Since atheism is a belief

Originally posted by googlefudge
KJ, you are talking about the consequences of holding a belief or not.

We are talking about whether or not there is a middle ground between believing something is
true, or believing that something is false.

The consequences of any given belief are irrelevant to that discussion.

We paint the world we live in by our beliefs or even lack of them. We think the universe
is very old, or very young, we can think all life comes from a common ancestor or not.
The foundation of those beliefs are our world views, the way we piece it all together in
our minds, from there we walk it out in our day to day. Rejecting or accepting God gives
you limited options in some areas and more in others.

The very fact you have to be adamant about your rejection of God should show you that
it is a thought out belief you have, that nothing and no one brought all of this universe
together. There are results to not believing in God and that is one of them. Unlike Pi which
I could care less about that will not affect me in any meaningful way, nor will it make do
this instead of that when the mood hits me.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
That certainly makes sense in the circumstances considered there. I do not think the statistical argument is relevant to
the existence of a creator however. It would, I allow, apply to archaeological contexts which have been extensively analysed.

It applies to everything, including the existence [or not] of a god.

Heuristics and Biases, Skepticon 4 Eliezer Yudkowsky

YouTube

This 42 minute lecture explains exactly this issue, including how it applies to belief in gods.

EDIT: Interestingly, this lecture also has an explanation of Richard Carriers definition of the supernatural
which is the one I quite like and agree with. Which I had forgotten about.

Originally posted by googlefudge
The consequences of any given belief are irrelevant to that discussion.

What he is trying to say is that if you believe a belief has consequences you will be forced to take a definite position ie believe x or ~x and not the middle ground.
There are two doors. If you go through door 1 and your number is prime, you die. If you go through door 2 and your number is not prime, you die. Go through the other door and everything is fine.
Which door do you go through?

Despite the above example I disagree with Kelly as if I was forced to pick a door I would choose door 2, but still be scared that I might die ie I would pick the one least likely to be wrong but would still not hold a definite belief on the matter.

Originally posted by KellyJay
We paint the world we live in by our beliefs or even lack of them. We think the universe
is very old, or very young, we can think all life comes from a common ancestor or not.
The foundation of those beliefs are our world views, the way we piece it all together in
our minds, from there we walk it out in our day to day. Rejecting or accepting God gives
y ...[text shortened]... ffect me in any meaningful way, nor will it make do
this instead of that when the mood hits me.

KJ, this may be an argument and response to something, but it has no baring on the
conversation we are currently having.

It's like we're have a discussion about what the best method for getting into space is,
and you come in telling us that getting into space is a waste of money.
That may or may not be true, but it's not the conversation we are currently having, and
it's completely irrelevant to the topic of what the best method of getting into space is.

We are not currently talking about what you're talking about.

Originally posted by twhitehead
What he is trying to say is that if you believe a belief has consequences you will be forced to take a definite position ie believe x or ~x and not the middle ground.
There are two doors. If you go through door 1 and your number is prime, you die. If you go through door 2 and your number is not prime, you die. Go through the other door and everything is ...[text shortened]... pick the one least likely to be wrong but would still not hold a definite belief on the matter.

Yeah, but even in your example [and I'm not sure that IS actually what he's saying] as you
say you still didn't hold a firm belief either way about the number being prime.

And if we are going to make the decision especially about atheism [it could apply elsewhere]
then there may very well be [and infact are] differences between people who simply lack a
belief in god/s and those who believe in a lack of gods.

Which is one of the many differences between atheists.

In your analogy this puts in a third door, a distinctly different choice.

It's still irrelevant to the discussion at hand because he is still talking about consequences of belief,
and not whether the different states of belief exist.

Originally posted by googlefudge
It applies to everything, including the existence [or not] of a god.

[b]Heuristics and Biases, Skepticon 4 Eliezer Yudkowsky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwqYB1uzcU4

This 42 minute lecture explains exactly this issue, including how it applies to belief in gods.[/b]

Watching this link now, but how can apply to everything? How can it apply to a situation which leaves no evidence? The universe may have been created by an act of will of some being in such a manner as to deliberately leave no evidence of such creation. Stonehenge may have originally been a residential site, but evidence may have been cleared during later use. In both cases, to take the lack of evidence as evidence of absence would be wrong, would it not?

Originally posted by KellyJay
10 commandments, I know you asked for 1 but I thought I'd give you more. 🙂

The commandments that means nothing to me, being an atheist, are the ones that has to do with blaspheming, having no other gods and honouring sabbath. How do you think it affects my world view that I don't find any reason to uphold those commandments?

Originally posted by KellyJay
Walking out one's faith doesn't require a positive thing to believe in to cause someone
to behave well or badly. You can believe there is no policeman over the hill and drive
20 mph over the speed limit because that is what you like to do, while if you believe one
could be there you may do the speed limit. The fact there could be one or not does not
mat ...[text shortened]... avior or follow
the laws, you'll follow your beliefs which will cause you to do or not do them.

I don't believe in scare tactics. The reason I don't speed is not for fear of being captured by the police, but because I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I ran someone over, knowing it could have been avoided. No god belief is needed.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
Watching this link now, but how can apply to everything? How can it apply to a situation which leaves no evidence? The universe may have been created by an act of will of some being in such a manner as to deliberately leave no evidence of such creation. Stonehenge may have originally been a residential site, but evidence may have been cleared during ...[text shortened]... In both cases, to take the lack of evidence as evidence of absence would be wrong, would it not?

Bayesian theory is about the probability that a hypothesis is correct.

In other words its about our confidence that what we think we know is correct.

Simply what it does is take the prior probability that a hypothesis is correct and
multiplies that initial probability by some factor related to the strength of the available evidence.

If the result is a very high, or very low probability for the hypothesis being right, then we have a strong
confidence that that hypothesis is either right or wrong depending.

If the result is neither very high nor very low then we have a very weak confidence that we know if
that hypothesis is correct or not.

Crucially, what Bayesian theory does is COMPARE competing explanations and evaluate their relative
probabilities.

So if you have a situation where all explanations are unlikely, but one hypothesis was 1000 times less unlikely
than the competition you would have a strong confidence that that was the right explanation.

So the question is not, for example, "what is the probability of the universe coming into existence on it's own?"

But

"What is the probability of the universe coming into existence on it's own VS being created by a god?"


Because it doesn't matter how improbable the universe popping into existence on it's own is, if it's millions or
billions [I am underestimating] of times more likely than it being created by a god, then it's the better hypothesis
with a very high confidence level.

This is the sister lecture to the one I linked before, that explains Bayes Theorem itself.

YouTube

They really should have been one combined lecture, but attendees were assumed to be going to both.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
If you use the absence of evidence to justify non-belief in X, you are taking the absence of evidence as evidence of absence, are you not?

I see what you (and googlefudge) are saying. Indeed, you're right that not believing in claims for X, is not the same as not believing in X. I stand corrected in that. However, I fail to see how one can be completely unconvinced by claims for X, and still believe X is true. It seems to me a logical consequence of being unconvinced by the claims for X. But maybe that's my own shortcoming. I'd have to think this through more thoroughly. Thank you. 🙂

Originally posted by lemon lime
Well sure, there can be many ways of saying you believe there is no god (or gods). I don't quite understand the aversion many atheists have to calling this a belief. But I suspect it has something to do with an unsavory connotation many atheists have ascribed to the word 'belief' when talking to and about Christians.

My nan use to call everyone 'love,' even the postman. ;o)

If she had thought however that the postman would take her 'throw away' love comment and read more into it (maybe as a true expression of her heart felt feelings towards him) i'm sure she would have avoided using the word.

The same for me as an atheist when i talk about not 'believing' there is a God. For me, the word 'believe' is a 'throw away' word like my nan's 'love.' i'm basically saying that what 'you' believe as a Christian is a non-issue for me, so let me get back to my own reality which is in no way influenced by your version of events. - However, 'some' Christians are just like my nan's misunderstanding postman. They hear my throw away 'believe' and read too much into it, incorrectly assuming my atheism has more to it than a simple rejection of what they believe.

P.S My nan married the postman.

Originally posted by C Hess
I see what you (and googlefudge) are saying. Indeed, you're right that not believing in claims for X, is not the same as not believing in X. I stand corrected in that. However, I fail to see how one can be completely unconvinced by claims for X, and still believe X is true. It seems to me a logical consequence of being unconvinced by the claims for X. But maybe that's my own shortcoming. I'd have to think this through more thoroughly. Thank you. 🙂

Wa... hang on, your now going too far the other way...

If you are completely unconvinced by the claims for X then I would expect you to lack a belief that X is true.

Ok, take this example.

A political party is proposing a new policy to tackle some issue.

You review their arguments FOR this policy and decide that those arguments are flawed and unconvincing
and so are unconvinced by their arguments that this policy will work.

However the fact that they haven't provided good arguments that are convincing to get you to believe that this
policy will work, in the absence of [known to you] any arguments that convince you it wont work, is not proof
that this policy will fail. [although the fact that they have presented no good arguments does suggest that it's
because they have no good arguments because there are no good arguments. However it could be that they
are just incompetent, which would be unsurprising as most politicians/governments are]

Thus you are in a position where you have been given no convincing reason to think this policy will work, which
suggests that there might not be any convincing reason.

However it's possible enough that it might work that you are not convinced it will fail either.

So you are neither strongly pro, nor strongly anti this policy.

You are somewhere in the middle, unconvinced either way.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I fail to see the difference as I explained it to you. If something is completely a "who cares"
type of thing, nothing about the topic one way or another is going to carry any meaning at
all to your life. That is not true with many other things not just God!

Believing and walking out your beliefs, can cause you great harm as I pointed out with the
gas ...[text shortened]... d be positive or not, just because the meaning will
be different it is still a matter of faith.

This sounds suspiciously like Pascal's wager. If you don't believe in god, you run the risk of eternal damnation, so it's better to act as though it's true, even if you doubt that it is. In the case of gas-filled rooms, they're part of the natural world, so you can easily test for their existence and probability. You can't do the same with god claims, thus, you can't know which god claims to take seriously, and which ones you can safely ignore. In the end, what you believe is not a matter of consequences, but how convinced you are by claims made for or against it.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
Stonehenge may have originally been a residential site, but evidence may have been cleared during later use. In both cases, to take the lack of evidence as evidence of absence would be wrong, would it not?

Do not confuse 'evidence of absence' with 'proof of absence'. Also do not confuse 'evidence of absence' with 'strong evidence of absence'. All we are saying is that absence of evidence can be taken as possibly very weak but non-zero evidence of absence.
Stonehenge may have originally been a residential site, a site of worship, a playground, a meeting place, a market etc. Prior to looking for any evidence, the probability of each of those has a given value based on prior knowledge of the societies of the time etc. Suppose your estimation of the probability that it was a residential site was 10.456%.
Then you do a survey of the site looking for evidence that it was originally a residential site. You find nothing. You should not adjust your probability downwards by some amount ie you take the absence of evidence into account. Your failure to find evidence in your survey is not completely meaningless.

Originally posted by C Hess
Supernatural means outside or beyond the natural. Something is supernatural if it doesn't exist in the natural world (though we can imagine an interaction). A tea pot orbiting a planet is clearly inside the natural realm, and so can never be considered supernatural, whether you can detect it or not, and whether you believe it exists or not.

The concept of tea pots is in the natural realm. Tea pots can exist as real objects. We can also imagine tea pots and imagine them orbiting mars. If however one should assign a supernatural property to a natural object or concept we now have a new object or concept, a new supernatural object or concept. There are no undetectable tea pots. If you imagine the tea pot is there, it's in your imagination. If you say it's there, that an actual tea pot is in orbit around mars, and that I should believe it's there without proof, without explanation of how it got there, or observation of it being there, then you are saying that something that you imagine actually exists. This now is a supernatural tea pot.