A non-believer would like to converse

[DataPacRat]

This thread ballooned a bit faster than I was expecting; I'll try to take the posts one-by-one.

Hello and welcome to the board,

Thank you.

I remember watching a movie where an atheist women yelled, "O God!" when she thought she was going to die in a crash. I always wondered about that.

Let's just say that, usually, mass media portrayals of atheists are about as accurate as their portrayals of Muslims.


Some of your questions are about 'have I ever' felt this or that. In order to honestly and accurately answer them, it will help to describe my past beliefs, which, now that I think of it, fell into three major stages. Firstly, I grew up in a generally Christian society, and in my childhood, I accepted Christianity without question - after all, the grownups had to know what they were talking about, right? I was so uncritical that I even accepted Jack Chick tracts as being genuine. Secondly, from my adolescence, maybe around 1990 or so, until around 2006, I was still uncritical, but accepted a wider range of things as being possible - after all, since I couldn't completely disprove astrology having /some/ effect, then I might as well act as if it /did/ have some effect, right? And, thirdly, sometime around 2006, I encountered the online skeptical community, and really began working on my critical thinking skills, learning more about logical fallacies, how to recognize them, and a bunch of other rationalist techniques that aren't directly relevant here. It was at this point that I changed from an 'agnostic gnostic', a believer in anything, to a full-fledged atheist.

So, when I answer your 'have you ever' questions, my response will try to cover all three stages of my theological development.

So my questions would be:

1. Have you ever been in a situation where you've been totally helpless, knowing no one can help you and you wondered about God, or felt compelled to believe that there is a Higher Being who has the power to save you?

I do not recall having ever felt totally helpless.

When I was a child, I believed what I was told, that God existed. When I was a young man, I didn't know for sure, but acted as if He was certainly a possibility, but didn't feel 'compelled'. Since '06, I have come to the conclusion that it's highly unlikely for the God of Abraham to exist as described.

2. Have you ever marvelled at the Creation and thought how could all this have created itself so perfectly?

3. Have you ever stretched your hands in front of you, wiggled your fingers and marvelled at the way you can make them move just by thinking about it and thought about the science behind it and the perfect harmony of every part that makes you and the entire Universe?

4. Again, have you ever looked at telescopes, camera lens accepting they are objects we can see with, and then marvelled at how the numerous independent processes working together to enable that lump of gooey flesh in your head to see?

These three questions seem to be the same idea expressed different ways; I hope you don't mind if I treat them as one.

I marvel at the universe all the time; I even have my desktop background picture to automatically change to the Astronomy Picture of the Day. I've watched science programs on TV since before I remember, read books describing the wonders of the universe, and regularly go on hikes to help me better appreciate nature. I even wonder at the fact that I /can/ wonder , and am keenly interested in theories of the mind; Douglas Hofstadter and Elizer Yudkowsky have some very interesting thoughts on that topic.

As for the universe being 'perfect', I like Douglas Adams' quote: "Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

5. Have you ever felt anything at all, in any way, that made you feel there is a God - but then, like the woman in the movie I might add, you continued to disbelieve?

As a child, I believed what I was told, and so I prayed, went to Sunday school, and so on, but don't recall having ever actually 'felt' anything particularly religious. As a young man, I tried looking into a variety of faiths and traditions, trying to see if any seemed better than any others, but again, didn't actually feel anything in particular. And, as you can probably guess, since becoming an atheist, I haven't had any religious experiences.

It's possible that if most people have a 'faith circuit', so to speak, in their brain, which gives them the capacity to feel God's presence, that I lack such neural wiring. Goodness knows my thought processes are different from the norm in a variety of ways, and that might be another of them. Put bluntly, no, I've never felt God's presence.

Thank you, for the opportunity to ask these questions Datapacrat.

And thank you for the chance to answer them. If you feel that I haven't answered an aspect of any of them you want to know more about, feel free to say so, and I'll try to write a better response.

 

[DataPacRat]

Ello welcome....

What the belo says ?????

lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

(I keep forgetting to add my signature manually...)

"lu" and "li'u" are like spoken quotation marks, whatever's between them is a quote rather than the main sentence in itself.

".iacu'i" is one of a category called 'vocative', and used here, it's basically saying that the speaker is feeling a particular sort of emotion. ".ia" means that the emotion being described is on the scale with belief at one end and disbelief at the other; "cu'i" means that the speaker is at the middle of that scale, and is usually translated as meaning "skepticism", or in this case, "I'm feeling skeptical".

"krinu" means reason, ".ei" is another vocative about feeling obligation, "mi" means I or me, "krici" means belief or believing, "traji" means superlative or 'the most', "vajni" means importance, and "preti" means question, and the other words are mostly grammatical stuff.

The most literal translation I can manage is something like:

"(I'm feeling skeptical) What reason obliges me to believe the referent of the last utterance?" has the superlative property of importance of any questions.

... though a more compact rendering would be:

"(Skepticism) Why should I believe that?" is the most important question.


Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

 

[DataPacRat]

but I am curious as to how 'virtual particles' fit in:

Radio astronomers have found the biggest hole ever seen in the universe. The void, which is nearly a billion light years across, is empty of both normal matter and dark matter. The finding challenges theories of large-scale structure formation in the universe
​

http://www.newscientist.com/article...in-space-is-1-billion-light-years-across.html

Er, well... there doesn't seem to be any direct connection between the two phenomena, other than both being the result of the physical laws of the universe, whatever those laws may turn out to be.

 

[DataPacRat]

I imagine that it easily possible to come to the conclusion that God does not exist or is not likely to exist - if you require scientifically substantiated evidence for the existence of God before you can believe in him ... (although, arguable, then it wouldn't be belief in the first place, but rather knowledge)

As I described a few posts up, whatever mental processes most people seem to use when they talk about 'believing in God', I don't seem to have them. When my thinking was such that I believed what I was told, and I was told God existed, then I 'believed' in God, but not in the same sense that most people describe 'believing in God'. As I improved and refined my thinking processes over the years, I went through several stages of kicking over my entire mental structure to take into account things that I was previously unaware of, or upon learning that something I had previously been told was true didn't actually have any evidence to back it up.

At present, I use something like a single axiom as the basis for my entire philosophy: "Thinking about the evidence of my senses can lead to useful conclusions." From this, some of my first conclusions are that the universe exists, that minds exist, and that logic is useful; further conclusions are based on the evidence, and upon logical conclusions based on that evidence.

(I could go into a whole sidebar about how Bayesian theory provides a framework for how /much/ belief to give to a proposition based on the available evidence, but it doesn't seem directly relevant to your point.)

I am intrigued. Can you tell us what this means?

Hopefully, I did two posts up.


Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

 

[DataPacRat]

Peace,
Isn't human biology interesting... Who do you think created you? Cell biology?

The creation of Allah is amazing, each protein, each ribosome, each vesicle has it's place, it's purpose and each has it's route in the build. Everything has been set and regulated magnificently in depth. Is atheism = it just is? How has cell structure been regulated so intellectually?

'It just is'?

This seems to enter the whole creation-vs-evolution debate, which would probably better be dealt with in a thread of its own - if you want to talk about it, feel free to start such a thread.

For this thread, I will respond by saying that I think that asking "Who created you?" contains false assumptions, in much the same manner as the question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" contains the assumption that you've been beating your wife, and thus cannot be answered as asked.

Your post seems to be implying that since cells and organisms are so complex, only Allah could have created them; this is known as the 'argument from incredulity', in that just because the arguer cannot figure out how it was done implies that only a divine agency could have done it. This is not a valid argument, especially since other people /have/ been able to work out how such complexity could arise without external intervention. I don't want to derail this thread too much, so I'll simply point to the Index to Creationist Claims at http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html as containing rebuttals to every argument I know of requiring a Creator as the source of life.


Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

 

[جوري]

Er, well... there doesn't seem to be any direct connection between the two phenomena, other than both being the result of the physical laws of the universe, whatever those laws may turn out to be.

My 'limited understanding of physics and the above offered' is that in a void, you can't claim to have ex nihilo 'sub-particles' and their physical antithesis.. in other words something can't really come out of nothing, which is what you've proposed in such eloquent terms of course as I could never muster... you can't really have it both ways.. and if I am to accept the premise that you propose (and I have no problem in doing so) it is still leaves me a lot empty as it doesn't cover and I quote from my previous post ."It would be more fascinating still to render this phenomenon on a more global scale and in the formation of much larger molecules into organ systems, higher reticular function into sentient beings of different shapes and sizes stratified on a scale in what we call the circle of life''...

all the best

 

[جوري]

Your post seems to be implying that since cells and organisms are so complex, only Allah could have created them; this is known as the 'argument from incredulity', in that just because the arguer cannot figure out how it was done implies that only a divine agency could have done it. This is not a valid argument, especially since other people /have/ been able to work out how such complexity could arise without external intervention. I don't want to derail this thread too much, so I'll simply point to the Index to Creationist Claims at http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html as containing rebuttals to every argument I know of requiring a Creator as the source of life.

i[/COLOR]

If I may interject here. No one has been able to make a 'valid argument' on how such complex organs could arise without external intervention!

'reproduction' isn't the same as 'creation' and there are many biochemical and physiological pathways that you are to account for in a data based logical fashion in order to render your own beliefs a step above the others!

you in fact have to go back to the drawing board to the origin of life and give us something better than

or rock, amphibian, human and voila 'scientific'
all the best

 

[DataPacRat]

do you believe there was nothing before the big bang?

I neither believe nor disbelieve. I have insufficient data to render a judgement about what might or might not have existed for the big bang, so I refrain from judging it, and simply say "I don't know". I'm comfortable with not knowing... especially since I, and many other people, are working on filling in that gap in our knowledge.

how can you make an absolute statement about god not existing? something about which you have no idea. if athiesm is lack of belief then you cannot say you believe god doesnt exist.

There are some people who insist that 'atheism' means one thing, and others that it means something not quite the same, about the differences between atheism and agnosticism, and there are whole reams of arguments about the difference between lack of belief and active disbelief. It's getting to the point where I sometimes try to avoid the term altogether, and use terms that are better-defined for a particular context, such as 'rationalist' or 'secular humanist'.

As for stating that God doesn't exist, here, as simply as I can manage, are my thought processes leading to that statement.

1) We have some good ideas about how the universe works: chemistry, geology, astronomy, biology, neurology, psychology, sociology, mathematics, mathematics-based game theory, game-theory-based ethics, and so on.

2) There does not seem to be any reliable evidence that anything we call "supernatural" exists. There is, in fact, sufficient lack of evidence to describe such lack as evidence for the non-existence of the supernatural. Some references I use to help describe this lack: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html , http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html , http://whatstheharm.net/ , http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ .

3) The God of Abraham, sometimes referred to as Allah, requires a specific set of leaps of faith to exist: that the supernatural exists, that supernatural beings exist, that such beings have consciousness, that at least one such being is eternal, that at least one such being is capable of creating something from nothing, that such a being is capable of miracles, that it is all-knowing, that it is all-powerful, and that it is all-loving. (Some faiths add additional criteria.)

4) Applying #2 to #3 implies that the very first such leap of faith is questionable, and needs to be addressed before any of the others are even considered.

5) The principle of Russell's teapot implies that even if God exists, but He does so in a way that is indistinguishable from a universe in which He does not exist (that is, that His existence is a matter of unsubstantiated faith rather than knowledge based on evidence), then it is both reasonable and rational to act /as if/ He does not exist; and it is further reasonable and rational to /conclude/ that He does not exist. (The differences between these two latter conclusions are basically the same as the ones between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism.)


With all that said, I do not say that there is a 100% certainty that God exists. (Thanks to Bayes' theorem, and even just the simpler form of Laplace's sunrise formula, one cannot truly say that there is a 100% certainty of /anything/.) What I /do/ say is that, based on the evidence available to me, it is /highly unlikely/ He exists as described, that unlikelihood being so great that it is reasonable both for me to act as if He does not exist (in much the same way it is reasonable for me to act as if I'm not going to win the lottery), and it is also reasonable for me to conclude that He does not exist (in much the same way that I have concluded that invisible pink unicorns do not exist).

And with /that/ said, I do not rule out the possibility that, at some point in the future, I will encounter evidence which will convince me of His existence. But, based on past experience, I predict that it is unlikely that I will encounter such evidence; and based on the principles of rationalism and logic, such evidence would have to meet certain standards. For just one example of a piece of evidence that would convince me to reconsider my stance on the supernatural, we could take that site I listed above, http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ ; if I were to witness the spontaneous regrowth of a limb, under circumstances that ruled out ordinary fraud, sleight-of-hand illusion, medical intervention, and other mundane causes, then that would be highly interesting. One way to help rule out such mundane causes would be for me to grow a limb - and since I'd rather avoid going through the trouble of losing one first, one of the suggestions I've made to theists in the past is that a miracle that would be sufficient for me to reconsider my atheism would be for me to grow a new limb from scratch, such as a nice, long tail. No, I'm not joking or kidding about that - from what has been described of Allah's powers, miraculously causing a true tail to appear on a human is within His powers; and it is one example of something that would lead to my ceasing to be an atheist.


I finish with something an acquaintance of mine once said, along the lines of, "God's omniscient and omnipotent, so He knows what it would take to make me believe in Him, and has the power to do so. The only reasonable conclusion from the fact that I /don't/ believe in Him is that He doesn't /want/ me to believe in Him."


Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

 

[DataPacRat]

If I may interject here.

How about I start a new thread on creationism vs evolution, and we discuss the issue there?

(I can /start/ the thread; how soon it will be /approved/ is open to question...)



Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

 

[marwen]

Welcome the forum DataPacRat !

I don't really agree with every word you mentioned, but I do respect your point of view.

I finish with something an acquaintance of mine once said, along the lines of, "God's omniscient and omnipotent, so He knows what it would take to make me believe in Him, and has the power to do so. The only reasonable conclusion from the fact that I /don't/ believe in Him is that He doesn't /want/ me to believe in Him."
..
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

I want just to understand something : if we suppose God exists and don't want you to believe in him (which i think is not true), is that an argument to not believe in him ? For example if I don't want you to believe that I'm muslim, but you know for sure that I'm muslim, will you not believe that I 'm muslim just because "I don't want you to do" ? (hope the example is clear ).
I just want to know if you consider that a sufficient argument for being atheist.

Now, concerning what if God want you to believe in him or not, IMHO, if we suppose God exists, I think God wants you to believe in him, but he wants you to believe in him by yourself not because he forced/convinced you to believe in him. That's what I believe in as a muslim.

How about I start a new thread on creationism vs evolution, and we discuss the issue there?
(I can /start/ the thread; how soon it will be /approved/ is open to question...)

Yes I think it's a good idea if you start a thread for every point, just to have a clear discussion.

 

[جوري]

How about I start a new thread on creationism vs evolution, and we discuss the issue there?

(I can /start/ the thread; how soon it will be /approved/ is open to question...)



Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

such a thread exists x perhaps 100+.. how about you review the threads on evolution vs. creation and then share with us what you think is in error (from either party) and offer us what is better?

here is perhaps the longest discussion we have had on said topic:
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/6570-biological-evolution-islamic-perspective.html

but the others were certainly equivocal albeit it a bit more abridged!

all the best

 

[DataPacRat]

Welcome the forum DataPacRat !

Thank you kindly.

I don't really agree with every word you mentioned, but I do respect your point of view.

It's a start - and it's a lot better reception than I've gotten elsewhere.

I want just to understand something : if we suppose God exists and don't want you to believe in him (which i think is not true), is that an argument to not believe in him ? For example if I don't want you to believe that I'm muslim, but you know for sure that I'm muslim, will you not believe that I 'm muslim just because "I don't want you to do" ? (hope the example is clear ).
I just want to know if you consider that a sufficient argument for being atheist.

I think I understand what you're asking.

The truth is what it is, regardless of whatever anyone wants it to be. It's generally a better idea to believe true things than false things.

In the thread I'm trying to start on evolution vs creationism, I quote from Yudkowsky's "Twelve Virtues of Rationality", but since it hasn't appeared yet, I'll quote a small but highly relevant portion from it:

P. C. Hodgell said: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm. Evaluate your beliefs first and then arrive at your emotions. Let yourself say: “If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.” Beware lest you become attached to beliefs you may not want.

Now, concerning what if God want you to believe in him or not, IMHO, if we suppose God exists, I think God wants you to believe in him, but he wants you to believe in him by yourself not because he forced/convinced you to believe in him. That's what I believe in as a muslim.

If that's the case, then the only way I am going to end up believing in Him is if I cease to use all the tools of rationality I have learned so far, or if He presents me with evidence of His existence. And, of course, an additional complication is that even if I start believing that some supernatural being exists, that doesn't necessarily mean that that being is the God of Abraham - there are a great many religions, and even assuming that /at least/ one of them is correct, it's very tricky to figure out /which one/, if any, contains the most truth.


Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

 

[Gator]

Dear DataPacRat,
Please, and I'm speaking for myself, pygo, trumble, skav, cz, kading and the rest of the atheist commuity here (really, they all sent me PMs telling me to tell you this), go find your own thiests. These are ours. Isn't there a nice Mormon or Sikh forum you can harrass? There's like 5,000 religions, why try to take our thiests into to the shadowy realm of logic and rational discourse?

Oh and welcome to the forum.

Yours Truly,
Gator


Ps- And no quoting Yudkowsky.

 

[جوري]

shadowy realm of logic and rational discourse?

.

:lol: how is the realm of 'logic and discourse' working out for ya et. al.? I had expected to see you applauded by your forum peers in Stockholm sometime back whilst collecting that Nobel or do you find clandestine gabfests and backbiting illuminating? ;D whatever you tell yourselves in your self-congratulatory sessions is A-OK but why make it so public or are you looking for some theistic approval?

all the best as usual!

 

[DataPacRat]

Dear DataPacRat,
Please, and I'm speaking for myself, pygo, trumble, skav, cz, kading and the rest of the atheist commuity here (really, they all sent me PMs telling me to tell you this), go find your own thiests. These are ours. Isn't there a nice Mormon or Sikh forum you can harrass? There's like 5,000 religions, why try to take our thiests into to the shadowy realm of logic and rational discourse?

Oh and welcome to the forum.

Yours Truly,
Gator

I offer my acceptance of your greeting in exactly the spirit you offered it.

As for finding my own theists, as soon as I find a group who wish me to limit my behaviour because of the tenets of /their/ religion, rather than because the actions they wish to prohibit cause any actual harm, then I'll happily queue up my discourse for whatever forums of theirs I find. In the meantime, I'm quite enjoying sharpening my teeth-of-rationality here.

(As an example, there was a story in my newsfeed today about a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, a religion whose tenets forbid donating blood or accepting blood donations. If they don't want to be involved in that themselves, then sobeit... however, a father insisted that he would rather his son die than receive a life-saving transfusion, and he and some other JW's besieged the operating theatre, trying to prevent the doctors from carrying out their professional duties. And after the doctors saved the boy's life... the father /disowned the son/. Source: http://friendlyatheist.com/2010/05/05/the-son-needed-blood-so-what-did-the-father-do/. Then there was the mother who starved her one-year-old son to death because he would not say 'Amen', and then tried to resurrect him using prayer. One source among many: http://unreasonablefaith.com/2010/02/27/baby-starved-to-death-because-he-did-not-say-amen/. When people use their religion as an excuse for hurting children... I get riled.)

Ps- And no quoting Yudkowsky.

As the saying goes: You can take my Yudkowsky quotes from me when you pry them from my cold, disconnected keyboard...

And just because I can, here's something Yudkowsky has written, more than once:

the

 

[جوري]

??????????

This is an Islamic forum, not the atheist welcoming committee, certainly if they wish to discuss their overwhelming since of empathy for their fellow man, then there is always the PM system.. which I am pretty sure they put to good use otherwise!

 

[glo]

As I described a few posts up, whatever mental processes most people seem to use when they talk about 'believing in God', I don't seem to have them. When my thinking was such that I believed what I was told, and I was told God existed, then I 'believed' in God, but not in the same sense that most people describe 'believing in God'. As I improved and refined my thinking processes over the years, I went through several stages of kicking over my entire mental structure to take into account things that I was previously unaware of, or upon learning that something I had previously been told was true didn't actually have any evidence to back it up.

I am married to an atheist, and I think I understand your perspective.

Interestingly enough I have met atheists who almost wished to have the ability to believe in God (presumably because they sensed some beauty and/or comfort in those who believed) - but simply did not find it within themselves to believe.
Clearly, if you don't have the ability to believe, then you can't believe ... all you could do is pretend to believe ...

It leaves me to wonder which God (if you can humour me for a moment in imagining he does believe) would appreciate more:

1. an honest atheist, who says "I explored the possibility of God, and could not believe in him", or
2. an atheist who pretends to believe, but in his heart doesn't really ...
   
   

At present, I use something like a single axiom as the basis for my entire philosophy: "Thinking about the evidence of my senses can lead to useful conclusions." From this, some of my first conclusions are that the universe exists, that minds exist, and that logic is useful; further conclusions are based on the evidence, and upon logical conclusions based on that evidence.

That's interesting.
I don't think many believers would disagree with you at all.
Perhaps the difference is that believers interpret the 'evidence of their senses' differently and come to the conclusion that they point to God (or some higher being(s))

(I could go into a whole sidebar about how Bayesian theory provides a framework for how /much/ belief to give to a proposition based on the available evidence, but it doesn't seem directly relevant to your point.)

Be gentle with me!
I can only digest so much philosophy at any one time!

The most literal translation I can manage is something like:

"(I'm feeling skeptical) What reason obliges me to believe the referent of the last utterance?" has the superlative property of importance of any questions.

... though a more compact rendering would be:

"(Skepticism) Why should I believe that?" is the most important question.


Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

What language is it?

 

[DataPacRat]

I am married to an atheist, and I think I understand your perspective.

Interestingly enough I have met atheists who almost wished to have the ability to believe in God (presumably because they sensed some beauty and/or comfort in those who believed) - but simply did not find it within themselves to believe.
Clearly, if you don't have the ability to believe, then you can't believe ... all you could do is pretend to believe ...

It leaves me to wonder which God (if you can humour me for a moment in imagining he does believe) would appreciate more:

1. an honest atheist, who says "I explored the possibility of God, and could not believe in him", or
2. an atheist who pretends to believe, but in his heart doesn't really ...
   
   

That's a pretty interesting hypothetical, as it happens. I read a lot of science-fiction, dabble at writing it, and have done my share of role-playing; taking hypotheticals and running with them to see where they go is what I do for fun. It may seem somewhat blasphemous, but many forms of fiction involve an active deity, requiring the authour to at least try to imagine how He would act in a given situation, and, thus, what motivations He has to make Him act one way rather than another. Some portrayals stick as closely as possible to one or more scriptures; some take a rather looser, comic-book-style approach; and some, well, head off in another direction altogether. (For example, I know of one novel series in which part of the background involves an entity which falsely claimed to various bronze-age cultures to be an omnipotent deity, and that he commanded "angels" and "demons" which were invulnerable to any army of the time... and, fast-forwarding to the present, humanity finds out about it, and also discovers that a creature that is essentially invulnerable to bronze swords is not necessarily quite so resistant to modern field artillery. The first novel is available for free online, and the second is being released, chapter-by-chapter, as it's written; googling for 'The Salvation War' should let you find it, though given the forum's policies, it's probably best if I refrain from linking to it directly.) Hypothetically, if I were to use some sort of super-science to create a world, and create intelligent beings to inhabit that world, and happened to learn of a pair of beings who met your two categories, I would prefer to interact with the former, the honest one, than the latter. Honest ignorance can be easily cured, and the cured person then becomes that much more interesting; dishonesty for the purpose of socialization, or whatever, is not a very good sign that the liar will ever be trustworthy at all.

But that's just my take on the motivations of a being I believe to be as fictional as Cthulhu.

That's interesting.
I don't think many believers would disagree with you at all.
Perhaps the difference is that believers interpret the 'evidence of their senses' differently and come to the conclusion that they point to God (or some higher being(s))

One of the most important lessons I've been learning, in the past few years, is how to distinguish between which sorts of evidence are useful for leading to conclusions on a topic, and which aren't. Even one's own senses can be surprisingly deceptive; the book "Mind Hacks" by Stafford and Webb (with website at http://www.mindhacks.com/) offers a lot of relevant information, in a fun format. For another, direct example, I'll quote from the Metafilter article from http://www.metafilter.com/36975/This-explains-so-much :

Truly mind blowing! First, you must follow the rules. Watch this short video. You are only allowed to watch it once. Seriously, do not cheat! In the video you will see a group of basketball players, some in white and some in black passing two balls around. Your goal is to count how many times the ball is passed by those wearing white shirts. It’s that simple. Remember, count just the passes of the ball by those wearing white. Once the movie is over, write down the number of passes you have counted, Do not watch the video again-- proceed to step two. (via)

Be gentle with me!
I can only digest so much philosophy at any one time!

In that case, I'll wait at least until my next post before I go into detail on the full Bayes' Theorem... but perhaps I might leave you with a simple math problem. The basic form is, "What is the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow?"

Put another way, if you're given a situation with two possible outcomes, and the only information you have is how many times the situation has occurred, and how many times each outcome has resulted, then how do you figure out the probability either outcome will happen? Let's say you're given a coin, and you're told that it's weighted so that it might land on heads all the time, or tails all the time, or heads 50% of the time, or anywhere between. Before you flip it, then, with everything you know, what is the best guess you can make that the next flip will turn up heads? And, let's say that when you flip it, it turns up heads; with all the information you now have, including everything you had before, plus the results of the first flip, what is the best guess you can /now/ make about the probability that the /next/ flip will be heads?

What language is it?

The language is logji bangu, or, more commonly, lojban.


Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u traji lo ka vajni fo lo preti

 

[Supreme]

# an honest atheist, who says "I explored the possibility of God, and could not believe in him", or
# an atheist who pretends to believe, but in his heart doesn't really ...

I'd agree that agnostic theists exist, just as there are agnostic atheists. However, I don't think you can class atheists as theists, when the two are diametrical opposites. If someone pretends to be theist, and they don't accept in their heart the religion they belong to, they have most likely considered the possibility of that religion being true, or else there would be no incentive to carry on in that belief system.

 

[Pygoscelis]

If someone pretends to be theist, and they don't accept in their heart the religion they belong to, they have most likely considered the possibility of that religion being true, or else there would be no incentive to carry on in that belief system.

Community
Job
In Laws
Other family
Business standing and connections

Many atheists pretend to be religious for all of the above, and when coming out of the closet put one or more of them at risk. I've known people who were disowned, creatively dismissed from employment, bullied in school, had major marital stress due to righteous inlaws etc due to having their disbelief found out or for having lost their faith. For other atheists the risk of being known isn't so stark but its just easier to pretend to believe. And yet other atheists can even see profit in faking it. Do you really think all those TV preachers telling you to send them money are really believers? The really dangerous ones maybe, but I bet there are others who are simply con men seeing a good angle.

I know atheists who keep it hidden even in my rather liberal province of Ontario, Canada. Its a dozen times worse for atheists in the bible belt of the US. And I can't even imagine how motivated atheists must be to hide it in Islamic nations, especially if they were raised muslims.