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Meh. If this was China/Tibet, I would be concerned (seriously).
In Mexico, no one cares. Nothing to watch here. Boring.

EDIT: my devout Catholic wife makes up for it. Trust me.
BTW, according the Census, the State of Jalisco (capital Guadalajara) is supposedly 95% Roman Catholic.

Those conquistadores sure were thorough.

Those conquistadores sure were thorough.

Yeah, but you might imagine how that conversation goes with my wife. Fireworks. Very bad area of discussion. I have learned the hard way (more than once).

Yeah, but you might imagine how that conversation goes with my wife. Fireworks. Very bad area of discussion. I have learned the hard way (more than once).

Oh I know exactly how that goes. I went to a catholic high school run by Benedictine monks (They had a monastery on campus and everything), my favorite thing to do when they talked about how great the church is was ask them if they endorsed pedophilia. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in detention.

....... Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in detention.

LOL Dude, 15 years ago, I was a high-school teacher at a very prominent Catholic school (kind of a problem, because I am not Catholic.) Let me tell you that, I would have been the first one to call your parents and bring them in for a meeting -- "the death sentence" and my pocket AA.

You would not believe the begging I got from the most misbehaving students.
BAD STUDENT: No Mr.Sneakers. Please. This is between you and me -- not my parents....please!!!"
ME: "I have good things to say too. Don't worry."

Result: Less troublesome student. It's a miracle! There is a god! lol

..........As you may guess, from my personality, I was tough on the jokers (especially because I was not Catholic. More responsibility). They called me "The Sheriff". LOL Today, they are all grown-up and bigger guys. I cannot believe how excited they get when they see Mr.Sneakers (sometimes playing Poker). So many stories. We laugh a lot.

But on the serious side, I never make fun of other people's religions. Well, at least I try not to do that.

Yeah, but you might imagine how that conversation goes with my wife. Fireworks. Very bad area of discussion. I have learned the hard way (more than once).

LOL... so you bring it up and she calmly explains all the rational reasoning and evidence behind being catholic at which point you're convinced and head straight to confession?

no?

In a vacuum (!!) - would you clasify it as one?

Nah, I wouldn't, although I think maybe some of my experiences were cut from the same emotional cloth. Of course you're right in saying that it's impossible to objectively classify something as a religious experience, at least without an established religious agent that leaves fingerprints behind. Barring that, any definition is going to be highly personal, and for me these experiences failed the litmus test in their fleetingness.

Regarding brain chemistry, "tripping" and having "religious experiences"... I thought research had shown a correlation between a person's predilection towards religious experience, and their previous religious indoctrination, however passive.

It would take more advanced neuroscience to show causality... but it makes reasonable sense to theorise that someone raised in a christian household, for example, might take a hallucinogen or other psychoactive substance, and be prone to having certain types of experience unaware that the brain is constructing these experiences from material already at hand.

I don't know about the research, but my personal experiences involved little to no exposure to religion through age five, and then enrollment in parochial school, youth group, etc from the ages of 10-17. I had some various atheistic sentiments as a child, though -- these were visceral and could probably be classified as a religious experience, oddly enough -- prior to my exposure to Roman Catholicism and Christianity in general (which also hit me like a ton of bricks when I first enrolled in Catholic school, but lost its shine within a year). I don't doubt that from an experiential standpoint, though, that various psychoactives draw upon the foundations of the personalities taking them. I tend to be a very melancholic person, and whatever my realizations were while tripping, I do remember that they felt nearly as sorrowful as they felt profound, at times.

Religion just turned out to be another fairytale for me. When i found out Santa and the Tooth Fairy were not real, the immediate question for a curious kid was what about god. It still was a gradual process to atheism, because where people will let you know the tooth fairy and Santa are not real, when it comes to God you have to battle with huge propaganda and your indoctrination.

I guess the people that shut out their reason and continue to believe in the fairytale have just been subjected to more intense propaganda and indoctrination. I find it disturbing someone in this thread has gone as far as to deny their is evidence for evolution. And not sure if it was the same person talking about a chosen Religion, lol, reason is vacated when it comes to Religion.

Perhaps there are a large number of people who believe in a religion simply because they were raised in an environment that supported, or even necessitated that belief in order for those people to belong among those in that environment, but I think it's an oversimplification to write off entire religions due to that supposition, and probably a little unkind as well. If the things you are told about life work for you, then there is little reason to go tearing up the foundations of your life, and the desire to not be alienated from your friends, family and peers is strong and often healthy. Laying those things aside, there are still those who arrive at faith of their own seeking. So even though I don't think any particular religion is true (though they all, as far as I know, have truths, despite my liking some better than others), I'm not dismissive of them. They seem to serve a valuable function in the lives of many.

This isn't to say that I don't find many of the stereotypical behaviors of the professed devout to be preposterous and often some degree of harmful, but you don't have to be religious to be a misguided individual. But in the end, if somebody claims to have belief in a deity or some other such order, I think I'm going to have to take them at their word, rather than suppose that they are being willfully ignorant. And if they do choose to deny evidence that supports a claim that they feel threatens their identity (not that I read that part of this thread), I'd hardly call that surprising.

A last thought: The idea that there is some absolute value against which we can measure the worthiness of a person seems to me to be a good beginning thought, if one wished to establish a new religion. Maybe that's the same thing as saying that everything is arbitrary, though, which isn't a position I'm prepared to defend, really (I can smell messy ethics discussions). Also, if it turns out tomorrow that I've just been rambling incoherently, lol sleep deprivation.

Traditionally, people have recognized three sources of knowledge: Revelation, Reason and Experience.

Revelation can be defined as God's disclosure of his own nature and his purpose for mankind, especially through the words of human intermediaries.
Revelation presupposes faith, so this source of knowledge has no persuasion to atheists.

Reason, can be defined as the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically.
Atheists tend to absolutize this source of knowledge above others, often they even consider this the only reliable source of all knowledge. This is especially visible in their claim that the scientific method is the only method for obtaining objective knowledge of reality. They discard other methods of reason, like philosophy and theology, as subjective and unreliable. (And indeed, atheists are often poor philosophers (think of Dawkins and Hitchens)).

(I think that the reason why atheist tend to cling so much to the hard data of the natural sciences, is because the atheist position is philosophically and intellectually weak. But that is another debate.)

The interesting thing is that this presupposition, that science is the only tool for obtaining reliable knowledge of reality, is not derived from science itself. It is therefore self-refuting. Because if the legitimizing of science as the only criterion for objective knowledge has to be sought outside science, than science is no longer the only criterion for objective knowledge.

The same holds for materialist philosophies on reality in general. Scientism (the belief that the investigative methods of the physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry), empiricism (the doctrine that all ideas and categories are derived from sense experience and that knowledge cannot extend beyond experience, including observation, experiment, and induction), and other related philosophies, are philosophies that are not justified and legitimized by their own standards and criteria.

That makes it all the more evident that they are belief systems, based on presuppositions that are not logical, self-evident conclusions of reason itself. You can believe in these philosophies as being true, you can bring forth good, reasonable arguments in favor of them, but they are still belief systems. That means that, in order to be intellectually honest, you have to be open to the possibility that these belief systems are untrue and that other belief systems, religious or not, can be true.

One poster in this thread said he could not understand how people can claim that empiricism is a belief system. I think he does not realize that he is biased, that his own presuppositions and assumptions are based on belief and not on self-evident logical truths. That is not wrong – all wordviews are based on belief. But admitting that fact makes for a more open mind and thus for better debates.


Experience, as the third source of knowledge, is very interesting when debating this topic. It is my conviction that experience, especially everyday human experience, speaks overwhelmingly in favor of theism. Let me give a few examples.

1) According to theism, truth is objective. According to atheism/materialism, truth is subjective. But in every day human experience, truth is objective. We may have different opinions on what is true, but when it comes to our everyday life, we all act as if there's one truth, one reality.

2) According to theism, morals are objective. According to atheism/materialism, morals have to be subjective. But in every day human experience, morals are objective. We may have different views on morality, but we all act as if morality is objective. Consider a society in which all individuals have the right to live according to the morals of their own choosing. It would never work.

3) According to theism, life has objective meaning. According to atheism/materialism, life has no objective meaning. But we all live as if life has objective meaning. We all feel that it matters whether we live or die, whether we make something of life or not. We all hope that our life matters to something or someone beyond ourselves.

4) According to theism, we have free will. According to atheism/materialism, we do not have free will. But in everyday human life, we all act as if we have free will. None of us acts as if all our actions and thoughts are predetermined.

5) According to theism, love is real. According to atheism/materialism, love is nothing more than the product of chemical reactions in our brain. But in every day life, love is very real. It is experienced by all humans as something that goes beyond our brains. The evidence for this is the immense collection of love story's, poems and songs that has been made and inspired people throughout human history. Other evidence is found in the phenomena of altruism and self-sacrifice, which are very hard to explain in materialism.

6) And the most convincing of all, in my mind, is this. According to atheism/materialism, there is no supernatural reality. But all cultures, from the very beginning of mankind have had religious ideas. Even today in modern cultures, where many people are not members of organized religion, the vast majority of humans have spiritual needs. They pray, hope for an afterlife, believe things happen for a reason. Most of us pray. Why do we do that?


I'm not saying this proves theism per se. Atheist/materialist thinkers have come up with their own approaches to all these phenomena. But I find them usually not very convincing or persuading. Because, even if we could conclude decisively that all these typical human experiences have biological functions that are evolved into our behaviour, that does not mean that they do not correspond to something outside our material reality. That would be the genetic fallacy – claiming that the reality of something is fully accounted for by the explanation of its origin. It is very possible for love to be something beyond our reality which corresponds to the biological processes in our brain. It is very possible for a supernatural Being to exist who corresponds to our spirituality, even if we could see material processes in our brain that are caused by or are causing spiritual experiences.

Of course, this is all a matter of belief. But the same holds for atheism. And I think theism has the most sufficient and most reasonable explanation for what we encounter in our every day human life.

@Ulysses

It's quite clear you are a little fuzzy on the terms in play in this thread. True Atheism is not the belief that there is no god. It is the rejection of theistic arguments

Traditionally, people have recognized three sources of knowledge: Revelation, Reason and Experience.

Revelation can be defined as God's disclosure of his own nature and his purpose for mankind, especially through the words of human intermediaries.
Revelation presupposes faith, so this source of knowledge has no persuasion to atheists.

Simple inclusion of this in your post is not sufficient merit to include it as a 'source of knowledge.' What are the criterion for determining the source of said revelations ie: how do you prove they aren't solely dependent upon the agent? This 'source' differs from empirical fact or logic inasmuch as the latter two are at least partially separable from the agent exercising them.

Reason, can be defined as the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically.
Atheists tend to absolutize this source of knowledge above others, often they even consider this the only reliable source of all knowledge. This is especially visible in their claim that the scientific method is the only method for obtaining objective knowledge of reality. They discard other methods of reason, like philosophy and theology, as subjective and unreliable. (And indeed, atheists are often poor philosophers (think of Dawkins and Hitchens)).

Philosophy is often the precursor to scientific theory, and it uses logic in the fundamental creation of its arguments. The scientific method is separate from but dependent on logical consistency, but not vice versa.

I think that the reason why atheist tend to cling so much to the hard data of the natural sciences, is because the atheist position is philosophically and intellectually weak. But that is another debate.

Since when is atheism dependent on the scientific method? Atheism is a lack of acceptance of philosophical arguments for theism and nothing more. Come up with a good, logically consistent argument for the existence of a deity and I will change my position.

Not only that, but I would argue atheism is the default position. It doesn't require intellectual or philosophical arguments. The burden of proof is solely on the theist.

The interesting thing is that this presupposition, that science is the only tool for obtaining reliable knowledge of reality, is not derived from science itself. It is therefore self-refuting. Because if the legitimizing of science as the only criterion for objective knowledge has to be sought outside science, than science is no longer the only criterion for objective knowledge.

It might not be the only way of obtaining empirical knowledge that there is, but it's the best one we have, and the only reliable one. Are we supposed to throw it all out and rely on weak philosophical arguments that say Goddidit instead of trusting our eyes and minds? Don't be absurd. Credulity will not make your life better or more truthful. This is the inherent draw of atheism and naturalism.

The same holds for materialist philosophies on reality in general. Scientism (the belief that the investigative methods of the physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry), empiricism (the doctrine that all ideas and categories are derived from sense experience and that knowledge cannot extend beyond experience, including observation, experiment, and induction), and other related philosophies, are philosophies that are not justified and legitimized by their own standards and criteria.

First of all no one in this thread as far as I can tell is saying that the scientific method is the only way of obtaining information, but without question it's the best one we have. Logically, how do you expect to experience anything except through your five senses? If you had no sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste you would cease to experience anything except your own thoughts. Also, over a short period of time your brain would actually start making things up for you to experience. It would hallucinate, smell things and hear noises that aren't there. If you don't believe me, just look up what happens when people go through sensory-deprivation experiments.

The scientific method simply takes our sensory experiences and attempts to control them...removing observer bias, and as much possibility for error as we can. Then we repeat the observation in an attempt to disprove our expected observation, readjust, re-hypothesize and retest.

The scientific method is an extension of sensory experience based in logical apparatus.

That makes it all the more evident that they are belief systems, based on presuppositions that are not logical, self-evident conclusions of reason itself.

Are you claiming that logic is inherently tautological?

You can believe in these philosophies as being true, you can bring forth good, reasonable arguments in favor of them, but they are still belief systems. That means that, in order to be intellectually honest, you have to be open to the possibility that these belief systems are untrue and that other belief systems, religious or not, can be true.

How exactly are they belief systems? Are you attempting to meander your way around with epistemological skepticism?

One poster in this thread said he could not understand how people can claim that empiricism is a belief system. I think he does not realize that he is biased, that his own presuppositions and assumptions are based on belief and not on self-evident logical truths.

Obviously this is a dig at me, but I'm still curious why you think objective fact is either unobtainable or that we as agents are so fallible that we cannot determine objective fact? Are you an epistemological skeptic? What are your arguments?

Self-evident logical truth? Are you attempting to argue theism now, without an argument?

Experience, as the third source of knowledge, is very interesting when debating this topic. It is my conviction that experience, especially everyday human experience, speaks overwhelmingly in favor of theism. Let me give a few examples.

1) According to theism, truth is objective. According to atheism/materialism, truth is subjective.

This is an incredibly bad generalization. What truth are you talking about? Moral truth? Physical truth? Both?

But in every day human experience, truth is objective. We may have different opinions on what is true, but when it comes to our everyday life, we all act as if there's one truth, one reality.

Huh? What do you mean truth is objective?

2) According to theism, morals are objective. According to atheism/materialism, morals have to be subjective.

This is patently wrong. There are some atheists that believe morality is objective. But even if morality is objective, there is no reason that it has to come from god, or more specifically the Christian god.

But in every day human experience, morals are objective. We may have different views on morality, but we all act as if morality is objective.

We do? Moral decisions are personal ones. I think your claim is fairly vacuous that every moral agent makes decisions because of what they think is 'objectively right.' I sure as hell don't. I make moral decisions based on what is right for me. This is not only more reasonable, it is more responsible. I personally believe murdering another human being in cold blood is wrong because their life belongs to them as much as mine belongs to me and I have no right to take it. If I agreed with murder I would by proxy agree that other people could rightfully take my life. I believe eating animals is morally neutral but some people believe it is morally repugnant. Who's right? Are we both appealing to objective moral truth? No, we aren't, and when we claim we are is when we cross the boundary of others' moral fabric and begin to be imposing...which I also think is wrong since I don't want others to impose their moral beliefs on me. Morality is based essentially in empathy.

Consider a society in which all individuals have the right to live according to the morals of their own choosing. It would never work.

You're living in one. History can clearly show that whether or not there is a law, or 'objective moral code,' it doesn't prevent people from being hurt by others. The law and justice system is in place to allow people remedy when they are hurt. That's it. It's not claiming simply by existing that there is a higher morality.

3) According to theism, life has objective meaning.

Of course you would say that, you have already pre-attached the existence of god to the meaning of life.

According to atheism/materialism, life has no objective meaning. But we all live as if life has objective meaning. We all feel that it matters whether we live or die, whether we make something of life or not. We all hope that our life matters to something or someone beyond ourselves.

Whether or not people in general want or think that their life has meaning does not mean that it actually does.

I don't feel this way at all and I think it's insulting to myself and others that you can read minds.

I think life is ultimately meaningless, and quite absurd.

In the short-term however, life is whatever you choose to make of it.

4) According to theism, we have free will.

No you don't. If god knows everything that's going to happen before he creates the universe, then your life is predestined. You only have the illusion of free will.

According to atheism/materialism, we do not have free will. But in everyday human life, we all act as if we have free will. None of us acts as if all our actions and thoughts are predetermined.

You better do some more reading. Determinism is not the same thing as predestination and determinism is not opposed to atheism.

5) According to atheism/materialism, love is nothing more than the product of chemical reactions in our brain.

What does it matter where it comes from? When you hurt me, the pain is a result of chemical reactions in my brain too, but I don't claim pain isn't real.

It is experienced by all humans as something that goes beyond our brains.

This is total bullshit. No one else can experience my love for my dog. If you destroy me, does my love remain somewhere in the ether?

The fact that if you drive a stake through my prefrontal cortex I will lose my ability to love is pure evidence that love is restricted to the brain.

Other evidence is found in the phenomena of altruism and self-sacrifice, which are very hard to explain in materialism.

They are quite easily explained, actually.

6) According to atheism/materialism, there is no supernatural reality. But all cultures, from the very beginning of mankind have had religious ideas. Even today in modern cultures, where many people are not members of organized religion, the vast majority of humans have spiritual needs. They pray, hope for an afterlife, believe things happen for a reason. Most of us pray. Why do we do that?

Because there is a God! Right?

I'm not saying this proves theism per se.

Thank goodness.

Atheist/materialist thinkers have come up with their own approaches to all these phenomena. But I find them usually not very convincing or persuading. Because, even if we could conclude decisively that all these typical human experiences have biological functions that are evolved into our behaviour, that does not mean that they do not correspond to something outside our material reality.

You're absolutely right. But there is no good reason to believe it's god.

That is why we are atheists. There is an explanation. And there is no good reason to believe it's god.

I don't get why this is so hard to understand.

It very well could be that science is total bs and there are other explanations outside of our material reality.

There is no good reason to believe it.

Of course, this is all a matter of belief. But the same holds for atheism.

Yes, only atheism is more grounded in observable reality and logic.

Ulysses, with no offense intended, I was eager to stop reading your post fairly early on due to sweeping generalizations (primarily in the form of attribution) and unsubstantiated personal value judgments. I trooped it out, but if you would hold a conversation those sort of things are only going to make your position appear weaker than it may actually be.

Two things

#1 I would like to learn how to exchange information with a non-scientific method. The obvious requirement is that the exchange cannot cause any detectable reaction in my brain - but I have to be aware of the information.

#2 After a few beers yesterday I concluded that God might be the creator of this Universe. All I need now is to find a way for me and God to exchange ideas (see #1).

Two things

#1 I would like to learn how to exchange information with a non-scientific method. The obvious requirement is that the exchange cannot cause any detectable reaction in my brain - but I have to be aware of the information.

Are you counting awareness as a reaction?

#2 After a few beers yesterday I concluded that God might be the creator of this Universe. All I need now is to find a way for me and God to exchange ideas (see #1).

If you ever manage to speak with him, ask him why he put nipples on men?

@nawhead

i see a similarity between belief in religious ideas and poker situations because sometimes we either crunch through probabilities for the unknown, or else disregard the unknown because it would be irrational to make some decision like "i just sat, this guy went all in, i'll call cause he might be bluffing." that would be irrational. there is no basis for that belief. and yet people do it all the time cause they've been losing and they just want to win a pot.

I see what you're saying. They way I see it though is within poker even beliefs from unknown information are still within a real tangible environment. We may believe the guy is bluffing and if we fold we'll never know for sure. However all possible outcomes are outcomes we know to exists and we know to be possible. He's bluffing or he's not. I'd like to think we can agree that while we have to believe one or the other; both are real possibilities we can understand and quantify.

It would kind of be like arguing over whether a particular cat we saw was brown or red. One person might believe or see it as red and the other might believe or see it as brown. Either way we know that brown, red and a cat are real things. Oversimplification I know but just trying to make a point.

That's how I see the difference in certain beliefs as being different. And some you can debate and some you can't. Once again not saying you shouldn't debate them just saying it's hard to debate them other then just for the sake of the discussion.