[quote=CA renter]
Your tone regarding religious people sounds a lot like how religious people talk about the non-religious.
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Scenario: A guy holds in his hands a large clod of a what, by all earthly appearances, is dirt. He tells me it’s actually gold. He tells me that his god has cast a spell on this gold to make it look and feel and otherwise appear like dirt. He says his god will reveal it to be gold at a future time. He says I only don’t know that it’s gold because I don’t have faith in his god, whom he calls “Goldie.” Should my disappointed and maybe dismissive tone toward his belief that this clod is actually gold be viewed the same as his disappointed and maybe dismissive tone toward my belief that it’s dirt?
[quote=CA renter]There are many people who would swear on their firstborns’ lives that they have seen evidence of reincarnation or some sort of miracle that justifies their beliefs, too. Some things cannot be explained by science as we know it.
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People have delusions and hallucinations all the time. Why are they only given credence when they fit somebody’s religion? There have been many people throughout history who sacrificed their firstborn children for religious purposes. So they obviously believed strongly enough to wager their firstborn’s lives that their religion was true. That doesn’t make their religion true.
Most people see and believe what they want to see and believe. That is a flaw of most humans. That doesn’t make those things true. Not everything can be explained by science. But people believing what they want to can be explained by science.
[quote=CA renter]Many physicists, astronomers, and other scientists are religious or believe in some kind of higher power, too. How would you explain that? Are they just fools who are intellectually inferior to atheists? [/quote]
Are they just fools who are intellectually inferior to atheists? Well, that’s a two part question. Are they intellectually inferior to people who think there is almost certainly no god? Not necessarily. Are they fools? If you count people as fools who believe what they want rather than what they would see if they were looking clearly, then yes. Do I count those people as fools? Not necessarily. I do think it’s a flaw, though. A fairly large one.
[quote=CA renter]
Let’s just accept that none of us knows anything for a fact, especially regarding the afterlife and all of the possibilities of the universe. Insisting that there is absolutely no god or higher power is every bit as nonsensical as insisting that there is a god. We simply don’t know…none of us will know until after we are dead, if even then.[/quote]
Show me where I insisted that there is absolutely no god or higher power, CA renter. You can’t do it, because I’ve never said it. In fact, I’ve said many times, even on this blog, that no one can be absolutely certain of anything. I’ve also said that we need a new word in English to describe people who don’t “believe” in god, but who aren’t absolutely certain there’s no god only because they understand that they don’t know enough about the universe to be absolutely certain, but who see, based on what they do know of the universe, that the likelihood of god is so infinitesimal as to be easily and completely dismissed from consideration. If I hold a clump of dirt in my hand, could it really be gold? Yes. Some trick of the universe (or Goldie) could be making it look and feel like dirt to me, and it could really be gold. Am I going to mortgage my house and buy a new Maserati and hope to pay for it with this gold? No. Am I going to accuse anybody who does that of wishful thinking? Yes. If the existence of god is as likely as that clump of dirt actually being gold, am I going to base my life on belief in god? No. Am I going to believe in god? Only if I trick myself into it. Which I can’t/won’t do. Is somebody who believes in god intellectually inferior to me? Depends what you mean by “intellectually.” Are they inferior in their ability to see reality as the evidence presents it rather than how they want to see it? Yes, I think they are.
