I notice there's a pattern of debates that hover around the theism and atheism space of one side or the other trying to shirk off their intellectual load by declaring their side is the default position, most notably in debates around semi-related scientific questions: Flat Earth vs Real Earth, Creationism vs Evolutionary Biology, etc etc. It's a grab that both sides will try to make, amazingly often while putting in the work to provide reasoning for their positions.
That is not how the default position works.
The default position on a scientific question about the universe is one thing, and one thing only: We Don't Know.
That's it. The default position is *not* what the science says, nor is it what the pseudoscience says; it's almost tautological: we don't know what the answer to a question is until we do.
Both sides of these debates come to the table presenting the notion that we do, in fact, know the answer to the question, whether one side presents the answer as flat earth and the other as spheroidal, or one side presents the explanation for the diversity of life as evolutionary biology and the other as special creation, *both sides* come to the table with the burden of proof.
It does not matter whether one side or the other thinks they have the backing of centuries of scientific understanding and observations, common sense, or religious authority; it is incumbant on both sides to actually *present* those observations, evidences, and reasonings in the debate setting.
There is, however, another kind of debate where one side is holding the default position, but it's not something that one side or the other has to claim - as much as the wrong side will often try. That is a debate on a single proposal, where one side argues yes, and the other side argues no.
This presents a different sort of default position with another, proper name: The Null Hypothesis. This is the default position on any positive claim: not accepting the claim. Any debate structured around such a question: whether flat earth can explain the south pole, or whether evolution can demonstrate the addition of "new information", are both debate topics that would have one person on the positive hypothesis side, and one person on the null hypothesis side, replecating in debate form the standard modus-operandi for statistical analysis: accept or reject the null hypothesis based on evidence in favor of or against the positive hypothesis.
And as you might have guessed, there's a particular category of debate that falls into exactly this style to the chagrin of one particular side: debates on the existence of god.
Such debates have one positive hypothesis at their core: there is a god. The theist side argues yes, the atheist side assumes the null hypothesis. Properly structured, the theist side presents their case, the atheist side critiques their case, the theist side defends against the critiques, and so on until agreements or impasses are reached.
Which of course, stands in contrast to a two prong debate, where each side has a case to make, and each side has rebuttals and defenses to offer for their own case - see also the shape of the earth.
Don't know if anyone who needs to see this to be helped by it will, but I needed to get the thoughts out of my head to clear up the ram for work tasks. Thank you/apologies for your time.
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Hi finally explaining something lol!!! My motivation is a struggle cause no one sees these, but know what even if I only have one like on every post whatever because that means someone sees these at least.
Hell is a complicated subject, people ask why a loving God would create Hell but that stance is one that holds a lack of understanding I think. Even if you're an atheist I want you to view hell as a real place and instead of seeing it as punishment look at is a default final destination, see sin goes against everything we where made for, sin is a crime and even if us who are alive now didn't choose our capacity to sin and that was just the mistake of our ancestors it's still something we pick every day like lust, cruelty towards others, over consumption, things like that and sin is what separates us from God; when sin is picked over something Godly we have separated ourselves from him and we have chosen Hell that's why repentance exists as God if you truly feel sorrow for your actions will forgive you.We all deserve Hell; Hell is simply a place with complete removal of God and since God is life, love, and salvation, hell is death, pain, and damnation.
Verse of the day-
Matthew 3:11-12 NIV
[11] “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. [12] His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
Sorry if I didn't explain well most of these are written in like twenty minute sittings right before bed.
We need to endorse the viewpoint of John Haynes Holmes who found "no contradiction between humanism and theism but rather discovered in the one the fulfillment and completion of the other."...
Humanism invites us to reject provincial and petty gods who suspend the laws of nature, play favorites among the races or nations of this globe, and whose wills are supposedly responsible for premature deaths and cosmic catastrophes. Alan Watts has a marvelous phrase for this torching of straw gods. He calls it "atheism in the name of God."
We are agnostic in that we Unitarian Universalists don't pretend, or even desire, to claim inside information about divine mystery. We are content to remain trustful unknowers. Humanism offers another staunch warning to those "hunting the divine fox": that none of our words are able to bring us closer to the presence of God. All discourse about God is inevitably analogical, drenched in human metaphor. Theology must never claim too much for itself. It points toward only the faintest echo of ultimate reality....
But more than discussing the mystery of God or experiencing the presence of God within our souls, we are urged to love God through our acts of kindness and justice, thereby infusing ourselves with the eternal Spirit. Love is an activity more than a commodity, and we love God chiefly not by study, or even prayer, but by loving the universe and all its inhabitants with full mind and heart and might. Gandhi, a mystical activist, reported that he never found God in person but only in action.
Think of the tree as one primary image of the cosmos as an organic system of meanings. It consists of a huge canopy of branches above, an unseen but vast system of roots below, and a trunk linking and separating these two complex networks. A tree has the remarkable ability to grow both up and down, at the same time. As God-fearing humanists, and all other self-ascribed combinations on the theological continuum, we are challenged to grow in both directions, simultaneously receiving sustenance from heaven and earth.
from Freethinking Mystics with Hands: Exploring the Heart of Unitarian Universalism by Tom Owen-Towle, pages 67-69
In the interesting predicament of being very ethnically and vaguely spiritually Jewish but not ideologically generally.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think when a faith has a bajillion rules on how to live your life that's Obnoxious and Not Fun and I see no issue with Just Be A Good Person to be the key to heaven or nirvana or moksha or whatever else.
Faith is a moral compass, it shouldn't dictate a person's entire existence.
The cosmological argument asks why there is anything at all, pointing to a necessary cause beyond the universe.
It invites reflection on contingency, causation, and the origin of existence.
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Can we like… stop arguing so much about whether or not a god exists…
Like there’s no real way to prove whether or not a god exists. I believe there’s some god out there. It makes me happier. Some of my friends believe there’s no god. It makes them happier. We co-exist just fine. End of story.
No real point in arguing this so much, in my opinion, since I don’t think anyone’s opinion is really gonna change.
I feel as though belief alone cannot save man. I have found in the baptist culture surrounding me, there is the statement of "once saved, always saved" a statement I'm fond of for in a way it's a mighty compassionate one but also holds a great weight of apathy.
In a lot of ways the surrounding culture is sinful in that, while it is simple to just be kind, it is not a thing that I believe is propped up enough as an actual virtue. I believe many value their indepedence, their individuality, and freedom over compassion and love. I find that many Baptist Christians have been rude, judgemental, prideful, consistently intoxicated, and so on. But for some reason it is dismissed and brushed off due to the actual conviction and belief that they hold instead of their own social character.
I think now people struggle with belief, and their lack of belief prevents them not necessarily from being good people, but not being able to find the value in being a good person outside of feeling like it. I believe that many, particularly protestant, sermons push statements where believers are only that - they simply see the events as described in the bible as true and as an event that happened that they see value in, but not much of anything else. Whereas, while this isn't universal of course, in my experience the sermons I got the best feeling out of were ones in which we need to be patient, we need to be humble, we need to be more loving and give grace to those who anger us, and so on. I think many Christians would be upset for this sense of simplicity, but many of those same people are that of unkind, lacking compassion, and consistently bashing other people.
I think I'm a post-theist.
