On the Burden of Proof and Implicit vs. Explicit Agnosticism

[Bucky Ball]

No, you gave no differences on how life on a practical basis can be different. They're all just your presuppositions.
I'm special pleading for nothing.

I talked about the morally relevant differences. I never said that it would make an amoral practical difference.

Your special pleading is your insisting that specifically amoral specifically practical differences are the only things that really make a difference to one's life so when I give moral differences to one's life then you say it doesn't count.

The point I was gong to make, after you failed to provide any practical differences, (which I expected), is that the religious and philosophical positions of

So I failed based on your own special pleading of what counts as making a difference to one's life which doesn't contradict or even address anything that I actually said? Alrighty then.

the highest level of European Christianity, (ie contemplative mysticism, ... see also "The Cloud of Unknowing" (Medieval anonymous), , John of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul", Teresa of Avila's "Interior Castle" ), Eastern Tao mysticism, and agnostic atheism all leave one, on a practical basis, in exactly the same place .... as Voltaire's "Candide" ... ill faut cultivar nos jardins.

Keep special pleading and insisting on a truth that doesn't contradict anything I actually said if you want, I'm not actually interested.

You provided no "morally" relevant differences that would actually impact a moral decision on a practical basis.
I'm special pleading nothing.
Nor am I interested in your pages of irrelevant philoso-babble.

[EvieTheAvocado]

No, you gave no differences on how life on a practical basis can be different. They're all just your presuppositions.
I'm special pleading for nothing.

I talked about the morally relevant differences. I never said that it would make an amoral practical difference.

Your special pleading is your insisting that specifically amoral specifically practical differences are the only things that really make a difference to one's life so when I give moral differences to one's life then you say it doesn't count.

The point I was gong to make, after you failed to provide any practical differences, (which I expected), is that the religious and philosophical positions of

So I failed based on your own special pleading of what counts as making a difference to one's life which doesn't contradict or even address anything that I actually said? Alrighty then.

the highest level of European Christianity, (ie contemplative mysticism, ... see also "The Cloud of Unknowing" (Medieval anonymous), , John of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul", Teresa of Avila's "Interior Castle" ), Eastern Tao mysticism, and agnostic atheism all leave one, on a practical basis, in exactly the same place .... as Voltaire's "Candide" ... ill faut cultivar nos jardins.

Keep special pleading and insisting on a truth that doesn't contradict anything I actually said if you want, I'm not actually interested.

You provided no "morally" relevant differences that would actually impact a moral decision on a practical basis.
I'm special pleading nothing.
Nor am I interested in your pages of irrelevant philoso-babble.

You're going on my Ignore List because you are either being intentionally disingenuous, or you have a severe reading problem, when it comes to reading my very basic explanations, even when I re-explain them over and over very clearly. I'm gonna assume that it's the latter, that you have a reading problem, but in either case: you're a waste of my time and attention ... so onto my Ignore List you go.

[Bucky Ball]

I talked about the morally relevant differences. I never said that it would make an amoral practical difference.

Your special pleading is your insisting that specifically amoral specifically practical differences are the only things that really make a difference to one's life so when I give moral differences to one's life then you say it doesn't count.


So I failed based on your own special pleading of what counts as making a difference to one's life which doesn't contradict or even address anything that I actually said? Alrighty then.


Keep special pleading and insisting on a truth that doesn't contradict anything I actually said if you want, I'm not actually interested.

You provided no "morally" relevant differences that would actually impact a moral decision on a practical basis.
I'm special pleading nothing.
Nor am I interested in your pages of irrelevant philoso-babble.

You're going on my Ignore List because you are either being intentionally disingenuous, or you have a severe reading problem, when it comes to reading my very basic explanations, even when I re-explain them over and over very clearly. I'm gonna assume that it's the latter, that you have a reading problem, but in either case: you're a waste of my time and attention ... so onto my Ignore List you go.

Oh no. Not that !! Such high tragedy.
So ..... still no practical examples I see. That's what I thought. Thanks for making my point.

[airportkid]

Evie did put up a laundry list of life differences between atheist & believer:

"Believers":

 1 ... preach at people ...
 2 ... are creationists ...
 3 ... believe in Hell, Heaven and prayer ...
 4 ... engage in magical thinking ...
 5 ... oppose abortion ...
 6 ... bomb abortion clinics ...
 7 ... are highly over-authoritarian ...
 8 ... spank their children ...
 9 ... teach their children not to question them ...
10 ... etc. ...

11 ... fundamental moral differences, not about whether it affects the everyday fundamentals of shopping at the store, driving a car or changing diapers, etc."

#1, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10 & #11 are not confined to believers, atheists do all of these too, perhaps not to the extent believers do, but belief or disbelief in a deity is not what drives any difference.

#2 doesn't appear to be something that would have any relevance to how one lives a life.

#3 alone has the potential to affect how one lives a life that is also ONLY within the province of belief in a deity, specifically prayer.  An atheist won't pray because it's meaningless.  A believer does pray.  This does constitute a profound difference in how a life is lived.  To the person for whom prayer is meaningless, solutions to life's difficulties have to be found in reality, and thus there's strong incentive to figure out how reality works.

That incentive is absent for the person who believes prayer works.  The person who believes prayer works will thus tend to be less learned, and live the type of life the less learned live vs the more learned.

The person who believes prayer works will also be more prone feel betrayed when disappointments occur; the athiest has no one to feel betrayed by and has less emotional toll to reckon with.  In that regard the atheist happiness index doesn't decline as much as a believer's.

That's how I read it.  Essentially, except in the depth of negative emotions and the degree of learning one has to recognize and deal with reality, there is no difference.

[EvieTheAvocado]

@airportkid Ultimately, beliefs not based on reality can be harmful, especially when those beliefs are morally repugnant.

Yes, atheists are capable of doing many of those things. But that's not the point.

Here's a quote to get to my point:



And yeah, prayer has a negative effect ... but so does belief in Heaven and Hell. Far more I would say.

There is NO ONE THING that can cause more suffering than anything else ... and all of those things can be done by believers and disbelievers.

It's a matter of frequency, degree, and motivation. If you believe fucked up shit so strongly that you're willing to act on that fucked up shit ... then you're more likely to cause harm.

There are many other harmful beliefs besides religious ones.

My point was to draw an analogy ... with respect to belief in Libertarian Free Will.

So even if I were to concede that religion was not a good analogy ... as long as you accept that some beliefs are more harmful than others ... then my point has not been missed. If that is not accepted, then my point has been missed.

As it happens, religion very much can be harmful ... it mostly depends on whether it's fundamentalist/extremist or not. But it is the fundamentals of the religions themselves that, when believed in with enough conviction, do harm. People act on their beliefs when they truly believe those beliefs strongly enough.

Islam is a prime example:



^^^Those who don't accept this ... happen to be wrong ^^^

The simplest argument is like this:

(1) Beliefs motivate action.

(2) Harmful beliefs are beliefs that motivate harmful actions.

(3) Such harmful beliefs exist.

(4) Therefore beliefs can motivate harmful actions.

[Bucky Ball]

Actually prayer has a positive effect: endorphins. 
http://theutopianlife.com/2014/10/14/hac...-oxytocin/
http://www.neuwritewest.org/blog/2014/7/...f-dopamine

Evie really *is* the *angry atheist*. Wow.

[airportkid]

... that's not the point ...

Coulda fooled me.  I was pretty sure Bucky's point was to identify what specifically differentiated a believer's life as lived from the non-believer's.  You set out a laundry list that made a good framework to build a response to.

What you're addressing here does not make any differentiation:

(1) Beliefs motivate action.
(2) Harmful beliefs are beliefs that motivate harmful actions.
(3) Such harmful beliefs exist.
(4) Therefore beliefs can motivate harmful actions.

That's standard MO for humanity, with religion only one of several belief "isms" that produce it.  Joining religion are nationalism, racism, tribalism, cultism, fanaticism, et. al., none of which require a god at their center.

[brunumb]

Actually prayer has a positive effect: endorphins. 
http://theutopianlife.com/2014/10/14/hac...-oxytocin/
http://www.neuwritewest.org/blog/2014/7/...f-dopamine

Evie really *is* the *angry atheist*. Wow.

I think what Evie may have been referring to was the negative effect observed with intercessory prayer. 

"What is completely clear is not only that prayer simply did not work, but also that those who were not prayed for did a lot better."
https://www.skeptical-science.com/scienc...-bad-ugly/

Whatever claims are made about prayer it is important to consider the credibility of the study involved.

[EvieTheAvocado]

Coulda fooled me.  I was pretty sure Bucky's point was to identify what specifically differentiated a believer's life as lived from the non-believer's.  You set out a laundry list that made a good framework to build a response to.

He contradicted me on that but the whole reason I argued for that in the first place was to draw an analogy between it and belief in Libertarian Free Will being harmful. If he can't accept the reality of religious belief being at least potentially harmful, then I can just move onto other examples of harmful belief, and use that as an analogy for the harm of belief in Libertarian Free Will instead.

The ultimate point that I was arguing for is that the fact that Libertarian Free Will doesn't exist doesn't mean that the belief in it cannot be harmful ... as there are many false beliefs or delusions that can be harmful, however widespread those false beliefs or delusions are ... I thought that fundamentalist religion was the most obvious example. I didn't expect him to not only contradict me on that but start to act as if that's what the whole disagreement was about when that was merely an analogy I was using to illustrate a previous point that we disagreed over.

What you're addressing here does not make any differentiation:

(1) Beliefs motivate action.
(2) Harmful beliefs are beliefs that motivate harmful actions.
(3) Such harmful beliefs exist.
(4) Therefore beliefs can motivate harmful actions.

That's standard MO for humanity, with religion only one of several belief "isms" that produce it.  Joining religion are nationalism, racism, tribalism, cultism, fanaticism, et. al., none of which require a god at their center.

Yeah, and the basic point that I was arguing for was NEVER that religious belief was especially harmful (regardless of Bucky's turning the debate into that when that was never even the key point). I was listing that as merely one example of a potentially harmful false belief(s) in order to use it as an analogy for why a false belief in Libertarian Free Will can be harmful ... I was thinking that the potential harm of religious belief was going to be one of the least controversial examples of potentially harmful belief!

[JesseB]

So What I can gather from this (which we all kinda already know...)

Is that prayer is really good for the one doing it, in the same way a massage or meditation or masturbation is really good for the one doing it, but like everything on that list it's not gonna help your friend grow his left nut back, or prevent an earthquake (though if you jerk off hard enough you might be able to fool the person next to you that you're causing an earthquake).

And in fact thanks to performance anxiety (really you need to quit beating the meat so often and get fucking laid so you don't freeze up when a chick actually lets you get in bed with her), prayer is quite the dick move for the person on the receiving end. For reals what kinda asshole would say they are prying for someone. Like no thanks, I'd like to get better please. How bout you pay the Dr bill, that'll relieve my stress and help me get better. Then go home and pray for your own health, or you know what just masturbate, not only does it make you feel better like prayer does, but it can also prevent cancer. Fucking a masturbation is better than prayer. Who knew?