>tfw you realise that Hitchens went the "all religions

I do that all the time

>>8925642
Is this literature?

>>8925642
that's not what he did. Islam is most dangerous now, but in WW2 times it was Catholicism, and a certain sect of Buddhism. All religions are irrational and crazy, so not entirely predictable. But all religions can end up dangerous or practically harmless, over time. Don't trust Quakers.

>>8925650
Yeah, he wrote many books on this subject.

>>8925642

>yfw you realise that Hitchen went the "all religions are bad" route so he could make money from teenagers instead of doing actual philosophy

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>>8925642
>thinly veiled Joseph Heller thread?

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>>8925642
All religion is good and bad at the same time, like most things humans do. Definitely not true in the sense that I concretely can drive to the nearest gas station. So past that I like to relinquish my beliefs in the truly extraordinary.
t. Descartes

>>8925654
>all religions are irrational and crazy

lol go back to sucking off sam harris you undereducated poser. better yet, go read a fucking book

>>8925681
This.
>>8927747
/pol/ detected

Everytime I see that picture of hitchens I cringe.

>>8925642
kill yourself christfag
>>8927747
kill yourself christfag

>>8925654
>all religions are equally bad!
Yeah no, this is literally a reddit opinion. Buddhists and Catholics are way better than Muslims. Also Catholics were persecuted during WW2, dipshit

Le Albert Camus cigarette collar up photograph

Christ lmao

>>8927789
no no NO don't insult my dear beloved Hitch!

>>8927747
well if they believe in a God that transcends the laws of nature, rationality goes out the window. God can just come in at any moment and make any paradox happen. Religious people literally believe in that sense that anything is possible. That is as irrational as it's possible to be.

>>8927772
and this is a very basic and uninteresting opinion.

Christian theology and metaphysics has been a mess for nearly a millenia (since even before the French university system reinterpreted Aristotle). Islam has been going downhill since the radicals siezed political power after modernists looked like little bitches after the ottomans fell, but it's been undergoing the a sort of purging fire since then. Radical Islam & the alt right need to be responded to with an updated form of liberal democracy if we want to make any lasting progress (the fascist critiques of democracy from 1900 finally having come true). Buddhism's fine when it stays out of politics but its metaphysics is second to none.

>>8927816
that's not true at all. any basic nondualist metaphysics knows that the first task is to avoid logical explosion. other forms have to jump through more hoops but can still do it. who's oversimplified, didnt-bother-to-read-original-thinkers lies are you regirgitating?

read some cusa or mahayana bro, they'll let you in on the difference between irrational and hyperrational/suprarational. the notion of 'God', when taken as Nondual Truth (which is more common than you'd think even after the metaphysical crises of the Catholic church) is logically rigorous af.

check out paraconsistent logic while you're at it (and maybe some Gödel & later Wittgenstein). individuation and affirmation are incredibly weak assumptions in basic logic

>>8927819
>Radical Islam & the alt right need to be responded to with an updated form of liberal democracy if we want to make any lasting progress (the fascist critiques of democracy from 1900 finally having come true)
care to explain more?

>>8927816
>uses the word transcend without knowing what it means

>>8927772
Read Imperial-way Zen, and see how Imperial Japan was derived from Buddhism.

Catholics were originally persecuted by Hitler, until the Vatican made an alliance with him, which would mean Catholicism would be taught in German schools, and in turn, the Pope ordered catholic groups resisting hitler to be disbanded (to which they listened), and ordered that Hitler's birthday be celebrated every year, which continued through til the end of the war.

And of course fascist italy is was catholic.

And of course you can blame catholicism for preaching antisemitism for quite a long time beforehand.

>>8927857
this belongs more in an essay but the gist is that they can be seen from a political philosophy angle as arising from critiques of liberal democracy that arose in the 20th century. liberal democracy mostly just won through military might and still hasn't really put forward a good countercritique (which would involve taking seriously critiques of liberty, capital, etc. and likely significantly adjusting them). there are many parallels, i think, here to the utter failure of American liberalism to cope with the alt right in any meaningful way (but i won't get into that here--Bannon & Trump are playing them like a fiddle). there needs to be a real dialogue, not a bunch of disparate circlejerks going on in seperate echo chambers

so they can bomb the shit out of them, call them racist, etc. all they like but until they have a real alternative that doesn't base itself off of materialism and so on i don't see us getting anywhere in our political discourse.

this countercritique is over 85 years too late, too

tldr liberal democracy needs to reevaluate its enlightenment roots and take a good long look in the mirror. ideologies that fundamentally oppose it to an extent are a godsend for this activity but extremely dangerous if left unchecked

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>tfw too intelligent to be atheist

>>8927866
"derived" is more complicated than you imply here. in essence, Zen heavily informed the Chinese style system that arose in Japan & was severely lacking in good, grounded political philosophy

>>8927816
>if they believe in a God that transcends the laws of nature, rationality goes out the window
Assuming that natural laws are already perfect, which is blatantly false.

>>8928120
what do you mean perfect/imperfect? I never said they were perfect, and wouldn't categorize them as either, wouldn't put them on that scale. They just are what they are and we've adapted around them. So how do you mean?

>>8927930
>tfw too intelligent to think the existence of a deity can be proved or disproved with current methods, or that anything but agnosticism is the logical choice

YOU'LL NEVER OUTLIVE PEEEEETER YOU'LL NEVER OUTLIVE PEEEEETER YOU'LL NEVER OUTLIVE PEEEEETER YOU'LL NEVER OUTLIVE PEEEEETER YOU'LL NEVER OUTLIVE PEEEEETER YOU'LL NEVER OUTLIVE PEEEEETER

>>8928120
whatever any given thing x is, inasmuch as it exists, must "point to" the Real (which transcends individuation) and "be animated by" the Real (which partakes in an immanent identity with each x). The former is spoken of in several religions as the world exhaulting God (but only those who Know or believe shall see) and the latter is Plato's moving picture of eternity.

nobody fucking talks like that in religious discussions on the internet because nobody fucking bothers to read those guys, and if they do, they read the ones spoiled by the Church's metaphysically-challenged millenia. sad!

>>8928152
well it's not true. Plato is the worst of them all, shitty little cretin

>>8928147
this is a better answer than atheism, but this is where i think nondualism actually excels. the limits of logic are indeed a problem, but a lot of metaphysicians, particularly in the east, like Zhuangzi and Nagarjuna, found a way around (the problem seems to be starting from the ground up). the west has some hidden gems too but they tend to get labeled heretics

>>8928172
what an intelligent and well thought out comment. you know that the very existence of that comment contradicts its content?

>>8925654
>WW2 times it was Catholicism,
Why?

>>8925642
He looks like hes trying really hard to be as cool as Camus.

>>8925650
>not reading one of the greatest modern writers in the English language

>>8928184
well first of all it's more Hitchen's opinion than mine but I mostly agree with him. But here,
>>8927866
Fascism and the alliance with hitler

Of course, if you are /pol/ you might think this a good thing.

>>8928196
He was cooler

>>8928183
no it doesn't

>>8928215
"No."

>>8928219
> no

ah, the classic way to admit "i have no fucking idea about what i speak of, but fuck you im rite n ur rong lol"

bravo!

>>8928262
Hitchen's Razor: that which is proposed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence

>>8927901
Who articulated those critiques? I'm interested but I don't have anything googlable

>>8928283
first of all, calling burden of proof "hitchen's razor" makes you sound like a fucking moron. i should stop right here but i'll humor you for a second

second, we haven't spoken of what evidence is considered permissible, let alone epistemology

third, you invoke burden of proof (but don't know what it's called) when you've done nothing but spout useless insignificances? do you even know what "level of discourse" means? it means that when you stop acting like a child i won't have to speak at a level a child can understand

fourth, for that reason you've shown that it's not worth my time to "prove God" (which is what getting you to accept the idea of the Real would be) -- why don't you just read a fucking book instead? how about one that challenges your naive enlightenment-derived attitude? i don't have time to educate children on 4chan

lastly, why don't you treat it like any other theory? this is more metaphysical than scientific (which just means it's more basic), but the same basic steps for basic validation are behind it: 1) make assumption (yes, this IS the first step of science go read some Popper) 2) work out implications 3) see if world is really like that. if you're capable of less amateur thought maybe you should look into epistemology of metaphysics?

here's a new razor for you: uninterested's razor: if someone proves to be a narrow-minded fucktard incapable of even a decent level of discourse, throw them a bone and berate them some more when they act hypocritical

get out of my sight you mental maggot

>>8927866
>Vatican made an alliance with Hitler

this is literally communist propaganda. It never happened

>>8925658

>>8928324
Marx, Sorel, and plenty of others. Pretty much any political philosopher who ended up influencing actual revolutions. A good way to start might be to look at Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, etc's own influences & writings and work backwards. As far as islam goes there's a good anthology called like "Readings in Islamic Modernism & Fundamentalism" or something like that which is a good start

>>8928351
That it is communist propaganda must itself be someone else's propaganda. It happened, the Catholic church is always trying to apologize for it, but they've yet to live it down.

>>8928342
tldr im not writing you an essay when you can hardly write a full sentence, faggot

>>8928365
>the Catholic church is always trying to apologize for it
source you smelly redditor

>>8928324
oh, and there's a red volume called like the essential marx or something. read pt 1 of on the Jewish question and what they have of the German ideology. his critique of liberty is damning, and he doesn't even have to quote Locke to show how individualistic and anti social liberty, in our current understanding of it, is

>>8928342
you told me I was contradicting myself without giving a reason, then I said I wasn't and you said I didn't give a reason, very simple, and unchildish on my part.

Hitchen's Razor is an adaption of an old latin phrase but it is different than burden of proof, though related.

>>8928382
no shit it's different, but all it's doing is demanding burden of proof before engaging.

you still haven't responded to the fact that you haven't bothered saying anything smart, yet expect me to write lengthy defenses of anything. speak smarter than a child and I won't have to gloss over all the rigor that children don't understand or appreciate. better yet, go read some metaphysics where this argument has been addressed over and over and over (i take it if you're citing hitchens you haven't read much religion or metaphysics or read the enlightenment critically)

go read about self-verifying epistemologies or something and come back. i don't have time to give you a basic philosophical education

>le Vatican was in bed with Hitler

You people retarded? You think Polish priests would have died in Auschwitz if this was the case?

>>8928424
>>8928376
>>8928342
>>8928262
>>8928183
>>8928177
>>8928152
>>8927934
>>8927901
>>8927852
I like this man and second everything he's said up until this point.

>>8928540
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/1999/10/pope-pius-xii-199910
pls discredit if you can

>>8925642
Didn't he also say Islam is the worst one out of the entire bunch?

>>8929495
he said modernly they are, but they move up and down over time, and other religions have been more dangerous to the world in history, and can be in the future. Never turn your back on a Quaker

>>8928177
Agnostics are atheists too.

Being an atheist just means you don't believe in god, you don't need to know for sure there isn't one. In fact I would assume most atheists are agnostics.

>>8929507
Bertrand Russel, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins are all agnostics in the sense that they don't say that they can know for sure there is no god, yes.

>>8929515
I think Hitchens actually said he's a gnostic atheist, as in he believes there is no personal God, because of all the injustices in the world like parasites that live in the eyes of children and all sorts of horrible diseases that would have to come from God.

Not sure about those other popsci atheists, I have only read some of Dawkins biology stuff.

Most atheists I know are skeptics and into science so they tell me something along the lines of: "I will believe in god once convincing evidence comes along, until then I don't buy it".

>>8927816
>transcends
I think you are misusing this word.
Anyways, God is just that which is essentially uncaused, but is the source of all that is caused.
This is a gross simplification, but if you look at the natural sciences, this is what it essentially comes down to. No amount of materialist reductionism (the overwhelming trend in most sciences these days) will ever be able to explain the source of everything, it just goes to ad infinitum. This along with things like the Anthropic principle and developments in physics is when the case for God begins to seem much more likely. With enough rationality, you can begin to see that their must be a source (god perhaps?) which science cannot (yet?) explain.

I smell shitposting

>>8929507
lol this is patently false. atheism is an extra step from agnosticism. you're not actually that stupid are you?

>>8929554
I don't see any reason that the source should be assumed to be any sort of intelligent being. Usually, the argument I come across goes something along the lines of there's no possible purely natural explanation for the existence of our universe, since it had a beginning, and can't have created itself. So there must be something not bound by our laws of physics or logic, usually having existed for eternity, which of caused our universe. Of course, they say it's god, and god created our universe. But this thing not bound by physics and logic, I don't see how they can start saying it must be intelligent, instead of just some thing that caused our universe by accident.

Meanwhile this would really only get someone as far as deism anyways.

>>8929637
agnostics don't believe in god. Believing it's possible is not believing in god. So they are atheists.

>>8929554
You're using the word "God" to represent different things, primary the thing called "existence" but people do not use the word "God" to mean existence they mean a conscious entity. If you keep using different definition for "god" then all you're arguments is going to devolve to semantics.

>materialist reductionism
That's the theoretical aspect of science. You have to reduce things. In theory you want to be able to predict. You can't predict anything if you don't reduce the things you are trying to predict into smaller pieces.

>>8929692
>So they are atheists.
Fuck off, dont lump me with you just so you can gain membership to your club

>>8929688
Well if it was by accident, then it could be just as likely that our universe would be complete chaos, rather than one bound by natural laws and order. There is no scientific reason why there should be any laws at all. Therefore the fact of order itself suggests that somewhere at the bottom of all this there is something intelligent at work. This is probably one of the better arguments for an intelligent designer.

>Meanwhile this would really only get someone as far as deism anyways.
This is true as this is only as far rationality can get us for now. Religion serves other purposes and shouldn't be reasoned through.

>>8929729
well before like, late 19th century, you wouldn't have had the word agnostic and certainly would have been classified, and classified yourself, as an atheist. Agnostic is a recent term, invented by pussies frankly, who didn't want to be associated with all the bad connotations of atheism.

>>8927866
I've never found a source for the Catholics were told to celebrate Hitler's birthday besides Hitchens himself. And the Reich hated Christianity and wanted to organize a state religion derived from Nazism itself. Stop saying bullshit you can't back up at all

>>8929726
>You can't predict anything if you don't reduce the things you are trying to predict into smaller pieces.
Yes, this is true but at the moment science cannot reduce everything down to the original source. All I'm saying is this method currently leads to infinite regression and that the answer is an ontological/philosophical one combined with science. When you have got to that point in knowledge where what is next proposed by the mathematics and the observations that completes the explanatory chain is the entity or state itself beyond explanation, without form or properties or characteristics but the source of them all, then you have found God.

>>8929739
imagine this, an "unnatural universe", if you want to call it that, a universe with no apparent laws or logic or consistency, randomly creates many universes as a byproduct. Some of these universes are orderly, some not. And there's a sort of natural selection of universes, very few are sustainable to life, but of course we live in one of those, because if we didn't, we wouldn't be alive.

What other purposes does religion serve?

>>8925642
>there is no such thing as an atheist bigot

>>8929782
This unnatural universe (sounds like multiverse) would be almost impossible to falsify. Also it would still have some sort of source. Interesting as a philosophical question either way.

>What other purposes does religion serve?
Longstanding culture, traditions, objective morality (and of course the values and ethics that come from this). And of course faith, some sort of answer/something to believe in, would read Kierkegaard for more on this.

>>8929808
That's not what he's implying you slippery vagina

>>8929820
I don't think it's any more unfalsifiable than God. I don't even believe in this multiverse, I just think I'd believe in it before God, seems simpler. But that's what I get to when I follow you past the idea that the anything that is not bound by the laws of physics exists at all, that the lawless needs to be invoked in order to create the laws. I'm very dubious about it.

Culture and traditions, you can get without religion, I believe. Objective morality doesn't seem that great. The criticism of subjective morality is usually that everyone will have a different opinion of morality, and fight over it. But what does objective morality get you? People say they know objective morality through god, someone else has a different god, and they fight over it.

>>8929767
Science, the theory side at least, tries to find representations for phenomenon in order to make predictions. That's all science is trying to do, make accurate predictions. Of course the representation is no substitution for the phenomena, otherwise you're doing raw engineering (what viruses and all other living organisms do, i.e. shit works or doesn't). The problem is that people think that religion is separate matter. It is not. Religion is finding a representation for the phenomena of existence so that people won't be scared shitless. Language is representation. Words are represenations. Symbols are representation. Philosophy uses words therefore it is a representation. You can't "know" nothing. But you can do a lot of things.

>>8929867
Funny thing is that morality is subjective. People kill each other all the time. They break their morals all the fucking time.
The problem is that people don't want to based the law on something subjective yet they don't understand that the law is subjective itself. Stupid laws are passed all the time. The law is broken all the time. Different places have different laws and so on.

>>8927772
He didn't say they're all equally bad, just that they all have the potential to be really bad.

>>8928209
>modern
You mean contemporary.

>>8929692
a theon means "no god" not "no explicit belief in god"

jesus you people are stupid

>>8929726
material reduction is problematic for epistemological reasons, you're throwing around all kinds of assumptions when you speak of "atomic (in the original sense) parts", such as subject-object duality. in layman's terms the idea of an observer being seperate from an observed system, among other things, really throws a wrench in pure materialism

science cannot verify itself directly & that's a big part of why there's been talk for the last 100 years of a "new science"

>>8930206
atheism means a lack of theism

>>8930226
ok. let me hold your hand through this basic greek etymology. it's not a + theism, it's a + theon + ism: the ism of being without God. the history of the word is that theism didn't need a name at first, because it was the default, but not believing in God did.

do your fucking homework. do you really not know how the alpha privative works with etymologies?

next time you want to lie at least back it up with an etymological dictionary

>>8927747
go fuck yourself

>>8930239
>t's not a + theism, it's a + theon + ism

urm, ok. but if it's "a + theon + ism" then like why isn't it atheonism?

>>8930246
go read a book

>>8930212
Nigga when science verify itself it's called engineering. How do you think nukes get built or that computer you using works? The verification of theory is engineering. Either you're theory is accurate and the airplane takes off or you're full of shit and it doesn't work.

And it's not materialism that science "adheres" to it's physicalism. But there's no problem because we are working in the realm of representation. When we talk about philosophy. Talk about epistemology. We're force to use language, a representation. And anything goes in representation. Fiction. Lies. Deception. Errors. When you talk about subject-object, you're using language to describe it. Which is inherently flawed.
You want science in its purest form? here it is:
Interact, make observation about a phenomenon.
Find patterns.
Use patterns as rules in a model.
Manipulate models according to rules.
Arrive at predictions from model manipulation.
Test prediction to see if true or false.
Engineer.

>>8928342
good lord that was cringey

>>8930254
because of how words like that get combined. i'm not going to go into the philological data if that's what you're asking.

but usually there's a certain amount of ellision, and moreover the words rarely come directly to English from Greek. There's usually a language (like Latin->old French is how we get most Latin words) that they hop through first.

moreover it's usually problematic not to divide a word into parts unless some combination of not all of those parts is already widespread, in this case "theism" would have just described the norm. "atheist" is a label that was come up with to describe deviations from the norm

>>8930258
>Nigga when science verify itself it's called engineering. How do you think nukes get built or that computer you using works? The verification of theory is engineering. Either you're theory is accurate and the airplane takes off or you're full of shit and it doesn't work.

wrong. science doesn't need engineering to verify a theory, and the point of engineering is not to verify scientific theories. if ur going to be a stem shill at least learn what the fuck you are talking about.

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>>8928215

>>8930258
that doesn't verify anything except that you did something and something else happened. why do you think the phlogiston theory worked until it suddenly didn't? or newton.

dude you apparently don't know the first thing about what induction means epistemologically if you're throwing around engineering as an example

i'm not having this argument with undereducated atheists yet again though. go read a fucking book on the philosophy of science or something. there is no philosopher of science who will equate induction with certainty like you all are

>>8929515
no, Hitch rigorously deemed himself a anti theist

Dawkins said "I am agnostic to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden."

dont know about russel

i got a kick out of this one, short and sweet - hard not to enjoy even if you're a believer, obv not a fair fight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG2ffBV4VbE

>>8930281
didn't Russell write "why i am an atheist?"

Dawkins just wanted a dickheaded way to say "atheist"

>>8930255
i shall, and you go fuck yourself

>>8930270
Engineering is the icing on the cake you fucking nigger. You forget that modern medicine is based on science. That the cars you drive, the a/c blasting the keyboard you're typing on is a result of scientific endeavors. You forget the germ theory? That resulted in vaccines. On doctors washing their hands before major surgery. On modern medicine? How bout that solid state drive you're using? how the fuck does that come about, without those retards in a lab blasting shit with lasers? Radio. Smart phones. That shit does not magically appear my nigga.

>>8930298
you're talking about things happening. we're talking about knowing what's going on. we have a pretty good idea on some level, but there is by no means certainty especially when you start getting on a scale of smaller or faster or certain other variables. if we have no idea how the parts work, or how many layers there are, why are you claiming to know anything with a reasonable degree of certainty just because you can turn your lights on when you get home. you're mistaking results for knowledge. really, go read some popper or something

>>8925655
> ideally those discussions of philosophy that take place on /lit/ should be based around specific philosophical works to which posters can refer

>>8930277
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Relativity of wrong by Isaac Asimov

Representations my nigga. Different representations will produce different predictions. New observations and measurements means more and more phenomena to explain. More and more to see which competing representation is more accurate. Yes, you can't "know" nothing. But you can do a lot of things.

>>8930311
are you the hall monitor?

>>8930312
you're straw manning a simple position about the epistemological certainty of inductive science into a false dichotomy between "we can know nothing" and "science teaches us everything." nowhere did i do anything except skepticism of scientism and the privileging of the scientific viewpoint

I find Heidegger's essays on world pictures and research, or Popper's evaluation of the method to be more illuminating than Asimov's amateurish attempts, but to each their own.

>>8928540

Historical fact, you retard.

>>8930306
Let me ask you, do you think a pigeon have knowledge of how to fly? It certainly can't explain itself to you how it does it. It can't present to you representation with symbols and formulas of flight. But it certainly "knows" how to fly. So what is knowledge then?

Would you say a physics undergrad who studies physics 101 for a semester have knowledge of flight? Would you trust him to fly an airplane you're on?

So what is knowledge then? Certainly being able to perform is a level of proof of knowledge. But according to you it is not.

>>8930311
Kill yourself, sperg.

>>8928424
Not him but what would you advise us to read to get into metaphysics and the whole lot you explained?

All religions are shit. I'm legitimately surprised grown adults still believe in fairy stories due to ignorance.

Inb4 edgy atheist tibs stegasaurus. We get it. You're a fucking retard. There is no god or gods.

>>8930347
> conflating knowing how with knowing what

> mfw

>>8930368
we get it. you read some shitty pseudointellectuals who fed you lies about religion and you look around at all the religions that fucked themselves over and are smugly overconfident in some new age "atheist" religious nutbaggery.

but don't take it out on us when we've actually bothered to read theology and metaphysics

The points being argued in this thread are fucktarded, triggers me every time it comes up.

>nothing can fully be explained
True
>therefore we have reason to believe in a creator

You have just as much reason to believe that you're living in a fucking Sims game being played by a five year old. This whole argument is always edgy, shouldn't even be on lit

>>8930420
you're projecting your own stupidity onto the "therefore". there are OTHER reasons to belive in the Real. YOU'RE the one conflating that with a creator because you don't know the first thing about a demiurge or the problem of evil/ignorance/manifestation

JESUS CHRIST. are you telling me that most of you have rejected religion without even bothering to get familiar with what it means? that you're blindly accepting science as a decent metric of ANYTHING without understanding its limitations?

sounds like you all need to fucking read more. i did my time. I've read plenty of history/philosophy of science and religion. I don't have to suffer through all you know-nothings talking shit about religion when you clearly don't know the first thing about it. i wouldn't expect you to put up with me saying the same about science (if y'all had actually bothered to do your homework on its foundations)

breeding halfwit know-it-alls is just the problem i have with polemic fuckwits like hitchens & co

>>8930420
nobody said "therefore" or "creator" after that. go home you illiterate fuck

>>8929688

>I don't see how they can start saying it must be intelligent, instead of just some thing that caused our universe by accident.

The idea is that since potential can't actualize itself, the first cause must be "pure actual". In other words the first cause must be perfect and not lacking in anything.

>>8928714
Whats your alternative view to that last post then?

>>8930442
I feel as though people who argue against scientific methods are usually just trying to be contrary. What's wrong with accepting that people don't have a purpose and that everything is just a big bowl of random shit, with nothing explaining it? I'm perfectly happy with believing that we're just living in a state of perpetual chaos, and I don't need any creationism bullshit to explain anything.

But I'll bite, seeing as your types come out in hoards. Rec me some books/essays/authors on this matter, and I'll see if I change my opinion.

>>8929637
Good argument.

>>8928228
see >>8928262

>>8930555

>accepting that people don't have a purpose and that everything is just a big bowl of random shit, with nothing explaining it?

that's literally contrary to the scientific method

>>8927852
Metaphysics doesn't exist, mongrel.

>>8930419

If you believe in a fairy tale and are over the age of seven you are an idiot. I understand the role religion has played to control and pacify others but that doesn't make its bullshit true.

>>8931123
It's become edgy and contrary to like religion now. So people are gonna swing to it to try and come across as le edgy intellect

>>8927858
>trolling

>>8928147
>>8927930
>believing in something for which there is no evidence
>intelligent

>>8929637
Nice non-argument assertion you got there anon.

Atheists are defined by not believing in a theistic god. Agnostics don't believe in a theistic god. Therefore agnostics are atheists.

>>8931167

there is no surviving evidence to suggest alexander the great existed

>>8931255
There are various accounts of historians. Sufficient evidence to solidify the theory that he existed. Most prominently Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius and Justin.
Just like there is enough historical evidence to let us believe that Jesus existed, though descriptions of him are primarily coming from religious followers in a religious scriptural context and therefore less trustworthy than historical accounts. Yet most historians agree he existed.

But there is not sufficient evidence for any kind of super-natural occurrence as described in the old or new testament. The existence of a regular human being doing worldly things is quite on a different level of required proof than the existence of a literal god ascended to earth to perform miracles.

>>8931280

>various accounts of historians

none of which date from his lifetime or were written by anyone who knew him or met him.

there is no unequivocal evidence that proves alexander the great existed, it's all circumstantial

>>8925642
God, he desperately wanted to be Camus, didn't he?

>>8929740
You fucking idiot. Start with the Greeks and look up Pyrro

>>8930268 Im sorry sir but you are mistaken. It is not theon, it is a + theism, I dont know where you got your dictionary but it's wrong.

>>8930281
He did, but I don't believe that made him not an atheist. An antitheist doesn't even like the idea of god, but that doesn't make him not an atheist, right?

>>8931283
Okay so you don't believe Jesus existed? Because I believe both him and Alexander most likely existed. But I am willing to accept your higher standard of evidence as valid.

>>8931255
>Comparing a human being to a deity
Fair comparison, they're both equally likely propositions. One surely doesn't take more faith to believe than the other.

>>8931255
If that's true I'm perfectly happy not to believe in Alexander the great. And believing in him asks a lot less of me than believing in a specific god does, believing in him doesn't also tak on all these books about the afterlife and his kids and shit that I also have to believe.

>>8931300

>Okay so you don't believe Jesus existed? Because I believe both him and Alexander most likely existed

I unhesitatingly believe both almost certainly existed and operate on the assumption that they did

we just can't prove that they did. i made the argument to satiate the "where are the proofs :DDDDD" nu-atheists

>>8927762
It's fedora tier.

>>8931334
don't you think god should require a bit more evidence than alex?

>>8931360
it was 2001 picture, it's just dated. Give it some years and it'll look cool in a retro way. You shouldn't be judging fashion from the 00s as if they were from today.

>>8931334
Still this guy has a point >>8931309
A human being isn't the same a deity in terms of evidence required. We know for sure humans exist and they can do things as described in the history of Alexander. Yet we don't believe the various claims of various historical figures to be descendants of the gods.

>>8931381
actually I believe Alexander did claim to be some sort of god, or at least demigod, didn't he? Just like that Kony guy, and all his soldiers can confirm. But I believe in Kony and Alex without believing in them having any supernatural powers, that's a much bigger leap.

>>8931390
Not sure about Alexander, I think that was a Hollywood addition. A good example would be the Japanese Emperors who claim to be direct descendants of Amaterasu the sun goddess. Which they used to justify their conquering in WW2.

>>8931390
A lot of people claim to be god... How exactly is this part of any argument being debated here?

>>8931492
It was asserted that because we believe Alexander the Great was real with limited evidence, we shouldn't need much evidence for God either. But it's not a fair comparison, and the god version of Alex is a fairer comparison. God requires much more proof, especially an intervening one, who would tell humans what they should do, with specific individuals as his messengers, who everyone else should listen to.

If it turned out Alexander the Great was a myth, I don't think it would change all that much for people's day to day lives. And if it came down to it, I would be fine to throw him into myth, because I don't have the same faith based attachment to him that a religious person does to god.

>>8931513
But I arguing the god part of Alexander the Great is sort of redundant because (as far as I'm aware) the majority of people see him as human. So yeah, it's definitely a stretch comparison to compare a deity to a (albeit supposedly great) human.

>>8931379
>it was 2001 picture, it's just dated. Give it some years and it'll look cool in a retro way. You shouldn't be judging fashion from the 00s as if they were from today.
My god, you sound like you were born in 1999...

>>8932151
look, Stirner's outfits look cool right now, right? Well they didn't a few years ago, and they won't again in a few years. Mentally, Stirner's outfit is the same as, represents the same things as Hitchens', it's just they are opposite ends of the same cycle. Understand?

>>8925658
underrated

>>8930442
What is "the Real"? I tried looking it up and couldn’t find anything.

>>8928211
hitler did nothing wrong

>>8928342
>tl;dr I am superior, and you don't meet the requirement on my metric-of-education for me to talk to. Yeah, fuck you, yea.
Beyond that, I agree with you, Anon.

>this whole thread
>barely any discussion about Hitchens' output
ah yes

Whatever you might think of him, I think in a century or so he'll be seen as a sort of a Hazlitt who was also really capable at debate and public speaking, if people will actually remember who Hazlitt was anyway.

>>8927930

he never said this btw

>>8925642
>christfag in denial
You keep on thinking that

>>8929637
What exactly is the point of making a distinction between atheism and agnosticism? The only thing I see it allowing you to do is posit Pascal’s Wager, but you have apologists like William Lane Craig and Frank Turek trying really hard to make the distinction.

>>8929554
>With enough rationality, you can begin to see that their [sic] must be a source (god perhaps?) which science cannot (yet?) explain
>Science can't explain
>Goddidit

Unless I'm completely misreading you, this is a God of the Gaps Argument, which is wrong because being unable to explain something does not automatically make another explanation correct.

>>8929692
>>8931243
>>8934580
Jesus Christ you people are fucking retards. And you claim to read? Try reading a fucking dictionary for fuck's sake. Agnostic == NOT knowing, i.e do not know whether there is a god or not. Atheist == do not believe in god(s). If you don't believe in god and are sure you are correct, then you are a gnostic atheist.

>>8928120
>perfect

>>8930442
you've been doing a lot of insulting in this thread, and telling everyone to read more without supplying any kind of substantial proof for any arguments you've brought up, I'm not sure if you're projecting, or just really confused

>>8930442
what does religion mean?

tell us, oh wise one. It's almost as if you think everyone else just doesn't get it. Read what you've written. And claiming that Hitchens is a fuckwit....is undeniable proof who the fuckwit is.

>>8931255
..but we don't worship and devote our entire life philosophy to Alexander the Great..

>>8931296
I can't speak for Hitch so I'll quote him:
"I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful."

>>8930290
>didn't Russell write "why i am an atheist?"
No, just "why I am not a Christian". It's pretty good desu.

>>8935408
he hated nietzsche tho so it's probably just some fedora tippy beta shit about heliocentric scientific models and crap

File: 145-108353-mike-pence-1469733364.jpg (20KB, 330x330px) Image search: [Google]

20KB, 330x330px

>>8925642
Are any of his essays actually worth reading?

>>8927866
Lel, you are one stupid ass motherfucker.

>>8935702
Yeah, dozens of them. Some are highly entertaining, such as this one: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/1996/09/hitchens-199609

>>8934625
You haven't answered my question: why are you trying so hard to argue the distinction between atheism and agnosticism? To me, this seems to be on the same level as correcting someone's grammar in an argument without addressing the argument. Christopher Hitchens made his view on religions very clear, regardless of what he called himself.

If you cannot answer the question "Do you believe in a god?" in the affirmative, then you are an atheist.

>>8928342
>LOL ALL YOU SHITS DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MUH PHILOSPHY AND THEOLOGY
>IF YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME YOU NEED TO FIRST ACCEPT THAT IM RIGHT
>YOU NEED TO EDUCATE YOURSELF
>YOU AREN’T WORTH MY TIME, RETARDS
I can quote Hitchens here:
>"You give me the awful impression, I hate to have to say it, of someone who hasn't read any of the arguments against your position ever."

>>8925642
If it wasn’t for the Scientific Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, and the Enlightenment destroying any one religion's hold on the all the answers, the West would be in the same boat as the Middle East. Islam just hasn't been as neutered as Christianity.