Atheism

Originally posted by safado
People have referred to the Higgs Boson as the God Particle

Those were mainly incompetent science journalists and people who wanted to get incompetent science journalists off their backs. Particle physicists know exactly what they're looking for with the Higgs Boson.

Originally posted by safado
A quick response to the "their is no evidence of hard wiring for belief in God." What do you call the right temporal lobe then? Please don'' be the type that says it's a bunch of neurons firing and they just \"happen" to create religious experience purely randomly.

Why not? We know that patterns of neuron firings produce all sorts of sensations.

And I'm pretty sure the right temporal lobe does more than produce spiritual experience.

Originally posted by safado
Man's relation to life after death is mankind's defining question.

I would say man's relation to death is a defining characteristic of human history.

Originally posted by safado
If we weren't hard wired for spiritual experience or it wasn't part of our naturew why do we need science at all?

This sentence doesn't make any sense to me.

Originally posted by safado
Obviously from the strict Darwinian survivalist POV, we won the war a LONG time ago. So why are still building Large Hadron Particle Accelerators, sending Hubble out into the universe and letting robots walk on mars lokking for a microbe or two

Only if you count "within the last 150 years" as "long ago". Up until then our technology wasn't nearly good enough to consistently put an individual human at the top of the food chain. It takes millions of years for evolutionary drives to fade. Besides, learning is the ultimate adaptive trait.

Originally posted by safado
How can you definitely define the "default" state. You are born hard wired with certain genetic predispositions that likely influence you one way or another.

Epigenetics and a strong contingent of psychiatric researchers attribute some mental illnesses to traumas that occur in the formative years. Likewise positive,well-adjusted behavior is likewise attributed to a positive, somewhat spiritual outlook on life in general

Their is also the fact that your culture will influence a tremendous portion of your thoughts on God and life after death by the time your 10 years of age and their is one other important fact: we are hard wired for spiritual experience.

My point is more of a philosophical one, you don't believe anything when you are born. I am not denying that there are societal leaning, I don't know how strong genetic leanings are, however the state you are in before "experiencing" something is not-believing it, if by the mere fact that you don't know of it. Ideally your what you believe in is based on rational thoughts, though that is not always the case, however when there is no evidence, at most hearsay, you should err on the side of not believing. And yes that is the default in the sense that it is what you are before you heard or experienced something.

Originally posted by safado
Spiritual experience can have a biological basis and still be a "real" thing depending on how you perceive the role of the human brain. I personally see the brain as a modem, allowing us access to the 3-d world we live in and filtering out experiences or sensory perceptions that our minds cannot handle. Faults in this process; such as an excess of information which the mind cannot filter out, are mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

In my view I see the brain protecting us from too much information. This is my first post here so i'm going to slowly introduce my ideas (which are very spiritual and oriented towards life after death and the like)

Our hard wiring is located in the right occipital lobe. Researchers call it "the God spot." The fact that we are born with this indicates to me that we are meant to have a relationship with a non-reductionist world. Spiritual experience is one of, if the not the most, defining question and relationship of human existence.

Well, I do find your views interesting. They seem somewhat unrelated to what I said though.

Originally posted by safado
It's sort of like sex - you can't avoid it. If you avoid sex, you are celibate. You have chosen to not engage in a basic human function.

Do you believe in asexuality? (bit random, just wondering)

Originally posted by safado
In relation to your own existence, relationship to the divine and the unknown, you are defining a huge portion of your life in terms of meaning and significance. Their is no escaping it because the need to know is there. We are mortal, we need to make decisions on our lives in relation to our mortal lives and the mortality of others around us.

I don't know doesn't cut the mustard. Everyone has an opinion. Genetics, experience and culture all contribute to it and who knows what else

I don't think everyone has an opinion on everything. Many people likely don't even know what they believe themselves on many issue, or even flip on them often. I find the disdain many people have for people "on the fence" quite ridiculous, not having an opinion on a subject you know nothing about is in no way discrediting to me it is honest and smart and I do very much respect it.

Especially on the internet it seems everyone has an opinion on everything and most of them stink, Dunning-Kruger style, modesty is not a bad thing.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
There's a difference between don't know and can't know. If you don't know whether god exist then you believe you can be convinced on way or another if evidence appears. If you believe that we cannot know the truth about god then you are saying there is no evidence and there will never be any evidence but you still equivocate.

The key effect of that difference is that the "don't know" is still thinking about their position. On the other hand the "can't know" just doesn't want to be called an atheist or are an atheist but think Pascal's Wager is a reasonable thing to worry about.

Simply, "don't know" is both true and intellectual defensible. I don't know if the gpd is real. Thus I might take the time to think about it and conclude that since there is no good evidence I should disregard it or that since there is good evidence I build an awesome temple for him.

"Can't know" is a cop out. You've just stopped thinking. I can't know if the god is real, thus I will remain neutral about it. That neutrality is ridiculous. You're either going to act on the idea that it is real or the idea that it isn't real, so to declare that you can't know serves to make a non-existent distinction. Effectively "can't know" is just a way of saying "I'm an atheist/theist but don't call me that."

There are other options, though. For a long time I was a "don't care" agnostic. The argument going that either there is an inactive god or there isn't a god, but both are the same to me. Eventually I decided that the difference between this and atheism was too small and dropped it in favor of atheism.

I get the point, but you are assuming to know underlying psychological motivations of 'cant know' agnostics, which you can't know. Guy can really just be skeptical about it:
"We can't know one way or another as there is no way to examine or determine the existence of god and given the very concept god, there likelly never will be."

Thus, the claim 'can't know' is an epistemic one and not a position taken about god one way or another. It's not even a matter of sitting in the fence, cause it is no position at all on the subject. It's not a claim about the existence or inexistence of god it's claim about what we can and can't claim to know.

Originally posted by 753
...the teapot was supposed to be too small to be detected by any means...

Those were mainly incompetent science journalists and people who wanted to get incompetent science journalists off their backs. Particle physicists know exactly what they're looking for with the Higgs Boson.

I know that, and I understand that the Higgs Boson, while being an earth-shattering find wouldn't be the smoking bullet everyone is looking for. The media needs to play up pure research science because it's hard to explain to the general populace why two particles need to travel 30 miles at the speed of near light for many billionsof dollars if you don't sex it up.. My point is that a lot of the debate is about semantics. The minute the word "God" enters into conversation everyone's conception of what God means skews the debate.

Their are trigger words that automatically derail debate because people's preconceived notions and ingrained likes or dislikes are immediately threatened.

I know that, and I understand that the Higgs Boson, while being an earth-shattering find wouldn't be the smoking bullet everyone is looking for. The media needs to play up pure research science because it's hard to explain to the general populace why two particles need to travel 30 miles at the speed of near light for many billionsof dollars if you don't sex it up.. My point is that a lot of the debate is about semantics. The minute the word "God" enters into conversation everyone's conception of what God means skews the debate.

We don't really need it, we happened to develop it as a refinement of direct obervation, trial and error and deduction, and we kept it for its social, economic and politcal utility[/QUOTE]

Except we do. Religion and spirituality are among the strongest binding forces in any species. Between the various versions of pre-modern man that walked the earth at the same time, they all displayed signs of rudimentary spirtuality. It can even be argued that animals do as well. Burying your dead is an acknowledgment of a relationship between life and death and symbolic tradition and even elephants have graveyards.Except we do. Religion and spirituality are among the strongest binding forces in any species. Between the various versions of pre-modern man that walked the earth at the same time, they all displayed signs of rudimentary spirituality. It can even be argued that animals do as well. Burying your dead is an acknowledgment of a relationship between life and death and symbolic tradition and even elephants have graveyards.

I'm making a long-winded point but the human relation with life and death is part and parcel of the human experience. The scientific method isn't something that just "happened," animals use it. Monkeys use tools to get food through deductive reasoning and the ability of many species to leave the cognitive loop and expand consciousness and thought is what separates a chimp from a human being.

It's far more than a social, economic and political tool. It's what enables us to have systemize our relationship with nature so that al of our basic life processes are beyond the animal.

The Romans constructed aqueducts, the aztecs and mayans were able to chart time and the movement of celestial bodies. Even simple farming is an astronomical leap from any other animal in the wild. We don't have to hunt for our food. We keep it in farms and slaughterhouses and complain that it's making us fat.

Most animals spend the majority of their time looking for food and resting once they've gotten it. We don't. We have developed something that not only eliminated the most fundamental survival need thousands of years ago, we are taking the same method and applying it to our relaton with the universe.

At the end of the day, that could be a survival skill as well. After all, if we don't develop the scientific method we are at the mercy of an asteroid-like extinction event, any number of bacterial outbreaks, and who knows what else. Perhaps we are MEANT to question our place because their is a dmaned good reason to do so

Except we do. Religion and spirituality are among the strongest binding forces in any species. Between the various versions of pre-modern man that walked the earth at the same time, they all displayed signs of rudimentary spirtuality. It can even be argued that animals do as well. Burying your dead is an acknowledgment of a relationship between life and death and symbolic tradition and even elephants have graveyards.Except we do. Religion and spirituality are among the strongest binding forces in any species. Between the various versions of pre-modern man that walked the earth at the same time, they all displayed signs of rudimentary spirituality. It can even be argued that animals do as well. Burying your dead is an acknowledgment of a relationship between life and death and symbolic tradition and even elephants have graveyards. I'm making a long-winded point but the human relation with life and death is part and parcel of the human experience. The scientific method isn't something that just "happened," animals use it. Monkeys use tools to get food through deductive reasoning and the ability of many species to leave the cognitive loop and expand consciousness and thought is what separates a chimp from a human being. It's far more than a social, economic and political tool. It's what enables us to have systemize our relationship with nature so that al of our basic life processes are beyond the animal. The Romans constructed aqueducts, the aztecs and mayans were able to chart time and the movement of celestial bodies. Even simple farming is an astronomical leap from any other animal in the wild. We don't have to hunt for our food. We keep it in farms and slaughterhouses and complain that it's making us fat. Most animals spend the majority of their time looking for food and resting once they've gotten it. We don't. We have developed something that not only eliminated the most fundamental survival need thousands of years ago, we are taking the same method and applying it to our relaton with the universe. At the end of the day, that could be a survival skill as well. After all, if we don't develop the scientific method we are at the mercy of an asteroid-like extinction event, any number of bacterial outbreaks, and who knows what else. Perhaps we are MEANT to question our place because their is a dmaned good reason to do so

I'll go with 'death isn't a factor' for the most part here (some themes of research are directly concerned with death and conscience of course). Besides, this kind of curiosity isnt a rule at all, most people aren't even curious about how water boils, they just accept that it does, you are an exception in your thirst for knowledge

Their isn't a human alive who isn't curious about what happens when the biological machinery stops functioning. It's impossible to not have an opinion on this. People live in society, within rules and therefore don't kill each other when its convenient etc... Even in areas where society breaks down, people are obligated to give thought to their respect, or lack therof for human life and what it means to them. It's like saying you have no opinion on money. OK, fine, but eventually bills come due and you're forced to think about itTheir isn't a human alive who isn't curious about what happens when the biological machinery stops functioning. It's impossible to not have an opinion on this. People live in society, within rules and therefore don't kill each other when its convenient etc... Even in areas where society breaks down, people are obligated to give thought to their respect, or lack therof for human life and what it means to them. It's like saying you have no opinion on money. OK, fine, but eventually bills come due and you're forced to think about it

Incidentally I can't find the quote on asexuality but I believe it does exist, but it's obviously extremely rare and likely a genetic anomaly. In my POV it's similiar to transexualism; sex is a question of preference, gender is a question of social identity. Asexuality is a genetic anomoly in which gender and preference are unable to define themselves. True asexuality however, is VERY rare. Most people I know who are asexual are usually in an extreme state of confusion about their sexuality and gender identity, they usually have a complicated sexual identity. Asexuality does exist legitimately thoughIncidentally I can't find the quote on asexuality but I believe it does exist, but it's obviously extremely rare and likely a genetic anomaly. In my POV it's similiar to transexualism; sex is a question of preference, gender is a question of social identity. Asexuality is a genetic anomoly in which gender and preference are unable to define themselves. True asexuality however, is VERY rare. Most people I know who are asexual are usually in an extreme state of confusion about their sexuality and gender identity, they usually have a complicated sexual identity. Asexuality does exist legitimately though

Wait, is safado is JIA in disgise? Am I the last one the figure this out?

Originally posted by safado
I could probably write a 300 page dissertation on why Life After Death exists,

is that a lot?

Originally posted by safado
What do you call the right temporal lobe then?

well, the temporal lobe in general is involved in what is called the "what" stream of information processing. The right hemisphere tends to deal with context more than the left, which is more strict identity, so my "what I say" about the right temporal lobe would be:

the RTL helps put information regarding stimuli coming in through the senses into context related to memory, goals, the world around the individual, etc.

There are a couple of issues with how you have interpreted this "God spot" though. Its not just something that activates when someone has a "religious" experience, it also activates when you look at art, or stare at the stars. It is an area associated with a sort of transcendant significance. So, the idea that this is something that has specific meaning for spirituality is not true.

The other problem is that this view takes too literal a view of localization of function. The religious experience involves many areas and systems in the brain working in tandem, one of the most important being memory and beliefs. Its not like, as an atheist, I don't have these significant moments where I feel insignificant in the face of a greater truth, it is just that I have a totally different narrative about how to interpret these experiences. These additional systems are far more related to the "God" context that you are talking about, rather than an area that is associated with personal significance.

Originally posted by safado
Please don'' be the type that says it's a bunch of neurons firing and they just \"happen" to create religious experience purely randomly.

I don't think there is anything random about it...

Originally posted by safado
Think about the nature of science for a minute.

*sets watch

*thinks

still not convinced...

Originally posted by safado
If we weren't hard wired for spiritual experience or it wasn't part of our naturew why do we need science at all?

so, I've been able to extrapolate 3 arguments from this... tell me if I'm wrong:

1) because humans have always been interested in death there must be an afterlife

2) because humans can feel religious experiences and have brain regions that activate to corresponding religious experiences, religious experiences must be real

3) Human curiosity proves the afterlife

so, my responses would be:

1) human interest in death means nothing other than death plays a huge psychological role in humans. There is certainly no need to invoke the supernatural to explain this.

2) aside from my above criticism, it fails to prove anything except that humans can have religious experiences. I would also point to a huge host of sensory illusions of things we also have brain areas for that are totally not real.

3) no it doesn't

Does anyone think Anti-theism should be a seperate thread, or could it also be discussed here?

Anti-theism (a word popularized, but not coined by Christopher Hitchens) is when a person not only disbelieves in god, but actually doesn't want there to be a god. The two often, but not always, go hand in hand. Feeling that there's a lack of evidence for a god is one leading reason for Atheism, another is that a once devout believer experienced a traumatic event. They feel that God disappointed them, or let them down, or is even a downright evil entity. In some cases both of these cause a person to question God's existence, such as Charles Darwin. His scientific work already gave him a bunch of doubt, and then the death of his daughter Annie really pushed him over the edge. After she died, he was absolutely convinced there was no god.

Anti-Theism doesn't seem like Atheism to me. Hating God isn't worth anyone's time if they don't believe he exists.

Anti-theism requires more than either merely disbelieving in gods or denying the existence of gods. Anti-theists believe that theism is harmful to the believer, harmful to society, harmful to culture, harmful to politics, etc. and that theism can and should be countered in order to reduce the harm it causes.

Except we do.

No we don't. Like I said, scientific method is just a refinement and formalization of the use of basic cognitive tools such as observation, insight, learning through trial and error and deduction. We have survived for thousands of years without this method and not every culture developed itand they were doing fine.

Religion and spirituality are among the strongest binding forces in any species. Between the various versions of pre-modern man that walked the earth at the same time, they all displayed signs of rudimentary spirtuality. It can even be argued that animals do as well. Burying your dead is an acknowledgment of a relationship between life and death and symbolic tradition and even elephants have graveyards.

Fear of death, sorrow over death and curiosity about death for those species sufficiently self-aware, such as humans and elephants, to have it, do not entail religion or metaphysics. The problem here is that you don't define what 'spiritual' means and say that it's just a matter of semantycs and not really a supernatural definition you're using, when it's obvious that you're talking about metaphysical entities.

I am very spiritualized and completelly materialistc. Spirituality to me has to do with deep emotional experiences with and comprehension of the world and my relationship to it. That's it. No god, no cosmic conscience no survival of the mind after the physical shut dwn of the brain. The Cosmos is unthinking, uncaring, totally indifferent to us and aesthetically marvelling, emotionally moving, a source of insight and meaning, and sacred - or rather I sacralize it.

I'm making a long-winded point but the human relation with life and death is part and parcel of the human experience. The scientific method isn't something that just "happened," animals use it. Monkeys use tools to get food through deductive reasoning and the ability of many species to leave the cognitive loop and expand consciousness and thought is what separates a chimp from a human being.

You are quite correct to note that several species have the cognitive functions which the method uses and upon which it is based, but its advent was a sociologically explicable cultural occurrance.

It's far more than a social, economic and political tool. It's what enables us to have systemize our relationship with nature so that al of our basic life processes are beyond the animal.

1. Nothing 'we' do is fundamentally beyond the animal. Our innate differences from other species are simply a matter of scale and even though our manipulation of the environment has reached a scale far beyond what any other animal does and this has created some unique qualitative differences in our interaction with the ecossystem (with catastrophic consequences), we remain apes and nothing more.

2. Us who pale face? There are still paleolithic cultures surviving today with no scientific method and no large scale manipulation/depredation of their ecossystems.

The Romans constructed aqueducts, the aztecs and mayans were able to chart time and the movement of celestial bodies. Even simple farming is an astronomical leap from any other animal in the wild. We don't have to hunt for our food. We keep it in farms and slaughterhouses and complain that it's making us fat.

Most animals spend the majority of their time looking for food and resting once they've gotten it. We don't. We have developed something that not only eliminated the most fundamental survival need thousands of years ago, we are taking the same method and applying it to our relaton with the universe.

We have eliminated nothing, we've creatd labour division - a rather schyzophrenic one at that. You still go to work don't you? You buy food? In fact, our work load in industrial societies is longer and more intense than in most stone age societies and certainly more so than the onças in the forest. The fact that you feel you are above a struggle for basic survival only tells me you were born in the middle or upper class.

At the end of the day, that could be a survival skill as well. After all, if we don't develop the scientific method we are at the mercy of an asteroid-like extinction event, any number of bacterial outbreaks, and who knows what else. Perhaps we are MEANT to question our place because their is a dmaned good reason to do so

We are at the mercy of those thing and probably (I'd say certainly) always will be. The belief that we can transcend Nature or become independent from and unnaffected by it through technical development is a scientist delusion.

We're not meant to do shit, who would be meanig us to do anything? Other than ourselves, that is.

Their isn't a human alive who isn't curious about what happens when the biological machinery stops functioning. It's impossible to not have an opinion on this. People live in society, within rules and therefore don't kill each other when its convenient etc... Even in areas where society breaks down, people are obligated to give thought to their respect, or lack therof for human life and what it means to them. It's like saying you have no opinion on money. OK, fine, but eventually bills come due and you're forced to think about it

I got a satisfactory answer for what happens: decomposition and I don't think about it any further in my life. The acceptance of our finitude has psychological consequences of course, the need to live life to the fullest and do the things I consider relevant right now being the most important ones.

Oh brother! How the hell is he going to reply to all these posts? I feel bad inviting him over here now. 😬

Originally posted by Deadline
Oh brother! How the hell is he going to reply to all these posts? I feel bad inviting him over here now. 😬

Originally posted by 753
I get the point, but you are assuming to know underlying psychological motivations of 'cant know' agnostics, which you can't know. Guy can really just be skeptical about it:
"We can't know one way or another as there is no way to examine or determine the existence of god and given the very concept god, there likelly never will be."

the problem here is that the guy is no longer being a skeptic, but proposing a very specific quality of god (something he feels can't be done anyways).

"I don't know if we can know god" or "I don't think we can know god" would be more appropriate. "unknowability" however, is a very powerful statement about the nature of god

Originally posted by 753
Thus, the claim 'can't know' is an epistemic one and not a position taken about god one way or another. It's not even a matter of sitting in the fence, cause it is no position at all on the subject. It's not a claim about the existence or inexistence of god it's claim about what we can and can't claim to know.

I'm not sure if you understand what I meant by "can't know". obviously all beliefs can't be generalized, but try it like this, a can't know agnostic would agree to the following:

it is and will always be impossible for man to know anything of the nature or existence of god, now, in the past and future, by definition

if you feel the need to temper that with an "unlikely" or two, you aren't what I would call a can't know agnostic. similarly, if you feel the need to argue that an atheist or theist can't know what they think they know, rather than just expressing personal doubt, you fall into this category.

this is because, while we can argue the semantics of whether agnosticism like this is a belief or a religion, it IS an ontology related to the nature of god, just like atheism and theism. it is an absolute statement about the nature of the divine.

my allusion to post modenism is basically this: as an ontology, Pomo makes some good points, but ultimately seeks to prevent any form of conclusion, even the most rudimentary and logically obvious, simply because there is no way to confirm it in a cosmological scale.

so, similarly with agnosticism. unless they either a) claim knowledge of anything is impossible or b) that the god that exists is of a sort that the term "god" historically would not describe it.

a) because it allows for a god of traditional definitions to be possible, though has to reject the lack of evidence as being a product man's inability to know the universe. b) has it's own problems, specifically that the "god of the gaps" god is so limited that it is essentially an anthropomorphic moving goal post. at the very least, it isn't a type of god commonly referee to by the question "does god exist?".

it's like if I said "there is a cat outside" and you go out and find a spider, then I go, oh ya, I was right all along!

otherwise atheism would just be the philosophy of disbelieving everything he individual has not personally seen. I certainly don't deny that there could be "beings" that exist in space beyond our universe. however, I have near certainty they don't have the qualities of the traditional "god"

Originally posted by Deadline
Oh brother! How the hell is he going to reply to all these posts? I feel bad inviting him over here now. 😬

Originally posted by inimalist
[B]the problem here is that the guy is no longer being a skeptic, but proposing a very specific quality of god (something he feels can't be done anyways).

"I don't know if we can know god" or "I don't think we can know god" would be more appropriate. "unknowability" however, is a very powerful statement about the nature of god

hum... some strands of skepticism could just as easily claim that nothing can be trully known, seen as we only have access to mental constructs based on sensorial impressions from reality and not reality itself. What lies beyond our senses may or may not exist, but it cannot possibly be known and we can speak nothing of it.

An empiricist might recognize the value of our sensorial experiences as source of legitimate knowledge, but still acknowledge the inherent impossibility of knowing what lies beyond them.

'Cant know' atheists indeed atribute this trait to God, existence beyond our scope of comprehension and perception, and you are right to point out that this IS a particular definition of God and that other definitions could be falsifiable. However, I disagree that this is not the traditional view of god and that these agnostics are proposing it and making their own claims about God's traits while saying we can't know. I think they just recognize that these traits - transcendental, uncomprehensible, beyond the physical universe, beyond reason or evidence, omnipotent and directly undetectable - are widelly accepted within the contemporary western monotheistic traditions. Aren't they? What do you think is the traditional definition of God and how could one go about confirming or refuting its existence?

Anyway, the god they claim can't be known is what I think most educated theists of today make reference to. If you define god in another manner, they'll likely have a different view on the subject.

I'm not sure if you understand what I meant by "can't know". obviously all beliefs can't be generalized, but try it like this, a can't know agnostic would agree to the following:

it is and will always be impossible for man to know anything of the nature or existence of god, now, in the past and future, by definition

if you feel the need to temper that with an "unlikely" or two, you aren't what I would call a can't know agnostic. similarly, if you feel the need to argue that an atheist or theist can't know what they think they know, rather than just expressing personal doubt, you fall into this category.

I understand now, but let me ask you: Do you think an atheist or a theist can know and not just believe what they think they know about the existence of God?

this is because, while we can argue the semantics of whether agnosticism like this is a belief or a religion, it IS an ontology related to the nature of god, just like atheism and theism. it is an absolute statement about the nature of the divine.

Granted, but like I said above, I don't think it's really their statement on the nature of the devine, just a conclusion drawn from traits theists atribute to god.

my allusion to post modenism is basically this: as an ontology, Pomo makes some good points, but ultimately seeks to prevent any form of conclusion, even the most rudimentary and logically obvious, simply because there is no way to confirm it in a cosmological scale.

so, similarly with agnosticism. unless they either a) claim knowledge of anything is impossible or b) that the god that exists is of a sort that the term "god" historically would not describe it.

a) because it allows for a god of traditional definitions to be possible, though has to reject the lack of evidence as being a product man's inability to know the universe. b) has it's own problems, specifically that the "god of the gaps" god is so limited that it is essentially an anthropomorphic moving goal post. at the very least, it isn't a type of god commonly referee to by the question "does god exist?".

it's like if I said "there is a cat outside" and you go out and find a spider, then I go, oh ya, I was right all along!

I think the 'can't know' type mostly go with a

otherwise atheism would just be the philosophy of disbelieving everything he individual has not personally seen. I certainly don't deny that there could be "beings" that exist in space beyond our universe. however, I have near certainty they don't have the qualities of the traditional "god"

Again, some forms of skepticism and empiricism are just exactly that.

That isn't how I view post-modernism though, or what is usally refered to as such, but that's another discussion and I think the term is too poorly defined anyway.

Originally posted by politicsguy
like in a black hole .. all matter is destroyed or something

that's what's theorized but if that's what happens in fact then yes.

Originally posted by FistOfThe North
that's what's theorized but if that's what happens in fact then yes.

That's not what's theorized at all. Black holes are made of matter.

it is theorized that matter dissapers when consumed by a black holes and black holes have always been matter, never denied that. in fact isn't a black black hole just dead and very dense star with really high gravity where nothing can escape it not even light. this place place or whereever or whatever happens to matter consumed by a black wholoe becomes apart of nothingness, as well.

and black hole can be anti matter, as well.

Originally posted by FistOfThe North
and black hole can be anti matter, as well.

I don't know if this is true?

wouldn't it instantly annhiliate itself against the matter it sucked in?