I’m sure it’s possible to believe in God but deceive oneself into belief of atheism. And then grieve shallowly with a feeling that the deceased is not really gone forever.
I was, for a period of a few months, in this category. And I’ve still sort of got something attached to that mental state, if I think about it hard enough.
Really? I would expect you of all people to see it.
Most atheists alieve in God and trust him to make the future turn out all right (ie they expect the future to magically be ok even if no one deliberately makes it so). Hence “beyond the reach of god” and all that stuff.
I guess this is offtopic in this particular thread, though.
Most atheists alieve in God and trust him to make the future turn out all right (ie they expect the future to magically be ok even if no one deliberately makes it so).
The statement in parentheses seems to contradict the one outside. Are you over-applying the correlation between magical thinking and theism?
The statement in parentheses seems to contradict the one outside.
The implication is “no one human”- that is, the atheists in question still live in a positive universe rather than a neutral one, but don’t have an explanation for the positivity.
People alieve that nothing too bad will happen if they behave well or otherwise follow some set of rules. (I have to fight this feeling myself!) I can well imagine people having a mental picture, which they habitually use to make predictions, in which something justifies this feeling. But do they picture a deity as commonly described? Or do they picture their parents/society/church having (limited) magical powers?
I highly doubt that that expectation is due to hidden belief in gods. It sounds more like an overly strong generalization from “it all adds up to normality” to me.
In other words, you can expect the future to turn out alright without any agents actively making it so based purely on inductive bias.
I’m sure it’s possible to believe in God but deceive oneself into belief of atheism. And then grieve shallowly with a feeling that the deceased is not really gone forever.
Also known as “there are no atheists in foxholes”.
That sounds theoretically possible but I haven’t seen it.
I was, for a period of a few months, in this category. And I’ve still sort of got something attached to that mental state, if I think about it hard enough.
Really? I would expect you of all people to see it.
Most atheists alieve in God and trust him to make the future turn out all right (ie they expect the future to magically be ok even if no one deliberately makes it so). Hence “beyond the reach of god” and all that stuff.
I guess this is offtopic in this particular thread, though.
The statement in parentheses seems to contradict the one outside. Are you over-applying the correlation between magical thinking and theism?
The implication is “no one human”- that is, the atheists in question still live in a positive universe rather than a neutral one, but don’t have an explanation for the positivity.
People alieve that nothing too bad will happen if they behave well or otherwise follow some set of rules. (I have to fight this feeling myself!) I can well imagine people having a mental picture, which they habitually use to make predictions, in which something justifies this feeling. But do they picture a deity as commonly described? Or do they picture their parents/society/church having (limited) magical powers?
I highly doubt that that expectation is due to hidden belief in gods. It sounds more like an overly strong generalization from “it all adds up to normality” to me.
In other words, you can expect the future to turn out alright without any agents actively making it so based purely on inductive bias.
I’ve seen that for planets a lot more than for people, yes.