Comments on: "Closed minds"

By: Way of the Mind’s 10 most popular posts in 2006

Way of the Mind’s 10 most popular posts in 2006 — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:34:38 +0000

[...] 10 - The problem of Agnosticism, part 2 - it’s a “part 2″ (see below for part 1), but it’s perfectly readable on its own. Discusses the contradiction of being “agnostic” about Yahweh, but “atheist” about every other made-up deity. 9 - Christian myths about Atheism: discussion - there were so many comments for the “16 Common Myths about Atheism” post (see below) that I had to close that thread and open a new one, or my web server would have been very, very angry at me. 8 - The problem of Agnosticism - explores why agnostics are agnostic, and what’s wrong, in my opinion, with it. 7 - How I’ve become an atheist - one of the oldest posts in Way of the Mind, this tells of my own “deconversion”, and links to a brilliant Douglas Adams interview 6 - Why Atheism is not a religion - oddly enough, many people seem to think it is - in other words, that it requires as much “faith” as theism. This post shows why that is not the case. 5 - Are the myths about atheists real or not? - after the popular “common myths” post, many people said I was creating “straw men” - in other words, the myths didn’t really exist. A simple search on Google News proved otherwise. 4 - “Closed minds” - disputes the common (and unfortunate) belief that “being sure of something is closed-minded” (also known as “reality is fluid”). 3 - Deism and Pantheism - a latecomer, this post describes those two not-very-well-known beliefs, whose proponents included many of the U.S. Founding Fathers, and Albert Einstein. 2 - Atheism: arrogance? - discusses why believing that 2+2 will still be 4 tomorrow isn’t “arrogant”. 1 - 16 Common Myths about Atheists - a list of what many theists believe — wrongly — about atheists in general. No, we don’t sacrifice babies. We don’t even boil young goats in their mothers’ milk. [...]

By: the equinox » i’m an atheist

the equinox » i’m an atheist — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 05:04:11 +0000

[...] atheists are stubborn and closed-minded. not unless you define “closed-minded” like this. but, as ebon said, ask any believer what would convince him he was mistaken and persuade him to leave his religion and become an atheist, and if you get a response, it will almost invariably be, “nothing - i have faith in my god.” although such people may well exist, i personally have yet to meet a theist who would acknowledge even the possibility that his belief was in error. many theists, by their own admission, structure their beliefs so that no evidence could possibly disprove them. atheists, on the other hand, are easy to convince - all it requires is for god to show himself in some unfakeable way - say, for instance, by doing any of the many things he supposedly did in the old testament… [...]

By: Jessica

Jessica — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 19:55:11 +0000

I understand where you’re coming from on this, but relativism isn’t necessarily cowardice, but simply another way of looking at the universe. Because, honestly, our interaction with our environment exists in chemical signals in our brains that can and are (frequently) fucked up. Therefore, you really can’t prove that anything exists. I don’t think it matters one way or the other, but saying that 2 +2 can equal whatever the fuck you want doesn’t mean that you can’t work around a fact of 2 + 2 = 4.

By: Gnack

Gnack — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 13:22:44 +0000

“2 + 2 = 4, but like you mentioned relativism is a terrible thing. You can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt there isn’t a God can you? So you are saying more along the lines of 2 + x = 4 without knowing what the x is. Granted Christians don’t know what the x is either, but there is where faith steps in.”

I don’t see the logic you’re using here. We know that 2 + 2 = 4 because - and only because - we know that both numbers ARE ‘2′. There is no ‘X’. Believing without a doubt that 2 + x = 4 is a better analogy for religion than for atheism. God + Creation = The Universe for instance. No one knows exactly who or what ‘God’ is and no one has any evidence of how the ‘Creation’ took place, yet some theists would believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that when you put the two together you get our current Universe.

Excellent post Pedro, I’ll be coming back to keep an eye on this blog.

Gnack

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:36:10 +0000

Pangwan… that is exactly my point! The definitions change. Each person operates under their own set of assumptions. We can talk about and agree on any number of them, but the bottom line is no two people will have exactly the same ones!

And if we want to have a conversation with the hope that we come to an agreement on, then we need to make sure that we are working under the same assumptions/definitions about that particular topic.

I’m not saying by this that there is no objective reality, but for those people who quickly point to “objective reality” as the basis for their beliefs, it should be pointed out that it is their “definitions” that color what they see.

By: Pedro Timóteo

Pedro Timóteo — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 15:20:25 +0000

Lincoln: my point is that, in my opinion, saying “you can’t be 100% sure that there is no God” is like saying “you can’t be 100% sure that 2 + 2 will be 4 tomorrow”. However, I’m pretty sure about both… reality has never disappointed me, so far, and I’ve never seen our universe being anything other than 100% natural. And I don’t think that being sure about those makes me “arrogant”.

By: Lincoln

Lincoln — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:59:55 +0000

2 + 2 = 4, but like you mentioned relativism is a terrible thing. You can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt there isn’t a God can you? So you are saying more along the lines of 2 + x = 4 without knowing what the x is. Granted Christians don’t know what the x is either, but there is where faith steps in.

By: pangwen

pangwen — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:32:12 +0000

Replying to Jim above:

Although you’re right that 2+2=1 if you use ‘mod 3′, unfortunately, there’s no way of making 2 + 2 = 5 without changing the definitions of the numbers…

By: whis

whis — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:30:47 +0000

Actually the effect of a placebo on the human body is well predictable (usually water or a solution of VC). And that’s why they use it (they expect that the subject substance will result in more drastic changes along diff lines). Also don’t be paranoid.

By: Pablo

Pablo — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 04:21:32 +0000

Factor X, huh? Sounds pretty uncalculable.

By: Psychonaught

Psychonaught — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 01:09:46 +0000

I quote ‘ As a small exercise, lets take ten theories accepted as fact by most of the scientific community about the physical world…There is no god ‘

Here’s a little insight into the scientific community; they DO believe in god. This ‘being’ is referred to as ‘Factor X’

By: Westley Dang

Westley Dang — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:01:35 +0000

Interesting blog, I don’t think I will be able to sleep tonight. =p

P.S. Jim left a very intriguing comment.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:47:20 +0000

Just to throw a monkey wrench into the dialogue above. It is possible for 2 + 2 to equal something other than 4… if you change the rules that is. For instance if I ask you what is 5 hours later than 10 o’clock, you would most likely answer 3 o’clock. This is the same as saying 10 + 5 = 3. This is something in math called modular arithmetic. (The ‘mod’ in this case is 12.) Using ‘mod 3′ we could then say that 2 + 2 = 1.

Of course, this is just another example that keeping an open mind can lead to some interesting discoveries!

However, it also points out that it is very hard to define what is ‘objective reality.’ There are often implied assumptions and perceptions that lead to our ‘objective’ facts.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:16:47 +0000

Perhaps a better understanding of these people can be “knee-jerk”. Anything is possible, if (10 dimensional) string theory pans out. Its just right in one of all possible universes!

Obviously there are different levels of truth, and while the person you argued with was of meagre intellect, I think they were after something like this:

As a small exercise, lets take ten theories accepted as fact by most of the scientific community about the physical world and you can assign probabilities to those facts. Others too.

1. Gravity is explained by string-theory.
2. Black holes exist.
3. The big bang caused the universe.
4. The universe is expanding but will in the future shrink and collapse.
5. There is a tenth planet in our solar system.
6. Genes cannot skip generations.
7. Placebo cant cause biological change in the organism.
8. String theory is correct.
9. There is a grand unifying theory.
10. There is no god.

For fun, heres mine:

1. 2%
2. 50%
3. 50%
4. 2%
5. 80%
6. 2%
7. 2%
8. 1%
9. 1%
10. 20% (I do believe, but know I may be wrong)

Ben.

By: jbruno

jbruno — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 01:59:43 +0000

Phew… Post-modernists are almost as bad as the fundies themselves, and unfortunately that “perception rules reality” bit is prevalent in the up and coming generation.

Nice blog. I’ll be back.