Image transcription: a section of a Wikipedia article titled “Relationship with Reality”. It reads “From a scientific viewpoint, elves are not considered objectively real. [3] However,” End transcription.
Discworld’s elvesfair folk, however, do not work like this and remain wildly powerful even as human belief in them withers and dissipates. The belief in elves at the beginning of Lords and Ladies is much akin to the belief in Om at the beginning of Small Gods. From memory, “like worshipping the shell left behind by a crustacean that has long since died”. But for some reason elves maintain power in the human world whereas Om is reduced to hoping the melons in the church gardens aren’t too thick-skinned.
Wow, they really dance around that. The belief in elves is real, champ, not the elves themselves due to that belief. This isn’t a Terry Pratchett novel.
Where enough people have believed in the reality of elves that those beliefs then had real effects in the world, they can be understood as part of people’s worldview, and as a social reality: a thing which, like the exchange value of a dollar bill or the sense of pride stirred up by a national flag, is real because of people’s beliefs rather than as an objective reality. Accordingly, beliefs about elves and their social functions have varied over time and space.
There are a few crusades and jihads that point towards gods being just as meaningfully real to us as dollar values and national pride
Same goes with trading a dollar bill for goods and services. That dollar doesn’t have legitimate inherent value, but it can manifest change in the world via the people that believe it does. Same goes with pride in your country/city/state/province when you see your region’s flag. It isn’t physically real, but the wiki never claimed that it is.
How many dollars is my favorite color being purple worth?
I really want to get through to you. What that wiki article is saying is that god is “”“real”“” (with a lot of air quotes) in the same way that fiat currency has value.
Can we agree that the bills in my wallet have less physical utility than the many paper towels they could buy? I could use them for kindling, or to wipe up a small mess, but paper towels are so much better at that. And some of these bills, despite being exactly the same size and weight, and arguable worse at being kindling, are somehow worth “more” than others.
For what reason am I able to exchange those bills for many paper towels? Why can I exchange one bill for several bills of the same exact size, but with a numerically smaller number written on them? The value of money is “real” insofar as it affects how we act. I don’t think there is a god, but the concept of gods has had a very real impact on the world. It is “real” in the sense that it affects people, the same way seeing a flag with a bunch of random colors can, the same way writing an extra 0 on a piece of green cotton can.
We can trade currency for goods and services because we agree to use the currency. Physical currency has an agreed-to meaning; you can’t spend a dollar bill after you burn it. It’s like arguing that a pound of gold being worth more than a pound of dog shit is meaningless.
Comparing God to feelings is ridiculous. We can observe and induce feelings by manipulating the brain physically or chemically.
The idea of a god has no power. The idea did not create the universe, cannot perform miracles, cannot observe or act. God is as real as the number four; it’s an idea that may have utility, but lacks any power in and of itself.
We can trade currency for goods and services because we agree to use the currency.
Yes. The value of money is real to us, even though it doesn’t have any intrinsic value
It’s like arguing that a pound of gold being worth more than a pound of dog shit is meaningless.
No. Gold has more intrinsic value than dog shit. It’s far more limited, one can’t simply print more of it. It’s shiny, so I can easily make jewelry to adorn myself. I could maybe make a weapon with which to defend myself from potential attackers, though there are better materials than that. It’s also useful in electronics, so I can trade it to electronics crafters in exchange for some of the electronics they craft.
The idea of a god has no power.
The idea of god has power in the same way that paper money has value. It drives many people to do many things, despite being intangible and unreal.
The idea did not create the universe, cannot perform miracles, cannot observe or act.
I never claimed that it did. I have claimed many times in this thread that I don’t think it did. I would like literally anyone to acknowledge that I’m not trying to argue that god exists. Please, someone, acknowledge that I am actually a damn atheist. Just respond this comment with “I’m actually reading your comments and processing them, even if I disagree with what you’re saying.”
God is as real as the number four; it’s an idea that may have utility, but lacks any power in and of itself.
Yes. That’s essentially what the article we’re discussing says. Nobody has tried to insinuate that god is physically real, only that the concept is really a concept, which has an impact on the people who believe it. I want to be clear here. I’m not saying there is a god consciously affecting those who believe in it. I’m saying that for those who believe in it, that belief has a real effect on them.
I love how nobody is responding to you, because the truth is: we can’t know, but most of us are very sure whether there is a god either way. It’s nonsense to call what an atheist believes absolutely “true,” because we can’t know. I’m an atheist, but it’s just pseudoscience to suggest that we can scientifically prove that there’s no god.
Agreed and well-put. Lack of evidence cannot give creedence to a claim. It’s all well and good to believe in (the absence of, or possibility of) supernatural being(s), but to state such beliefs as objective is not follow the scientific method.
What a thing to say. It’s perfectly reasonable to say that there’s insufficient evidence to believe in any gods, but to state that there is no god as a matter of fact is as presumptive as saying that there objectively is.
God doesn’t exist. The tooth fairy doesn’t exist. Elvis Presley is dead. If you want to believe there is a possibility for any of these statements to be false, you have a questionable relationship with reality.
There is evidence to suggest that the tooth fairy isn’t real–when tested, magic has consistently been shown to not exist. The only intangible forces that have been shown to act on things are gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces, none of which allows for teeth to turn into quarters. On top of that, most parents will admit that they made the tooth fairy up. It’s reasonable to say that there is objectively no tooth fairy because there’s evidence to suggest it can’t exist.
There is no such evidence to suggest that there can’t be a creator deity. I don’t believe that there is, but I won’t make a truth claim without evidence. If you wanna say that the Christian god isn’t real, that’s fine. There are contradictions in their holy text that show that the god in their book cannot exist. But to say that no god can exist is a truth statement that lacks evidence. Saying it just makes you look like an edgy teenager who just figured out that they’re atheist. Makes you look like a fan of thunderf00t or Carl of Akkad.
Yes, made up. Just like deities made up in more ignorant times.
Are you seriously arguing in good faith that “god” exists as anything more than a mass delusion? And you think not believing that is “edgy”? If so, I really think we’re done.
Are you seriously arguing in good faith that “god” exists as anything more than a mass delusion?
No! I’m saying that making a truth claim without evidence is necessarily irrational! I literally said that I don’t believe it. There is a difference between not believing something and believing not something.
I think that centering your online persona around your lack of belief while making comments about how delusional someone must be to be religious is what’s edgy.
I would counter that your pedantic hair splitting is what is truly edgy. “I don’t believe in god, but I don’t believe in not god” makes no semantic difference and is rather perfect fence sitting.
Okay buddy, you’ve convinced me. Gnostic atheism is much more reasonable and true than agnostic atheism. Saying “I don’t know and don’t much care” is so much edgier than naming yourself “sin free for 0 days” and claiming to know for an absolute fact that there is no god
That’s precisely what I’m saying. If you can’t prove that something is true, it’s weird to go to such lengths justifying an affirmative belief that it’s true, instead of taking the position that you simply don’t know and therefore don’t believe any claims made about it either way.
If you can’t say god doesn’t exist, you are willing to say anything is possible. I believe 100% the sun will rise in the East tomorrow morning. I guess with your reasoning, I shouldn’t discount the chance that the sun will rise from the horizon in which it set. We don’t know anything!
I mean we’ve repeatedly demonstrated tens of millions of times throughout human history that the sun rises in the east, we can verify that the earth spins eastward with instruments and spacecraft, and we have extremely reliable models of reality that give us good reason to authoritatively state that the sun will rise in the east.
I need you to understand that there are no models or experiments that give us reason to authoritatively state that no deity exists, as surely as the sun will rise in the east in the morning. It is entirely possible that a deity exists. I don’t believe there is one, but until it can be proven that there isn’t one with the same veracity as any other claim, the only reasonable position is “I don’t believe it.”
Lemme paint you a word picture here. Don’t pull out a calculator. If I tell you that 11,441,612 divided by 17 is equal to 673,036, is it most reasonable to say that “no, it definitely isn’t” because I just pulled those numbers out of my ass, “yes, it definitely is,” because you have faith in my quick math calculating, or “I don’t know, but almost certainly not?”
The big difference between that and a claim about a god is that you can easily pull out a calculator and definitely state whether or not it’s true, but you can’t make that authoritative claim until after you’ve checked it.
Just saying I love that this in depth discussion about truth and how to best dissect the whole is happening. Helps people to recognize this is a communication that needs to happen and what their own personal stance is. I like it
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