As one of the lurkers on this forum, I’m glad he’s not on vacation, I enjoy his posts very much 
I know this was a long time ago, but I want to respond to this
Every person acts on faith every single day. They drive their car, on the belief they will not get into an accident. They ride in elevators, believing that they won’t get stuck. They turn on gas stoves, confident that they won’t burn their house down.
And yet, elevators get stuck, traffic accidents happen and houses burn down from kitchen fires.
I think this ignores something important called risk analysis. It’s not that all people drive their cars on the belief that they won’t get into an accident (not that that isn’t the case some of the time). I can drive my car knowing the risks but choosing to drive anyway because there are risks to not driving, such as getting hit by a car on the side walk. If I choose not to walk around because of that, there’s a risk that I could starve to death if I don’t, because now I’m not working and won’t go to the store to buy food etc. The mere fact that I don’t have perfect knowledge doesn’t mean that I’m acting on faith. It means I’ve chosen a path that I think is most likely to lead to my preferred ends, and I can chose those paths based completely in the absence of faith.
Your estimation of the risks is inducitve. You can’t know it.
I can’t know that a traffic accident is possible if I drive on the road?
You can’t rule it out a priori. Our caveman brains are hardwired to trust inductive logic. I do all the time. But armchair theorizing should refrain from putative assumptions.
Ok. Is my estimation of the risks based on faith?
Not the same kind of “faith” that christians have in the bible…
If you assert that the risk of getting hit is X, you are making a leap of “faith”. If you say “the risks are unknowable but so far the risk appears to be X and I’m going to go with that because I need to drive”, then there’s no faith involved.
Then that is what I’m going to say from now on.
Much of the stuff done by skeptics seems simply to be OCD about terminology. “NO don’t say all swans are white! You have to say you’ve only observed only white swans!” Which makes the whole thing really pointless for mundane topics, like risk driving. Its more applicable in unprecedented high impact events.
Like the discovery of life on another planet, or the awareness of a God.
I am hoping people get the notion of taking leaps of faith. Belief in social absolutes and ideal action are flaws of statist thinking.
I’ve become fond of pointing out that no industrialized free peoples have ever been overrun by a state, and that all modern states are residual from agricultural economies, unconnected and uneducated 
I guess it all boils down to how “better” is defined. If “better” means less dead or tortured people, then for sure. Way better. If “better” means hope and optimism for a nifty, touchy-feely, gum drops and cotton candy place we go to when we die, then no–not better. Religion is like a post-hypnotic suggestion that makes most people feel good about the prospect of dying and sharing.
Esuric, I’m new here so I don’t want to come off as being brash, but really, most people accept things based on past previous experiences. If an expert is telling you how something is done, you may not understand why, but your previous experience with “higher-ups” lends you to believe he has no reason to lie. Or like the earlier example of driving because you believe you will not get into an accident. You accept the potential risk of getting into an accident because you believe it to be minimal, due to past experience. Some things “make sense” and others don’t. I can’t give you a philosophical explanation, but from a purely descriptive sense of how we humans operate, we accept them. God is not one of those things.
Atheism is the default position. It boggles my mind when people like William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga try to pass off God as being properly basic. Who defines what is properly basic? If that’s the case, then I can label anything I want to as being properly basic. It is a matter to be taken upon faith and there’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever to point towards any God.
This may not be “philosophically sound”, so tear into me if you wish! However, I would postulate that things we all take for granted can be deemed as properly basic, whereras areas in life that differ greatly can be called into question. The very fact that some people feel no spiritual connection whatsoever and that many religions have sprung up in every area of the world lead me to believe that God is a societal construct. Same goes for worldwide moral sentiments. I know, I know, “genetic fallacy!”, but that’s not the point. When there are so many differing versions, it works against the case for one of them being true. How are we meant to tell the difference between God to God?
I find this to be an absolutely amazing statement. Statism/religion are one in the same. They are each top-down moral authorities that give individual human beings the right to act in their name. How could it be otherwise? Maybe you’re a deist or something because I haven’t been around long enough, but religion is all about social absolutes and ideal action. States are like the manifestation of secular religion.
“The very fact that some people feel no spiritual connection whatsoever and that many religions have sprung up in every area of the world lead me to believe that God is a societal construct.”
Well said. (After all, we are all born atheists, whether we are comfortable with that notion it or not…it is then up to the indoctrination schemes [or absence thereof] of our respective families and cultures to determine if, how, and to what extent, we deviate from that natural state of atheism).
Well said. (After all, we are all born atheists, whether we are comfortable with that notion it or not…it is then up to the indoctrination schemes [or absence thereof] of our respective families and cultures to determine if, how, and to what extent, we deviate from that natural state of atheism).
After all, we are all born atheists imbeciles, whether we are comfortable with that notion it or not…it is then up to the indoctrination schemes [or absence thereof] of our respective families and cultures to determine if, how, and to what extent, we deviate from that natural state of atheism imbecility.
I would say though, Steve, that the need to achieve or live for something “higher than yourself” is something just about all humans can relate to. Some also feel that need to be at one with nature (like with pandeism or something), but I don’t feel that connection at all. As a species, we differ either genetically or by circumstance, but it is my belief that religion exploits that relationship in the same way that the State exploits our desire to be a cohesive society.
Angurse, if by imbecility you mean like an uneducated, blank slate, your point is a poor one. Yes, susequent indoctrination can serve to instill objective truths, e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, or “the Earth is not flat” to alleviate our natural-born imbecility. But much indoctrination is based on subjective “truths”–e.g., “Noah built an ark,” or “the Earth is a flat plane that rests on the back of a giant turtle” etc. Your own apparent dilemma of having being born a horse’s ass has clearly yet to be alleviated by time or indoctrination.
If you can’t articulate an argument without getting personal, then your time sharing an opinion here will probably be a waste.
Angurse, if by imbecility you mean like an uneducated, blank slate, your point is a poor one. Yes, susequent indoctrination can serve to instill objective truths, e.g., 1 + 1 = 2, or “the Earth is not flat” to alleviate our natural-born imbecility. But much indoctrination is based on subjective “truths”–e.g., “Noah built an ark,” or “the Earth is a flat plane that rests on the back of a giant turtle” etc..
Where’s Lionel Hutz? “There’s the truth… and, the truth!”
So the naturalistic fallacy applies to some things but not others? Luckily (thank God?), you get to decide which truths are “objective” and which are “subjective”. Has anyone actually proven addition yet?
Your own apparent dilemma of having being born a horse’s ass has clearly yet to be alleviated by time or indoctrination.
By your reasoning being a horses ass is my natural state of being, I’m not going to let your schemes overcome nature.