Nobody thinks our current understanding is perfect. But, just because we don’t know everything, doesn’t mean we need to entertain wild ideas without a lick of evidence. Sure, there could be supernatural explanations for things. But any other time we’ve previously thought something was caused by the supernatural, it was proven to not be. Every. Single. Time. Why bet on the horse that’s lost 1,000 races?
Spirituality, God, and Religion are all separate things. And if you have any research on when and why any of those concepts were created I’d love to read them.
You have to understand that the problem here is bad people, not bad ideas.
I currently live in a society where trans and gay rights are constantly under attack by religious folk simply because a ‘holy book’ supposedly says they’re sinners (despite it never mentioning trans people). Forgive me for not feeling sorry for the religious.
Besides, you’re in an atheist community. What do you expect us to talk about?
I’m not here simping for religion, I promise. The concept of god can and does exist separately from religion.
Yeah, I know horrific things have been done in the name of big G God, but those things were done by people. Not a god, or God, not spirituality. Allowing that to narrow your worldview to only things we can directly observe and quantify is leaving an entire realm of understanding on the table.
I know where I am, I’m just wondering why other people are here.
Imagine I created a community around my belief that flying pigs didn’t exist and all the content was shitting on the people who did… What do I get out of that other than putting people down? It literally widens the division in the name of scoring meaningless points against “the other team.”
Religion isn’t a cohesive group, and judging everyone who participates because certain sects are deplorable isn’t very “enlightened.”
I still don’t see any reason to believe in things I don’t see any evidence for. If you want to believe in ghosts or spirituality or Bigfoot or whatever, have at it. I don’t agree with you, but I don’t really care either. I only take issue with people that have, and act according to, beliefs that cause direct harm to others. Religions, crystal healing, antivaxxers, etc.
Sure, a community based around not believing in flying pigs might not make sense to you. Why build a community around not believing something? But you’re missing the same point a lot of religious folk do when they say, “why do you hate god if you don’t believe in him?” See, what if you lived in a world where 90% of people believed in either flying pigs, flying sheep, or flying cows, and all around the world, people in power are making laws based around these things that directly hurt, suppress, and ostracize the lives of others? Suddenly, making a community around it makes more sense.
What do we get out of it? Well, we get a sense of community and belonging for one thing. We all have something in common, and many of us have even been directly hurt or oppressed by the beliefs we stand against. And besides, we’re not perfect human beings—sometimes it’s just fun to poke fun at things we find ridiculous with a group of like-minded individuals.
The Placebo Effect is, in my opinion, -is- the power of belief. (And I think it can do more than that, but that would mean going into my woowoo closet. We’ll just leave it shut for now.)
I know spirituality doesn’t put people on the moon and it doesn’t do much for the economy. (Worship on the other hand…oof.)
Anyway. My point is the pendulum swung hard because religion as we know it fucking sucks, and there is more material value in science. But that doesn’t mean spirituality is worthless.
I think we’re capable of more than what science alone can teach us.
The brain is a material organ that has some amount of control over the rest of your body. If that organ believes a certain thing, it is not supernatural or spiritual for that to have a material effect on your body.
I agree. It doesn’t provide any proof. Speculater was asking for a definition of a spiritual explanation and I was just giving an example.
Spiritual means different things to different people, and they’re right, I think a lot of these kinds of discussions would go a lot better with some baseline definitions.
That being said… Virtually 100% of the time, I’ll go with scientific consensus. My entire argument is that we’ve swung pretty far into physical science when I think there’s an entire realm of understanding that we’re leaving generally untapped because we can’t make a graph out of it (yet)
Why? Because people do horrific shit in the name of god? People do horrific shit in the name of science, too.
Atheists go on about proof of everything, yet any time I ask for proof that some type of “god” doesn’t exist I get the burden of proof line.
…my position is that it’s unknown. The burden of proof isn’t on me.
I asked you to define the term to highlight that what you’re referring to is untestable and as you pointed out unmeasurable.
I think very few reasonable people will say, “God absolutely doesn’t exist.” Because that’s an untestable claim, but I do think most atheists feel strongly that there’s insufficient evidence that a god should exist.
I asked you to define the term to highlight that what you’re referring to is untestable and as you pointed out unmeasurable.
I’m not suggesting you apply the scientific method to spirituality, though. I’m suggesting that Cause can be unmeasurable. If we can do that, it opens up possibilities for new understanding.
I think the material world can only be half explained by modern physics. (I have a few reasons for coming to this conclusion, which I’ll share if you care to hear them. It’s hard for me to type out, I can explain myself better in speech, if that makes sense.)
And that’s fair. But it’s always going to have that margin of error until it doesn’t, it has been my actual, lived experience online that you can bet on an Atheist to be a complete dick to anyone even hinting to a supernatural belief. (Look at these comments.) You (generally speaking) don’t get to go around being a giant dick to the “other team” like that with any margin of error.
I genuinely feel that we aren’t going to science ourselves into the Star Trek future. Corruptibility is Humanities Achilles Heel, and I don’t see how we science our way out of that.
I completely agree. Just as religion should not be used to negate scientific evidence, the arrogance of the logical mind should not be used to negate spirituality without sufficient scientific evidence.
I love how saying ”Hey, maybe we don’t know everything yet, and belittling people who have differing opinions is a dick move." gets downvotes in a supposedly science centric community.
(And just to clarify, I’m replying to my own comment as a broad reply to others.)
The post is arguing that a lack of evidence for one option should not justify belief in a different option. An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The funny part is how how this gets twisted into attacking people. If your belief is so core as to becomes part of your identity, then that belief being wrong becomes a personal attack, and anyone looking for the truth becomes an enemy.
If saying “I don’t know” threatens your belief you have a problem with reality, and once you start ignoring reality your can justify nearly anything to yourself.
The post isn’t dunking on spiritualism, just the claim that anything about it can be known without evidence. It always comes back to evidence.
Removed by mod
Nobody thinks our current understanding is perfect. But, just because we don’t know everything, doesn’t mean we need to entertain wild ideas without a lick of evidence. Sure, there could be supernatural explanations for things. But any other time we’ve previously thought something was caused by the supernatural, it was proven to not be. Every. Single. Time. Why bet on the horse that’s lost 1,000 races?
You don’t have to bet against it, though.
What do you gain by putting down other belief systems?
Other belief systems have caused death and despair.
Science has, too. Splitting the atom had some pretty harsh consequences.
It wasn’t science’ s fault though, was it? No. It was people using science to hurt others.
Sure seems like an awful lot of people use religion to hurt others. Almost like it’s their main tool, or like religion was purpose-built to harm.
Spirituality, God, and Religion are all separate things. And if you have any research on when and why any of those concepts were created I’d love to read them.
You have to understand that the problem here is bad people, not bad ideas.
I currently live in a society where trans and gay rights are constantly under attack by religious folk simply because a ‘holy book’ supposedly says they’re sinners (despite it never mentioning trans people). Forgive me for not feeling sorry for the religious.
Besides, you’re in an atheist community. What do you expect us to talk about?
I’m not here simping for religion, I promise. The concept of god can and does exist separately from religion.
Yeah, I know horrific things have been done in the name of big G God, but those things were done by people. Not a god, or God, not spirituality. Allowing that to narrow your worldview to only things we can directly observe and quantify is leaving an entire realm of understanding on the table.
I know where I am, I’m just wondering why other people are here.
Imagine I created a community around my belief that flying pigs didn’t exist and all the content was shitting on the people who did… What do I get out of that other than putting people down? It literally widens the division in the name of scoring meaningless points against “the other team.”
Religion isn’t a cohesive group, and judging everyone who participates because certain sects are deplorable isn’t very “enlightened.”
I still don’t see any reason to believe in things I don’t see any evidence for. If you want to believe in ghosts or spirituality or Bigfoot or whatever, have at it. I don’t agree with you, but I don’t really care either. I only take issue with people that have, and act according to, beliefs that cause direct harm to others. Religions, crystal healing, antivaxxers, etc.
Sure, a community based around not believing in flying pigs might not make sense to you. Why build a community around not believing something? But you’re missing the same point a lot of religious folk do when they say, “why do you hate god if you don’t believe in him?” See, what if you lived in a world where 90% of people believed in either flying pigs, flying sheep, or flying cows, and all around the world, people in power are making laws based around these things that directly hurt, suppress, and ostracize the lives of others? Suddenly, making a community around it makes more sense.
What do we get out of it? Well, we get a sense of community and belonging for one thing. We all have something in common, and many of us have even been directly hurt or oppressed by the beliefs we stand against. And besides, we’re not perfect human beings—sometimes it’s just fun to poke fun at things we find ridiculous with a group of like-minded individuals.
You make a lot of good, valid points.
Define a “spiritual explanation.”
Pretty sure it involves mescaline. Or shrooms. Maybe LSD. Possibly all three.
Still working on my answer to the question, but I think you’re in the ballpark, in a way.
well. when you do the god drug, let the rest of us know which one it was, so we can do it too?
If I discovered a god drug I’d open source it, lol.
The Placebo Effect is, in my opinion, -is- the power of belief. (And I think it can do more than that, but that would mean going into my woowoo closet. We’ll just leave it shut for now.)
I know spirituality doesn’t put people on the moon and it doesn’t do much for the economy. (Worship on the other hand…oof.)
Anyway. My point is the pendulum swung hard because religion as we know it fucking sucks, and there is more material value in science. But that doesn’t mean spirituality is worthless.
I think we’re capable of more than what science alone can teach us.
The brain is a material organ that has some amount of control over the rest of your body. If that organ believes a certain thing, it is not supernatural or spiritual for that to have a material effect on your body.
Edit: Misread your reply.
I agree. It doesn’t provide any proof. Speculater was asking for a definition of a spiritual explanation and I was just giving an example.
Spiritual means different things to different people, and they’re right, I think a lot of these kinds of discussions would go a lot better with some baseline definitions.
That being said… Virtually 100% of the time, I’ll go with scientific consensus. My entire argument is that we’ve swung pretty far into physical science when I think there’s an entire realm of understanding that we’re leaving generally untapped because we can’t make a graph out of it (yet)
Why? Because people do horrific shit in the name of god? People do horrific shit in the name of science, too.
Atheists go on about proof of everything, yet any time I ask for proof that some type of “god” doesn’t exist I get the burden of proof line.
…my position is that it’s unknown. The burden of proof isn’t on me.
I asked you to define the term to highlight that what you’re referring to is untestable and as you pointed out unmeasurable.
I think very few reasonable people will say, “God absolutely doesn’t exist.” Because that’s an untestable claim, but I do think most atheists feel strongly that there’s insufficient evidence that a god should exist.
I’m not suggesting you apply the scientific method to spirituality, though. I’m suggesting that Cause can be unmeasurable. If we can do that, it opens up possibilities for new understanding.
I think the material world can only be half explained by modern physics. (I have a few reasons for coming to this conclusion, which I’ll share if you care to hear them. It’s hard for me to type out, I can explain myself better in speech, if that makes sense.)
And that’s fair. But it’s always going to have that margin of error until it doesn’t, it has been my actual, lived experience online that you can bet on an Atheist to be a complete dick to anyone even hinting to a supernatural belief. (Look at these comments.) You (generally speaking) don’t get to go around being a giant dick to the “other team” like that with any margin of error.
I genuinely feel that we aren’t going to science ourselves into the Star Trek future. Corruptibility is Humanities Achilles Heel, and I don’t see how we science our way out of that.
I completely agree. Just as religion should not be used to negate scientific evidence, the arrogance of the logical mind should not be used to negate spirituality without sufficient scientific evidence.
I love how saying ”Hey, maybe we don’t know everything yet, and belittling people who have differing opinions is a dick move." gets downvotes in a supposedly science centric community.
(And just to clarify, I’m replying to my own comment as a broad reply to others.)
The post is arguing that a lack of evidence for one option should not justify belief in a different option. An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The funny part is how how this gets twisted into attacking people. If your belief is so core as to becomes part of your identity, then that belief being wrong becomes a personal attack, and anyone looking for the truth becomes an enemy.
If saying “I don’t know” threatens your belief you have a problem with reality, and once you start ignoring reality your can justify nearly anything to yourself.
The post isn’t dunking on spiritualism, just the claim that anything about it can be known without evidence. It always comes back to evidence.
Yeah, the meme starting with “Your inability to understand basic science” is definitely not meant to belittle or shame anyone.
Good call. My bad.