Originally Posted by kirant
One thing I notice in the lack of a theist in the conversation is that there is less balance in the debate. I'm a self professed agnostic (agnostic atheist when I voted in the old poll) and only caught parts of the debate (I left it running while making some food), but there seemed to be times where they'd not really make distinctions in theism.
One part that I heard in detail and disagreed with is how a theist would pray to their god. One of the commentators (I don't know which one in specific, as again I wasn't watching, just listening) mentions that you can test a faith by looking at whether or not prayer works. I didn't catch the preceding section and may be acting without some knowledge (he mentions something "Randy" stated), but this snippet strikes me as a bit odd. The distinction between a non-acting god and a god that actively listens and participates in individual's prayers wasn't made. In this train of thought and measurement, the possibility that god doesn't act based on prayer is treated as impossibility. I haven't read the Bible in a while, but I do wonder if it's actually even stated in there that god will, without a doubt, answer your prayer if you have been a loyal follower. Either way, the test would be whether or not a god that acts based on faith based requests is tested, not on the existence of a god as a whole (which only happens if we can make the assumption that if a god exists, it will act on these requests). If we narrow the concept to a single type of god, one that must act on all forms of prayer, then we may see results that don't support a hypothesis...but the concept and the definition of a supreme being doesn't necessarily lock in all those terms from my understanding.
Later on, I caught a few comments implying that a theist would believe anything they're told, and linking that to politics (seemingly implying that they'd not trust religious politicians). I believe few people make such uninformed decisions and that all atheists are simply as all-encompassing about their belief as they make it out to be. In the poll from this forum, an agnostic theist would choose to believe in a god because something that happened to them and make the decision to be theist based on evidence...a life changing experience of sorts. In groups as large as atheist and theist, not everyone can be encompassed in such a simple manner...the internet an excellent host to many people who seem to have little evidence that god can't exist (with even less evidence or comprehension of their own arguments) and have more fun just flaming away as oppose to actually understanding the conflicting forces (even more notable if you talk to some). Large groups are impossible to scoop up into individual categories...there are almost always minorities and different streams of similar thought that confuse things.
One small comment too on the famous "theist vs atheist/rapist" study. I've always wondered (as I never tracked down a version of the study) is if there is a reciprocal reaction of atheists to theists - Do atheists react in a similar manner to a theist to the opposite belief in terms of trust? We have one point of data - That, barring a possible peculiarity in sample data (as the error bars are HUGE), it seems that from the single test that theists distrust atheists. However, hat seems pretty meaningless to me unless we see a difference in reaction from atheists towards theists. If there is no difference, then I think that we've simply seeing the effects of huge division along the concept of atheism/theism. If there is a difference, then there may be something to talk about...one side, if they're much more trusting of the other, may claim moral victory, though I'd be more interested in the "why" of the statistic...why is it that one side is less trusting of their opposite faith persons.
It's actually a decent listen from what I caught. A little one-sided, but worth hearing.
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