#skepticalavenger

[skepticalavenger]

Been gone a while

Sorry I was gone for a bit.  My work and personal life has been significantly crazy for a while.  I hope I can get back into the routine.

~ Steve

[skepticalavenger]

Philosophy

I think one of my big personal limitations is an inability to maintain a great curiosity about philosophy.

I had one philosophy class in college.  As it was an introductory class, the arguments didn't get overly deep.  I wrote a few papers and made a few comments and the professor said I had a knack for philosophy and might want to consider a career in it.

The prospect never interested me however.  My primary problem, I think, is that I have a total blind spot in trying to read the works of other philosophers, which I would have to guess is kind of a requirement to be taken seriously as a philosopher.

I skated past this limitation in class.  One of the assignments was supposed to be a paper supporting or refuting the arguments of a particular philosopher in one of their essays. I chose Thomas Aquinas, and I'll blatantly admit that I didn't do anything more than skim his arguments for his god's existence.  My paper spent maybe half a paragraph discussing Aquinas, and I spent the rest of the paper proving why no absolute proof or disproof of God could ever exist.  I managed to pull down an A on the paper without the teacher noticing (or at least not caring) that I didn't even remotely attempt to meet the paper's stated requirements.

It's not even that I'm not interested in what philosophers have to say.  It's more that when I read books written by philosophers, my mind completely loses focus.  I start skimming and skipping sessions.  As a result, it isn't surprising that at the end I can't claim to have anything but the vaguest notions what the philosopher was talking about.

I could blame the philosophers writing styles as being rather dry and difficult, but this probably isn't true for all philosophers.  And, at the same time, I read stuff related to physics and science, also described as occasionally being both dry and difficult, with no difficulty whatsoever.

In some ways almost everyone is an armchair philosopher.  I doubt I will ever be able to be considered more than this.  It's not something I'm proud of, but it is what it is, and I feel no compulsion to change it.

[thedragoninmygarage]

This is for both my blogs thedragoninmygarage and thedemon-hauntedworld.

1) sagansense

2) skepticalavenger

3) juliesupernova

4) brutalgeneration

5) sci-universe

6) wearestarstuff

7) scientificthinker

8) thenewenlightenmentage

9) scienspiration

I wanted to recognize all these awesome blogs and also say thank you to everyone who follows me. I am so amazed that almost 7,000 people follow thedragoninmygarage, and almost 5,000 follow thedemon-hauntedworld. Thank you everyone :)

[skepticalavenger]

pocketsofsnow asked you: 

So this has most definitely been asked before, but I shall ask it again. What lead you to hold the belief that you do? I'm a teenager still exploring life without the means to do my own research into the depths of if there is proof of a god or not, although I've done some anyways (The Truth Project- I'm into history and science and conspiracy theories of our society, okay?). I have problems with both scientific and religious explanations of the beginning, and like the ideals of some eastern l 

I'm always exploring the answer to this question.  While I hold a lack of belief in a god or gods, I do hold beliefs in many other things.

It starts out with my being raised utterly without religion.  I can't remember even stepping into a church until I was in my teens.  Non-belief was kind of the default, but, not really even being raised with enough knowledge to be skeptical, I was open to the idea of a god.  I explored a couple of different religions...I belonged to the Unity Church for a while because, while many of their beliefs are batshit crazy, they at least accepted evolution and were nice people in general.

I read the Bible completely through at one point (skimming the begats and such), without really understanding a lot of it.  My experiments with Christianity never went anywhere.  I began calling myself agnostic, thinking atheism was foolishness. It was only much later that I learned that atheists can still maintain a degree of uncertainty toward the existence of deities.  It was at this point I asked myself if I really believed that there was a god of any kind, and that's when I answered no.

I also called myself a fiscal conservative for many years.  I similarly learned that there are many lies and naivete associated with that as well, and have learned that reality really does seem to have a liberal bias.  Much of what I hold now, admittedly, I would not call belief so much as verifiable facts.

I, personally, have no problem with the scientific views of the beginning of the universe because these views are based on hard and rigorously tested observations of reality.  There is much uncertainty about the initial moments of creation, and there may always be.  There is strong evidence for most of what follows however.  I have nothing strongly against Eastern philosophies, and there can be much learned from these.  I'm not a fan of mysticism however, and things like karma or reincarnation really don't impress me overmuch.

Thanks for the question,

~ Steve

[axiolotl]

I got on tumblr and had like 37 notifications and was like "what the fuck?"

but turns out Steve reblogged something of mine OOPS 

[in-the-right]

You say you are a young Earth creationist. Why do you feel that the majority of scientists disagree with this viewpoint? Are they misreading reality? Is it a conspiracy? Or do you feel that scientific findings don't matter in regard to Biblical truths? Or is there something else?

I think atheist scientists are under the misconception that their area of expertise (science) is all there is, and all of reality has to fall within it. If they gave heed to creationism, they would have to consider that there is something beyond science--and that just doesn't mesh with how they want the world to work. As for old-earth creationists, I think they've been duped by the lie that is the theory of evolution, and they felt they must have misinterpreted the Bible, where it says God made the universe in six days.

As for how they come to the conclusion that evolution is supported, I think it's all about bias. For one, they refuse to even fairly consider creationism because some aspects of it are supernatural (which makes them feel less important). With this refusal comes the shunning of any scientist who does heed creationism. These shunned scientists don't get the grants, which is the biggest thing that powers scientific research. So fewer people are looking into creationism for fear of ostracism. More people are afraid of coming to any conclusions that hint at creationism. On the other hand, the scientists that really want to believe in evolution, or the ones that are highly invested in it, do what they can to make sure the results or conclusions they come to about the results support evolution in some way--even if it's fallacious and an abuse of the scientific method and of logic.