual man, despite being completely agnostic and having no belief in the supernatural at all.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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The only sophistry going on is your constant habit of pretending that whatever your assessment of what's believeable and what isn't is "rationality and reason" whereas anything you don't find credible must not be, as if you were some arbitrator of what is and isn't. This "pure rtionality, pure reason" crap is nothing more than you proclaiming your own beliefs about how things work to be self-evidently true - just a rephrasal of the same old circular argument that anything supernatural is necessarily incerdible and unbelievable simply becuase it's supernatural. "All superstition is myth" is the same thing - question-begging and tautology.. and blatantly at that. Superstition is myth! duh! who knew? That doesn't say anything about what is and isn't superstition in the first place.

The only sophistry going on here is yours, (assuming we're even using that word correctly) engaging in your normal habit of trying to just get your view of the world set up as a baseline of rationality that you expect people to just take for granted and not challenge, so that you can engage other positions from this condescending viewpoint of "yeah, well, you think that but MY position is the rational one because it's rational". It's the typical nonbeliever inability to even remotely consider that anything other than what they consider believable might have any actual reason to be considered; the same utter horseshit of "these claims are mythical and superstitious; they require evidence. Documentation of them actually happening obviously isn't evidence though, because those documented claims are clearly mythical and superstitious and can't have happened!"



A) It's hilarious that you think a "previously decent argument" regarding human behavioral habits is somehow "torpedoed" by a new argument on a more-or-less unrelated point as to what does and does not constitute spirituality or religion. This is no different than the
B) Your fascination with justifying your own positions as "rational and reasonable" has nothing to do with them being exclusively so, nd everything with you reassuring yourself that YOU are a rational thinker and everyone else must not be if they don't take positions that fall within what you're comfortable with. This is not about rational and reasonable; it's about your personal insecurity and need to vent your spleen.
C) I didn't prove any difference between religious and areligious people at all; in fact I just demonstrated that putting viewpoints areligious people don't like in front of them is just as likely to make them go off on an irrational ranting **** fit as religious people are. I did so by getting you to do precisely that. All you're doing is demonstrating that the limit of your ability to understand the concepts of rational and reasonable is "If I proclaim my viewpoint to be so, and make enough comments about 'invisible sky fairies' and 'superstition' and generally denigrate those positions enough and just refuse to acknowledge anything other than my own assumptions, eventually that will be the tone of conversation and I'll win." Unfortunately for you, this inability to see your own position as anything but self-evidently true comes right through to anyone that doesn't fall into the trap of letting you control all the assumptions. The difference between me and you is that while I understand what your view is and why you hold it and don't try to pretend it's irrtational or stupid just because I don't agree, and frankly, don't like your view, you just can't. You are so beholden to and emotionally invested in your rejection of religion that you are unable to understand that THERE ARE RATIONAL, REASONABLE, AND LOGICAL REASONS TO BELIEVE IN IT.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Give me your rational, reasonable, and logical reasons (redundant, btw..."reasonable" requires "reasons") to believe in Zeus and Apollo atop Mount Olympus today.

Give me your rational reasons to believe that the sun is a fiery chariot driven by the sun God today.

Give me your rational reasons to believe in a Terracentric universe today.


Once you realize that the concept of any of those is entirely irrational, unreasonable, and illogical, then one can begin to approach the same truth that believing in discrete creation of individual species, or a 6000 year old universe is equally irrational, unreasonable, and illogical.

Any advocation of things that fly against rationality is a form of proselytizing, and automatically falls into the irritating idiot things people do. (To find the same thing along lines unrelated to religion, I suppose you can look at "911 truthers," and people who think the moon landings were hoaxes.) Furthermore, defending people who do so puts one in the same category.

Accepting the facts established by the scientific as truth is not, it is simply acting in a rational way.

Belief in God is not automatically illogical. It is "alogical," as it cannot be touched by reason in any meaningful way, but it does not fly against what can be established empirically. Promoting religious beliefs, however, that directly contradict everything we can clearly establish scientifically is most certainly irrational.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Explain why doing this on an inidividual level is somehow different from doing it as a part of an organized group. I've run into plenty of these sort of people that are basically just using it as a way to pick and choose parts of religion they like, and not have any social accountability to anyone else... and are usually all-too-eager to tell you how much better it is than 'organized religion'. That tells me it's religion, just not organized.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

We've been over all of this in dozens of past threads. All you're doing is lumping all beliefs that you donb't find credible together and assuming they are all equally incredible. It should be plainly obvious why it is more rational and reasonable to believe in the first one than the latter two, even if neither of us consider any of them particularly reasonable in the absolute sense, but your simple inability to understand that "I don't believe it" does not mean "all things I don't believe in are created equal" precludes effective progress at this point.



Once you realize that it is a possible, albiet highly unlikely explanation that the world WAS created 6000 years ago, in the state we see it in now, and that the evidence of this is contained in Genesis, we can start making some progress. That is a logical and rational conclusion to draw. It might be UNREASONABLE because the WEIGHT of evidence is so strongly against it, and that documentation is more easily and simply explained with an allegorical approach. Nevertheless, it is NOT in the same category as any of your first three examples, which in turn ar not all equally unbelievable. The only similarity between them is "things that various sorts of skeptics don't believe".



Yet more simply assuming your own conclusion.



Yes. It. Can.

It's touched by reason in that people have documented, and verbally attested to, their experiences in that regard in and outside scriptures. There's no basis for claiming it isn't related to reason that doesn't rely on dismissing the claims out of hand becuase of their nature.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Those things are not rational or logical. (which is not to say they were irrational or illogical, either.) There's no rational basis in anecdotal evidence.

This doesn't require dishonesty or even mental disorder on the part of the person relating the story. Even directly witnessing a miracle is not rational or logical basis to believe in the supernatural in and of itself. The standard is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." There's no reason to doubt a claim that you saw a rainbow - rainbows are relatively commonplace. But if someone claims to have seen a leprechaun guarding a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, believing that claim is not rational in the slightest. The vast majority of things people used to believe were supernatural in nature, now have physical, logical, empirical and wholely natural explanations. Lightning is not caused by Zeus hurling bolts from on high. An Earthquake is not the wrath of an angry god. The Sun is not the glory of a deity travelling through the sky. They wholely believed they were seeing something supernatural, but they were not.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I did, but I meant it as it's commonly used, not defined (which no one agrees on). I don't know that I've ever spoken to someone that claims to be spiritual and doesn't believe they have a soul. I would not call NDT a spiritual man. Call it what you will, spirituality denotes a belief in something beyond ourselves. Without that belief the distinction is irrelevant.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Documentary evidence is not necessarily anecdotal evidence, and anecdotal evidence is still evidence. All the documentation of the civil war is "anecdotal" as well. Anecdotal evidence is not in any way disconnected from rationality or logic; it's just not very strong evidence in most cases. This is not hard to understand.



There is no such thing as "Extraordinary claims" to begin with. Claims require evidence (not "proof"). Rainbows are a common, everyday phenomenon, so if a person who appears to otherwise be healthy and sound of mind earnestly claims to have seen a leprechaun at the end of one (or even to have actually seen the "end of a rainbow" at all) we compare it to all other instances of rainbows and the reports of observers.

Singular historical events are not like that. If someone makes a claim that George Washington lead the American Revolution we do not look at all other revolutions to see if they were lead by George Washington, and when we discover that they were not, we do not dismiss the idea that he lead the American one.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is simply a way of taking claims one does not want to believe or considers unlikely, and then dismissing any and all evidence as "not extraordinary enough". What is the standard for "extraordinary" exactly? Here's a hint - there isn't one, and nonbelievers and skeptics do not get to decide what it might be. "Proof" is the same thing. People demand "proof" of things all the time just so they can turn around in the face of mountains and evidence "you haven't PROVEN it" because, philosophically, other explanations are conceivably possible, even ones that rely on unknowables. You can carry on all day long about how incredibly unlikely literal Creationism seems to be as a plausible explanation and be totally correct, but as soon as you cross the line into dismissing it as being necessarily wrong, you've surrendered rationality by virtue of diving wholesale into question-begging.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not getting sucked into it. I'm not doing what you state at all. Never said it was the same, I'm generalizing.

This is not true, because the scientist will present an option.

One of the greatest minds of our era said it better than I ever could:




Now, I know you're not a literal creationist, so see where Sagan is going with this? The facts we observe are in such direct conflict with the concept of creationism and a 6000 year old universe, that if the creationist is correct (and it's entirely possible that an ominpotent being made it this way), then it was designed to deceive us, to cause people of rational minds to disbelieve. Sagan called this a "malevolent theology," and this accurate description is in direct contradiction with Christian doctrine. Think about what the bible says about your God: Hebrews 6:18 "It is impossible for God to lie." 1 John 4:8 "God is love."

While an omnipotent God certainly could create a universe designed to intentionally deceive rational thought, this betrays such a dishonest mindset and capricious and uncaring nature that even if it were true, it would utterly invalidate their faith.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Social interaction is a natural tendency for humans. Spirituality is a natural tendency for humans. These two natural aspects of human behavior come together to drive the creation of religions. Extrapolating this, it's "natural" for an individual to address their need for spirituality through aligning themselves with a particular religion that they were brought up through.

It takes effort to break the pattern and convert to a different religion. While technically it's your choice to convert, it's fairly "natural" to remain in place.

Moreover, this is fairly irrelevant. Atheists do not target a specific religious doctrine, they target religion in general, and quite frequently the entire notion of spirituality.

I'm well aware of his viewpoint, but my opinion is the same. NDT relates his feelings to spirituality to relate with people; not because he's actually spiritual. He finds beauty in the universe and how everything is connected in a material sense, but he has no belief that he'll continue on as some form of consciousness or whatever after he dies.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yeah, I think relevantly...

spir·i·tu·al·i·ty : "the quality or state of being spiritual "
spir·i·tu·al : "of or relating to a person's spirit"
spir·it : "the inner quality or nature of a person," alternately "the force within a person that is believed to give the body life, energy, and power"


None of those need invoke the supernatural, at all.

What Tyson invokes in the video I linked is a form of Pantheism, which is definitely a type of spirituality. (Even if Dawkins calls it "sexed-up Atheism.")

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Let's next define spir and sp. Then, possibly, let's tackle s.

God never stated how old the Universe was - the idea that it is 6,000 years old is entirely the conjured belief of humans well after its creation.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Well, that depends on whether you believe that the bible is the "Word of God" and whether Genesis is to be taken literally.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Doesn't really matter no time scale was given. What is a day to God? What is a day before day and night?

Dun Dun Dunnnnnn

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yes, these are some arguments that people who take Genesis to be allegorical use.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

In Genesis, God does **** up the order in which he created things.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Uh... yes, exactly. And if God, had, in fact DONE PRECISELY THAT and then TOLD US ABOUT IT IN HIS BOOK... we would see exactly what we see. Carl Sagan is appealing to consequences, essentially "but if this were true, astronomers would be deceived!" Yes, they would. Sorry. I don;t think they have been deceived, but there you have it. It's perfectly valid to say "I don't think that happened", but "that's just unbelievable because it's unbelievable" is not.




You're appealing to consequences as well. It's "malevolent theology". A) So what? malevolent is not a synonym for false and B) no it isn't. What the **** entitles anyone to have God reveal hos His universe works to them? What's arrogant about it? You don't like the fact that if it were the case, you couldn't do anything about it? Sorry. Fortunately for you, I doubt it's actually the case.

Finally, the evolution in schools debate is over. It isn't being "urged on us" at all; Creationism is not making a return to science class. There is no "attack on science". This is just you trying to come up with excuses to ***** about the imaginary "zealots" you worry about.

Now, I know you're not a literal creationist, so see where Sagan is going with this? The facts we observe are in such direct conflict with the concept of creationism and a 6000 year old universe, that if the creationist is correct (and it's entirely possible that an ominpotent being made it this way), then it was designed to deceive us, to cause people of rational minds to disbelieve. Sagan called this a "malevolent theology," and this accurate description is in direct contradiction with Christian doctrine. Think about what the bible says about your God: Hebrews 6:18 "It is impossible for God to lie." 1 John 4:8 "God is love."



No it wouldn't. That's just your interpretation of it - and why should anyone take your proclamation it's bad over God's that it's good? Furthermore, you don't get to decide what invalidates anyone's faith. That's the supreme arrogance right there - you thinking you have even the slightest authority to evaluate anyone's faith.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It came up because Xeq takes issue with the notion that pejoratives are somehow not ok if they are aimed at demographic groups one "chooses" to be a part of. I guess there's nothing wrong with "kike" either.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Under this logic, "fundies" (as opposed to "Christians") aren't a demographic group either.

In any case, I definitely do not see a problem with using a pejorative term to label a group of people who insist on believing something ridiculous despite massive amounts of indisuputable evidence to the contrary. Truthers and Young Earth Creationists are no different at all in this regard.

Also, you posted this:



http://legacy-cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/assets/images/articles/2013/04/quiz.jpg

No, that's not an appeal to consequence. An appeal to consequence would be if Sagan had said, "That cannot be true, because if it were, it would make god a cruel malevolent dishonest being." He didn't say that. He said "Of course it could be true, there's no way to prove it is not, but if it is, it makes god a cruel malevolent dishonest being."

What he is saying, is that if it is true, the very doctrine of the people who promote it is now false - because their god is no longer the paragon of honesty and love they make him out to be. The idea of a "god of love" who "cannot lie" makes young earth creationism impossible if it is true.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █