I lack belief in diety(ies) because they probably don't exist. This position can be described as agnostic but also as atheist. I prefer the description "atheist" because I behave as though they don't exist, much like aliens that visit Earth in order to anally probe unconvincing witnesses, something I consider to be more likely than the Abrahamic God.

Atheism is not an organised collection of beliefs, cultural systems and world views; it does not have narratives, symbols and sacred histories which attempt to explain the meaning of life and/or to explain the origin of life or the Universe.

Meeting in the middle is beneficial because we get to see both sides perspective and try to come to some agreement here or at the very least increase our knowledge together. As they say 2 heads are better than one. I see no reason why atheists and theists should not be able to come to some kind of compromise and be able to agree to disagree at the very least. We need to be able to have level headed calm discussions that don't involve aggressive language that makes any kind of mutual understanding of each other impossible.

I admit I do not have perfect knowledge, I know that I have so much more to learn about atheism and theism. I am open to the idea that I could be wrong, and that is why I think we need these discussions in case there was something we missed.

I also want to be clear when I say meet in the middle I don't mean it in a give and take way. For example I'm not saying atheists should agree to give up their fight to keep religion out of schools and in exchange theists will close 10% of churches. Or something like that. I mean it more in a way of lets try and discuss our differences and see where each of the other side is coming from. If we were to give and take anything from each other, let it be knowledge and a sincere effort to come to the most logical conclusion we can given our limited abilities.

I do, religion forces it's way into my children's schools, into politics, into every day conversations about morality and how we should live, it causes wars and suffering and violence and overall I believe it to be a net-negative and that we'd be better off without it. There is no compromise for me unless you consider 'keep it to yourself and we'll get on just fine' to be a compromise.

I would like to rephrase your question to, do those people believe what they do because they believe it is actually true, or do they only believe it because others around them do? (If this is not the question you actually are asking then please rephrase it for me.)

Some people believe in religion because it is popular to do so, just as some people believe atheism is true because it may be popular to do so in their culture. There are of course people out there who believe in their religion not because it is the popular decision but because they have their own individual reasons for doing so.

Are you open to the possibility that what you believe could be incorrect? If you are not open to that, then it would seem you believe there is no chance of you being wrong? Or do you believe there is a chance of you being wrong but regardless of how big or small that chance is, you are not open to examining it?

You have said you dont believe things you cant prove. Can you prove this? Because i dont think you can.

Yes, except that I used the terminology 'cultural influence' because I think it includes influences both passive and active. I don't think that process is entirely passive. this can apply equally to any belief system, or lack thereof.

Yes.

I'm always willing to examine what I believe and abandon it should it prove to be false. That's one of the differences, in my view, between atheists and those who use faith to support their beliefs.

I take your point but on the one hand we have someone who is saying that we can't ever prove something, that it's impossible to prove it, because the god that is responsible for it is deliberately preventing us from ever having proof (convenient...), so to go ahead and believe it anyway seems perverse and intellectually dishonest, and on the other hand we have something that is easy to examine, the evidence is all around us. Whilst I could be wrong and if it were possible to actually total up all the positives and negatives and come up with a number that showed religion is in fact has a positive effect overall, it's still easy for me to point to a considerable number of negatives that result from the existence of religious beliefs so you would actually have to do the sum, it's certainly not a foregone conclusion that religion is a positive.

Don't forget that I regard most of the aspects of religion that people would generally consider to be positives (comfort, education etc) as negatives.

So no proof. Ok...

No, you arent.

Your view on religion and religious people hasnt budged one nanometre since you came here, despite being shown over and over again ( even by people you purport to respect, like OrP) that your view is false, or biased, or flawed, or inconsistent, or logically falacious

You have the burden of proof wrong. You don't need to disprove god to not believe. How would you even prove the non-existence of something (that is not logically impossible)? Seriously, how would you do that?
You need is a good reason to believe. What Dawkins does is look at the arguments for the existence of god and explain why he finds them unconvincing.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...nimals-653010/

Isn't the middle excluded?

Good point Batair, and not just polemically. Demanding proof of beliefs is a high standard for others as well as oneself.

It does seem like this.

Meet in the middle?

Religion side is so far off the cliff whats the point.

But you don't consider comfort and education themselves to be negative. Just when it comes to religion. Because you believe without proof that anything religious is bad.

I came a long long way from then. Amazing what 5 years of reading william lane craig articles nonstop can do for ya.

Yeah i think pretty much everyone holds beliefs they cant prove in a real or scientific method way. I believe aliens exist, the cute waitress girl who flirts with me wants my junk, and my car will get me to work. Got no real proof of any of that. But i dont see it as necessarily a bad thing and would not hold to the idea its a theist trait or one the MB doesn't do himself.

You don't know how to get proof of that?

I can get proof of that and the last one. But i dont have it, and already believe it. Its not about the ability to get proof. Its about what beliefs you hold with or without it.


And even if it was no one has convinced me you cant prove or disprove God. People say humans will never do that but i think they are guessing without proof.

It is interesting, there is often this appeal towards the middle. Why can't democrats and republicans meet somewhere in the middle, and so on.

The appeal to the middle doesn't really function because heuristically middles of opposing sides have better arguments, but more because it is perceived as a way of avoiding conflict. If someone had the middle belief, then the conflict between the two sides would be reduced.

This isn't always the case, but often two sides have very different underlying assumptions. Those assumptions may be right or wrong, but the middle is a sort of muddy and confusing place where various assumptions are all working in tandem. That is, the middle can be sort of the least likely position to be true.

In politics I find the opposite to be true most of the time. The truth is somewhere in the middle with differing sides usually having some good points. However, the middle is avoided in rhetoric because it is unclear and a bit hazy, so it doesn't sway a lot of votes. So you get a self-reinforcing system of polemic where almost all sound and decent politics take place in the centre, but demagogues whose only ambition is to show why "the other side" is horribly wrong get most of the attention. It's almost always part of their schtick to portray compromise as weakness.

But, non-violent and formalized politics in a democracy mostly rest on joint assumptions ("this state is worth continuing"), atheism and theism on the other hand can have completely contradictory basic assumptions.

I still think, as I said earlier, that many theists and atheists do meet in the middle. Weak atheism and "modern" deism are for all practical intents and purposes very similar, but on paper they might seem like opposites.

This literally couldn't be further from the truth, which is why I generally don't bother answering your posts. You don't pay attention.

Let's go back to my original statement, which you misquoted, what I actually said was:

Notice the bolded, what RLK is claiming wrt to god and prayer is not possible to prove, so I think it's perfectly reasonable of me to not be convinced by something that logically can't be proven to be true or false, and what I'm claiming is possible to prove because the evidence is all around us and is observable and measurable. They are very different claims.

There's enough observable evidence available that for me to hold the position that religion is a net-negative is reasonable, even if I'm wrong, it makes sense and it's certainly better than something that could be pure invention with no basis at all in what we know.

So you see your 'proof' argument is fatuous unless you live in a world where anything at all that can be posited but for which proof can't be offered is as equally likely to be as true/false as things for which proof does exist?

Notice the bolded

So it seems you don't know whether it is actually possible to prove that religion is a net negative yet you believe it anyway.

FWIW I think the claim that religion is a net negative something that it's not possible to prove, it seems that to measure whether or not it is you would have to compare the world with religion to one without it and we can't do that as we don't know what a world without religion looks like.