Atheism

[Alcadizzar19]

Maybe I am using the term atheist slightly incorrectly. However, I think that it is unfair to say it takes an equal amount of faith to have belief in the existence of something as the default position of disbelief. Think about how you interpret the rest of the universe, is there ANYTHING else where the default position is to believe something exists? ANY other claim such as the claim for intelligent life, the claim the the earth is round, or anything else takes the default position of disbelief followed by the testing of that belief.

I would argue that for the existence of anything you first assume the null hypothesis, that it does not exist and then you seek to disprove the null hypothesis.

That is certainly your default position, and it is one that works for many (if not all) empirical questions of survival. Assuming a new food is poison, rather than edible, or that someone you see for the first time is a danger, rather than a friend, is quite practical. But don't think that this default disbelief in things is natural for everyone, or is necessarily a good for everyone either simply because it is where we have ended up.

There is a possible world where the default position is to believe everything, and then test for converses; it's a possible world because we can create a rational framework for such a method of science (I just outlined it, its belief and then testing to see if that belief holds true rather than the opposite {which is the one we hold best}) and such a framework is held out by the actual existence of people who are naturally or defaultly credulous. A cynical person would call them gullible.

I, by default, believe that my house will be standing when I get home from work today, this frees me from constant worry and stress (which is a negative thing in a life) and there are people who do otherwise, we all know constant worriers who are in constant fear that their lives will be upended at all times and therefore run themselves ragged. I, by default, believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning but it will not be empirically tested until tomorrow. I assume it will because it did yesterday and I understand entropy won't accumulate far enough for natural death for many billions of years, but past performance and theoretical models are certainly not indicators of rock-solid future performance.

tl;dr
Don't project that the way you see the world and the way you think of how to go about living is just natural and right.

 

[moscal]

Given that atheism literally means a lack of belief saying that it is a faith is tautologist. Yes we all have faith that the world as we experience it is real, that red is red, that we do actually exist... but past these few very basic assumptions atheism doesn't take anything on 'faith alone' and the only reason many atheists have faith that reality is real is that to believe otherwise would make living in the reality that we may or may not actually be experiencing impossible

Catholics and Protestants also use Occam's razor

 

[Maraxus]

There should be an event, if you are an unreformed Norse and there's some Christian (or possibly any organized religion) around you, you may get an event where he asks you "What do you believe in?" and you can talk about Odin for some piety or, if you are non-zealous "I believe in my own strength" to turn some piety into prestige, or if you are cynical "I believe in my strength and nothing else" to turn some more piety and church opinion into prestige and a temporary martial bonus.

And that's as far as atheism goes.

 

[Ceranai]

That is certainly your default position, and it is one that works for many (if not all) empirical questions of survival. Assuming a new food is poison, rather than edible, or that someone you see for the first time is a danger, rather than a friend, is quite practical. But don't think that this default disbelief in things is natural for everyone, or is necessarily a good for everyone either simply because it is where we have ended up.

There is a possible world where the default position is to believe everything, and then test for converses; it's a possible world because we can create a rational framework for such a method of science (I just outlined it, its belief and then testing to see if that belief holds true rather than the opposite {which is the one we hold best}) and such a framework is held out by the actual existence of people who are naturally or defaultly credulous. A cynical person would call them gullible.

I, by default, believe that my house will be standing when I get home from work today, this frees me from constant worry and stress (which is a negative thing in a life) and there are people who do otherwise, we all know constant worriers who are in constant fear that their lives will be upended at all times and therefore run themselves ragged. I, by default, believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning but it will not be empirically tested until tomorrow. I assume it will because it did yesterday and I understand entropy won't accumulate far enough for natural death for many billions of years, but past performance and theoretical models are certainly not indicators of rock-solid future performance.

tl;dr
Don't project that the way you see the world and the way you think of how to go about living is just natural and right.

There is good evidence that your house will be there when you get home and that the sun will rise tomorrow so you aren't taking it on faith alone. The problem with taking belief as the default position is that there are many things that cant be shown or even tested at all. If belief is your default position then you should believe absolutely everything unless you have reason to disbelieve it. You should believe in unicorns and in dwarves and in elves and in dragons and in ghosts and in Allah and in Krishna and in the force and if I tell you that there is a teacup orbiting the sun you should believe that too. You should believe everything and anything anyone tells you until they have been shown to be wrong or until you have strong reason to reject the claim.

Believing everything is logically flawed because you will believe things that clearly contradict each other. For example in the bible Matthew and Luke both give different fathers to Joseph, Matthew claims that Joseph's father was Jacob and Luke claims that his father was Heli. If your default position is belief then this gives him two fathers. This can also be applied to religions as a whole: you should be a believer of every religion if your default position is to believe everything. It isnt just about being an optimist vs being a pessimist as you seem to be making out.

The fact is that you DONT believe everything, no-one can, its impossible. However, you have made an exception for the existence of God, by default you dont believe in the unprovable, unless you want to say you believe in Jedi in a galaxy far far away. It is why in science the default position when you are trying to prove something is to act as if it is not true. Even if you are trying to prove that a miracle drug works you design your tests in such a way that you assume it doesnt, then if your results can't be explained you reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between people treated with the drug and those in the control group. You never PROVE that the drug DOES work. This methodology means that if your tests do not show anything conclusively you assume that the drug was a failure.

Can you imagine what hospitals would be like if drugs were approved for use as long as you couldnt prove they DONT work or that they DONT kill people. Every few months we would get another disaster where the drug that in trials couldnt be proved was killing patients but it turns out it actually was.

 

[Alcadizzar19]

There is good evidence that your house will be there when you get home and that the sun will rise tomorrow so you aren't taking it on faith alone. The problem with taking belief as the default position is that there are many things that cant be shown or even tested at all. If belief is your default position then you should believe absolutely everything unless you have reason to disbelieve it. You should believe in unicorns and in dwarves and in elves and in dragons and in ghosts and in Allah and in Krishna and in the force and if I tell you that there is a teacup orbiting the sun you should believe that too. You should believe everything and anything anyone tells you until they have been shown to be wrong or until you have strong reason to reject the claim.

Believing everything is logically flawed because you will believe things that clearly contradict each other. For example in the bible Matthew and Luke both give different fathers to Joseph, Matthew claims that Joseph's father was Jacob and Luke claims that his father was Heli. If your default position is belief then this gives him two fathers. This can also be applied to religions as a whole: you should be a believer of every religion if your default position is to believe everything. It isnt just about being an optimist vs being a pessimist as you seem to be making out.

The fact is that you DONT believe everything, no-one can, its impossible. However, you have made an exception for the existence of God, by default you dont believe in the unprovable, unless you want to say you believe in Jedi in a galaxy far far away. It is why in science the default position when you are trying to prove something is to act as if it is not true. Even if you are trying to prove that a miracle drug works you design your tests in such a way that you assume it doesnt, then if your results can't be explained you reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between people treated with the drug and those in the control group. You never PROVE that the drug DOES work. This methodology means that if your tests do not show anything conclusively you assume that the drug was a failure.

Can you imagine what hospitals would be like if drugs were approved for use as long as you couldnt prove they DONT work or that they DONT kill people. Every few months we would get another disaster where the drug that in trials couldnt be proved was killing patients but it turns out it actually was.

My response supposes your model of evidence is based on hard empiricism, since that's usually the case with a skeptic. If it isn't, I apologize.

1. There is no hard, empirical evidence that my house is standing when I am not observing it. There is no hard, empirical evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow because past performance is never an indicator of future performance. That's just how empiricism works. If you can't observe it, there is no evidence at all for it. It may make sense (as my security company has not informed me of a fire and it is intuitive that tomorrow should come) but just because something makes intuitive sense doesn't mean that it follows epistemological rigor. It's broadly called the problem of induction, it's inherent in philosophy and it's going nowhere.

2. I did not say I believed everything nor did I advocate that such a worldview would be a good, I said it is possible to construct a model of testing, a scientific method, where the default position is belief and then you test your belief to see if it holds up or not. This was to show you that the scientific method we have was not and is not an inevitability of thought. To that end I'm not going to write about the particular counterexamples you bring up about medical tests or others, because I never proposed I held to such a model or that it would be a better model than the one we use now.
2.5 Ideally the scientific method we have is dispassionate anyway, neither believing nor disbelieving. Skeptical without taking any side, unfortunately our language has move to a point where "skeptic" somehow means "doubter" rather than "no opinion as of yet." Alas, the word "literally" has also been assigned the definition of "figuratively" in the Oxford dictionary so I think this is a losing struggle of mine.

3. Your characterization of my possible testing system as necessarily believing in all religious claims forever is flawed. A person would believe in a pantheon, take steps to see if the pantheon responded in the way the pantheon's clerics stated they would and if they did not, the person would find a different pantheon and repeat. A state of all-belief could only be held in regards to a belief system that denies an absolute, exclusive, truth anyway. Any number of belief systems are very exclusive, it is cognitive dissonance of the highest order to believe in multiple contradictory points at the same time.

4. I am having difficulty with your statements that "you assume it doesn't" or "you try and disprove your own ideas" in a scientific enquiry because I have never met a person who advanced a hypothesis and then proceeded to self-deprecate their own ideas, that's what peer review is for. I'll use the word "think" rather than "believe" here, but you could easily put believe in the next point: A person advances a hypothesis that they think is the correct answer and then testing occurs. No one advances a hypothesis that they think is not the answer.

5. The genealogy of Jesus is a subject of much debate, so I'm not taking any point but St Paul's writings, which we have the oldest extant writings from a New Testament book of, don't mention Mary by name and don't even refer to Joseph. So gospels, each of which often reference different events and (we propose) were written for different audiences to tackle a subject in different forms of genre, are certainly not going to be something I'm going to put my pen to.

I think that covers what I wanted it to cover but it's still widely off-topic to the OP. Which I imagine he wanted in the first place.

 

[vyshan]

This thread should be moved to the OT forum.

 

[Dr Gonzo]

@Ceranai I think my own belief is quite similar to yours but I would express it a little differently. If it helps I tend to call myself 'functionally atheist'.. By this I mean that I act and think at all times in a manner consistent with there being no gods, afterlife, ghosts etc. but recognise that in fact @moscal is also mostly right.

God being, pretty much by definition, an unfalsifiable hypothesis, cannot be ruled out. An omnipotent being would clearly be able to create and maintain the world I perceive and just as Elon Musk was recently talking about, we could easily be living in an computer generated world right now. Following this line of argument further I quickly discover that in fact I know of no way to prove the reality of my subjective existence, save, "cogito ergo sum*", and thus must take everything else on differing levels of faith. This would then make me an agnostic, but this is a meaningless statement where I am agnostic about everything except my own existence.
*"I think, therefore I am"

From this standpoint it becomes clear that whether God exists is in fact a highly subjective question. Within the universe I perceive, I see no evidence of the supernatural and act accordingly. Others act differently but given that I cannot prove whether the supernatural exists I cannot tell them they are wrong, simply that the balance of probabilities would seem to suggest it.

People's belief systems tend by their nature to be self reinforcing (Dawkins meme idea is still a good one) and so someone whose mindset is built around the expectation of gods or spirits affecting their life will see them everywhere. I will not and I will look for other explanations, but I will seek them from within the rational empirical base of knowledge built up through science. By finding them I reinforce my own belief in the fact that things have rational explanations. This way of filtering the world according to personal expectations means that you and I could look at the same scene and see completely different things.

So, the default position for any given individual is the product of many factors but ultimately is dependent on their own personal world view. For many people the default position on this is theism of one kind of another, and this is why atheists are called to justify themselves for a lack of belief in a way that believers almost never are. Being brought up in a theist society will leave many people with an unexamined view that theism is the only thing that makes sense and so this will often be the default position.

So should I call myself an atheist? I believe yes. But for political rather than philosophical reasons. At this time I believe it is important that we continue to use the label even where we acknowledge personally that we cannot disprove God in order to demonstrate our existence as a group within society that deserves representation and consideration. I believe the term agnostic should be left to those who are true agnostics, e.g. those who would pray, "just in case". For those of us who treat the world as if God does not exist, for all that we can't prove it, and believe that religion should not form a part of public policy, it is important that we stand together and having a common term for those who don't believe is a good thing. I think moscal's reading of the definition is overnice and we should stand up and call ourselves atheists. Disbelief should not have a doctrine.

TL;DR Yes I might be a brain in a jar that a butterfly is dreaming about, but I may as well act like I'm real since I see no evidence otherwise. Likewise why believe in God with no evidence? Just because I can't disprove God's existence doesn't make me not an atheist. It is the act of behaving as if there is no God which makes me an atheist not the niceties of my philosophy.

 

[Dr Gonzo]

OT: I agree the cynical trait essentially represents atheism in the game. Hence why you pick it up for rejecting priestly requests etc. Religion in game is more of a societal-cultural factor than about actual personal religiosity.

 

[Adaption]

Firstly, I think that cynical fits the description very well, secondly I don't think that Atheism fits within the Political-Spiritual Framework of the times.

Indeed, there were actually Atheists, to a certain degree - specifically I remember that an Atheistic sect around India was involved in the Mughal House of Learning, and participated in the Mughal Sultan's infamous religious debates. However, when we look at the Western European Mechanics which all houses and states are build around in CK2, there really isn't a function for Atheism. I like to think of Protestantism as the Secularisation of Christianity, because it detached itself from the Pope, who is sort of seen as the authority of the time, of most of Europe's Christians. It allowed for further secularisation of all things, especially after the Treaty of Westphalia and the diminishment of Monarchies and the role of religion in politics in exchange for a more universal humanist view. Like others who have posted have said, Atheism wasn't a power-player in Medieval times.
Certainly, I'd speculate that it might be like Game of Thrones, where you have a lot of lip-service by the cynical lords, but with evidence of people who are really into their faiths, but I would say that its more like the show Vikings, in how people take their religious values seriously, and their religion in turn determines how they see the world. (If you've seen the show or generally like Historically based drama, re/watch and see the episodes and scenes with Aethelstan who is seduced by both Norse and Catholic faiths, and how he sees the world through those belief systems.)

Lets say you were the King of Bavaria, "Hallo, I am King Hans von Munich"
Now you, my King have decided, "You know what, court of knights, gentry, priests, Papal Ambassador, yes hello Holy Brother, oh and my Court Jew, Samuel, how's it hanging Sam?"
"'The vineyards, my Lord? I written to your Steward, and it seems that the harve-"
"Okay! Great! Very Good, okay, so as I was saying, I was just reading my Bible, which was difficult, mind you because my Father, Hugo the Strong, thought that reading was for snivelling priests, when a real man was out hunting and falconing and learning to ride, anyways, so I've read through the Bible, written down a list of inconsistencies since I was having some doubts beforehand and without asking anyone experienced in matters of faith, I have decided that God is dead. I am no longer a Christian, despite my sons being baptised, they won't be Christians either.
*A priest walks out from the crowd of shocked and muttering nobles and ladies* "My Lord, you would let you and your family be damned by turning to the Godless heathens of the Saracens and Moors and other sons of the devil!?" *he points angrily to Samuel HaYehudi HaChetzar*
"What? No, despite the great strength and ferocity of the Mohammedans and I bet converting would get me some hefty favours with them, I do not believe in god, send this to the four corners of the Kingdom, "God is Dead".

It should perhaps be the right time to explain the Conversions of the Kievan Rus and the Khazars. Both of them converted to Abrahamic Religions, as Abrahamic religions were encroaching closer and closer to their Pagan Empires. The Kievan Rus, converted to Greek Christianity, when Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam were also discussed with him, as it's famously retold, the King of the Kievan Rus, Vladimir the Great, first chose Judaism, but did not accept conversion because the Jews did not have a home or Kingdom of their own, then he chose Islam, but upon hearing the abstention of alcohol, he said, "Drink is the joy of the Russian." and so he chose Greek Christianity, and married and Byzantine Princess, cementing ties with the Roman Empire, and solidifying a Orthodox Christian sphere of influence within the east Slavic people which exists today. The Khazars, were quite similar, it is suggested that they converted to Judaism, as a way to negate the foreign influence of Byzantine Christianity, and Sunni Islam, to provide a formalised faith that was independent from the Patriarch and the Caliph, and showed no factionalist support to the Christian, Tengri and Muslim elements in the Kingdom. But, lets get back to King Hans a year later.

"My King, ever since your... bold proclamation, we have many things to discuss regarding the Kingdom."
"Ah! Steward, due to the changes to our Federal state, I have changed the crown into a small hat with a short, round brim, named after it, I call it the "Fedora."
"Very good, my King, firstly, regarding the treasury. When your highness revoked the privileges of the Church, you gained many riches and lands, however, the Papal Ambassador who left angrily from your court has reported to the Pope, and the Pope has declared you an enemy of God's Church, who has forsaken our saviour-"
"Our 'Saviour', Steward?"
"Apologies my king, 'his saviour' and has pillaged his holy places and oppressed his believers. Our neighbours are encroaching upon our territories, with the intent to conquer us using the declaration of the Pope to back their claims on your ancestral lands."
"Call the banners, Steward! This cannot stand!"
"My Lord, your Marshal has already called the banners to go against the invaders, but unfortunately since the priests left or built their own parishes, they have been obstinate against us, and we no longer have their administration or access to their records of how much wealth or men to call upon. Infact, I have a report from the Marshal, who appears to be having hardship, it seems that some of his soldiers have fled, or turned against him, as the Duke of Milan had his Bishop read out the declaration, that all who serve you will be excommunicated and their souls not be saved."
"Psh, if only they would see reason, send a message to all the Kingdoms who believe that God is Dead, and have them send aid to us."
"Of course your highness, already I have sent riders with fresh horses to every single Kingdom that might assist us in a sense of brotherhood."

*A noise comes from outside the hall, a company of knights and the Kings younger brother, Fredrick burst in!*
"Damned Brother, I have come to take my birthright which you have forsaken and squandered!
"Fred, the hell are you doing here?! You should be fighting the damn Duke of Milan."
"No brother, I have come to take my rightful place, as King of Bavaria! It is my divine right to rule, since you have decided the forsake the Lord!"
"It's not your kingdom, Fred, you didn't inherit it, I did!"
"But it is, Brother, for I, and all good Bavarian Christians, believe in our Saviour, and know that it is God's rightful plan that a true Christian of God's Church rule his people. Now, surrender, by the grace of God, and we shall not harm you."
"Damn you, Fredrick! You cannot stop me, for I am King, and I say so! I will fight you all alone, the only Atheist in all of Allemania!"
*One of the Knights stabs King Hans in the shoulder*
"Ouch! Jesus Christ that hurt!"

 

[Urzhail64]

Because science and philosophy hadn't progressed to the point where Man started questioning the existence of a higher being at that time.

 

[Ceranai]

My response supposes your model of evidence is based on hard empiricism, since that's usually the case with a skeptic. If it isn't, I apologize.

1. There is no hard, empirical evidence that my house is standing when I am not observing it. There is no hard, empirical evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow because past performance is never an indicator of future performance. That's just how empiricism works. If you can't observe it, there is no evidence at all for it. It may make sense (as my security company has not informed me of a fire and it is intuitive that tomorrow should come) but just because something makes intuitive sense doesn't mean that it follows epistemological rigor. It's broadly called the problem of induction, it's inherent in philosophy and it's going nowhere.

2. I did not say I believed everything nor did I advocate that such a worldview would be a good, I said it is possible to construct a model of testing, a scientific method, where the default position is belief and then you test your belief to see if it holds up or not. This was to show you that the scientific method we have was not and is not an inevitability of thought. To that end I'm not going to write about the particular counterexamples you bring up about medical tests or others, because I never proposed I held to such a model or that it would be a better model than the one we use now.
2.5 Ideally the scientific method we have is dispassionate anyway, neither believing nor disbelieving. Skeptical without taking any side, unfortunately our language has move to a point where "skeptic" somehow means "doubter" rather than "no opinion as of yet." Alas, the word "literally" has also been assigned the definition of "figuratively" in the Oxford dictionary so I think this is a losing struggle of mine.

3. Your characterization of my possible testing system as necessarily believing in all religious claims forever is flawed. A person would believe in a pantheon, take steps to see if the pantheon responded in the way the pantheon's clerics stated they would and if they did not, the person would find a different pantheon and repeat. A state of all-belief could only be held in regards to a belief system that denies an absolute, exclusive, truth anyway. Any number of belief systems are very exclusive, it is cognitive dissonance of the highest order to believe in multiple contradictory points at the same time.

4. I am having difficulty with your statements that "you assume it doesn't" or "you try and disprove your own ideas" in a scientific enquiry because I have never met a person who advanced a hypothesis and then proceeded to self-deprecate their own ideas, that's what peer review is for. I'll use the word "think" rather than "believe" here, but you could easily put believe in the next point: A person advances a hypothesis that they think is the correct answer and then testing occurs. No one advances a hypothesis that they think is not the answer.

5. The genealogy of Jesus is a subject of much debate, so I'm not taking any point but St Paul's writings, which we have the oldest extant writings from a New Testament book of, don't mention Mary by name and don't even refer to Joseph. So gospels, each of which often reference different events and (we propose) were written for different audiences to tackle a subject in different forms of genre, are certainly not going to be something I'm going to put my pen to.

I think that covers what I wanted it to cover but it's still widely off-topic to the OP. Which I imagine he wanted in the first place.

Its been a long time since Ive had a debate about theism/religion but I think its always a good thing to encourage open and honest debate.

In regards to 4- In statistical analysis of data you will find that there are two competing hypotheses. In order to determine if the result you have is due to chance or not you must first consider what your result would be if there is NO difference between treatments. If the medicine or w/e you are testing is tic tacs. The null hypothesis is therefore that there is no difference between the treatment group and the test group. You apply statistical tests which then tell you how likely it is that the result you got is purely due to chance. Generally we take things that have a p value of less than 0.05 to be significant and REJECT the null hypothesis. A value of 0.05 or less means that it is only 5% likely that your results are due to chance and that therefore it is likely that there IS a significant difference between the treatment group and the control group.

I cant really explain it better than wikipedia so Ill just quote that here:
The "null hypothesis" usually refers to a general statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or no association among groups. Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis—and thus concluding that there are grounds for believing that there is a relationship between two phenomena (e.g. that a potential treatment has a measurable effect)—is a central task in the modern practice of science, and gives a precise criterion for rejecting a hypothesis. The null hypothesis is generally assumed to be true until evidence indicates otherwise.

There IS an alternate hypothesis approach that is then compared to the null hypothesis (its basically the opposite, what you hope to prove) and you see which hypothesis explains the data better. The point being that you start off your testing and statistical analysis from a position of disbelief. I guess this isnt really that applicable to God because hypothesis testing can only really occur when you have data to test in the first place.

I guess the question is have you been intellectually honest with yourself in taking the same approach to God as to everything else? If your default position for belief is to believe in something without evidence for its existence then why do you not believe in all the Gods and all the unprovable claims out there. If your default position is to not believe in something without evidence for its existence then what criteria has any one God (assuming christianity) met that is sufficient to prove its existence that the rest of the gods have not?

 

[Rags17]

Atheism wasn't a political force during the game's time period.

Neither was Zoroastrianism, or Romuva or Suomenusko for that matter - so what ? This is a game of possibilities, if someone wants to create a Lollard Europe then they can (try to) do it, same goes for a Norse India, Aztec Ireland or Islamic theocracy of Finland. I really can't see why this idea is so violently opposed.

I personally have no interest in seeing it added, nor do I have any interest in a more fleshed out Hellenic or generic Pagan religion, I just raised the point that if someone wanted to add new worldviews, maybe just so they could screw it up (see above re Aztecs, Norse or Reformed Romuva) then they could. Again, why does no one have any problem with creating the Aztec Islamic Caliphate of Lithuania but not of the Secular Kingdom of Man ?

None of that follows. Western universities were created by monastic orders, and the Imperial University of Constantinople is centuries old when the game starts. Thoroughly Christian Byzantium was also the inventor of civilian hospitals and the leader in medicine.

Islamic Universities weren't, neither were Indian seats of learning, so what ?

 

[DukeDayve]

The really simple answer to this thread is... because almost everybody was religious to some extent in the CK2 times (and also before it). I'm sure there were people who had their doubts, but I'm willing to bet they were very few and I'm very willing to bet they would never admit it due to the fact that they would most likely be killed. Or maybe at best they would be simply treated as a freak and nobody in their village would speak to them.

People in those days just didn't have the knowledge to be Atheist. They had no idea about evolution, they probably had no idea that there are trillions of stars just like our own and trillions of trillions of planets. Most people couldn't even read or write.

 

[Alcadizzar19]

I guess the question is have you been intellectually honest with yourself in taking the same approach to God as to everything else? If your default position for belief is to believe in something without evidence for its existence then why do you not believe in all the Gods and all the unprovable claims out there. If your default position is to not believe in something without evidence for its existence then what criteria has any one God (assuming christianity) met that is sufficient to prove its existence that the rest of the gods have not?

I sincerely believe that I have considered the question of divinity with the same rigor I have my other beliefs. You probably would not agree though since I have a different conclusion than you, and at the risk of putting words in your mouth, it's unlikely you'd accept that the things I consider "evidence" actually are. It has been a large set of arguments and data, some quite subjective so it would feel academically dishonest to bring up any of it, but I've come to the conclusion the existence of some divinity is more likely than not, and within that the claims of Christianity have been the most compelling. So I guess there's not much else, have a nice day before the thread is moved or locked.

 

[Ceranai]

I sincerely believe that I have considered the question of divinity with the same rigor I have my other beliefs. You probably would not agree though since I have a different conclusion than you, and at the risk of putting words in your mouth, it's unlikely you'd accept that the things I consider "evidence" actually are. It has been a large set of arguments and data, some quite subjective so it would feel academically dishonest to bring up any of it, but I've come to the conclusion the existence of some divinity is more likely than not, and within that the claims of Christianity have been the most compelling. So I guess there's not much else, have a nice day before the thread is moved or locked.

Im surprised it hasnt been already. I guess everyone has been polite and civil so its not that bad

I most likely wouldnt agree with the things you call evidence, but Im not trying to convert you, my point was really that it takes less evidence to accept the null hypothesis than to reject it, therefore the original comment I was replying to that being an atheist takes as much 'faith' as being a theist isnt really fair as you yourself acknowledged that a lot of the evidence you have used to come to your conclusion is subjective.

 

[AjayAlcos]

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/atheism
"Disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods"

English isn't my native speaker, but i know. Atheism = null skepticism. 100% convinced that their faith is based on the truth (rational, empirical, sensual, etc.). All others are based on superstitions. Sorry, but rationalism works in religions. Thoma de Aquino or William of Occam in west world. Occam's razor is a very rational principle. Problem is that rationality is not objective - brain work based on biochemia and electricity; "Ratio" work based on experiences in the past etc. Rational thought for a representative of the leisure class it could be something completely different than the representative of the working class. For someone who was born in New York, the idea of X (for the New Yorker rational) can be for resident Tokyo irrational. Whose "rational principles" are better and why?

Sorry, but "truth" and "ratio" is relative. "Rational principle" is nothing. The ancient skeptics or eleatics who did not give faith to anything (even the existence of time, movement, humans, society or change), they have like you "Rational principle". Why do they disbelief in the movement is worse than your faith in the movement?

I'm extremely lost as to what exactly your trying to articulate in regard to the point I set previously, so I will try to be curt with this statement. Rationality and Irrationality are indeed embedded in all systems whether philosophical, religious, social, economic political and many others. However your seeming disregard for the long-established concept of the "principle of rationality" from my point of view is extremely unorthodox and alien towards my own mind of thought; hence I do ask for your pardon if I may seem somewhat bewildered in my typing. In reply to statement, let us take the "feeding of the 5,000" and/or the "feeding of the 4,000" as an example. Both these events (should it be taken into account that they were in fact separate) according to Christian canon are considered "miracles" simply due to the fact the Christ along with his disciples managed to divide 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish amongst all 5,000/4,000 followers. On the other-hand, if one were to look through a thoroughly "Aristotelian" lense using the principle of rationality; these comeuppance of these two events can simply be described as a skilled redistribution of a meagre food stock of food amongst a large mass of people.

On further notes as to what you've written, I find little to no instance in which I can disagree with your reasoning. However I have perceived it to be more in line with describing the fundamental of "rational irrationality" in which variables construe the ability to pursue rational thought and analysis which thus causes logical thoughts and actions to become illogical at the same time (e.g. doublethink) (for example "how do you fix the broken half of a vase without breaking the other); or to state in a somewhat more succinct manner, the concept that all things are contradictory in nature simply because a positive and a negative cannot exist without the other. I also perceived (and I hope I am not mistaken) that you've touched upon the basic limits of human perception in that it is by its own nature, inherently flawed and thus cannot be absolutely relied upon. On the whole however, theological schools which were once considered schools of rational thought are in this modern age no longer really considered such from a scientific perspective, simply due to the data and discoveries which have been since which have shed new light and information (specifically provable evidence) to both disprove and replace what was once considered to be "fact". For instance, the rings of Saturn are no longer considered to be the foreskin of you know who...

 

[Rationalsanity]

Neither was Zoroastrianism, or Romuva or Suomenusko for that matter - so what ? This is a game of possibilities, if someone wants to create a Lollard Europe then they can (try to) do it, same goes for a Norse India, Aztec Ireland or Islamic theocracy of Finland. I really can't see why this idea is so violently opposed.

I personally have no interest in seeing it added, nor do I have any interest in a more fleshed out Hellenic or generic Pagan religion, I just raised the point that if someone wanted to add new worldviews, maybe just so they could screw it up (see above re Aztecs, Norse or Reformed Romuva) then they could. Again, why does no one have any problem with creating the Aztec Islamic Caliphate of Lithuania but not of the Secular Kingdom of Man ?

All three of those faiths had localized influence for portions of the time period. Atheism wasn't even conceptualized as a political factor.

 

[Alcadizzar19]

Im surprised it hasnt been already. I guess everyone has been polite and civil so its not that bad

I most likely wouldnt agree with the things you call evidence, but Im not trying to convert you, my point was really that it takes less evidence to accept the null hypothesis than to reject it, therefore the original comment I was replying to that being an atheist takes as much 'faith' as being a theist isnt really fair as you yourself acknowledged that a lot of the evidence you have used to come to your conclusion is subjective.

I believe the person who asserted that was the quasi-illiterate Slav.

My initial problem was with your assertion that the way you understand how to do testing was natural and intuitive and a necessary good. And we've kinda snowballed.

 

[Helios Panoptes]

I'm not opposed to a Atheist 'religion' in theory, but I am opposed to the magical atheism where just saying "i don't believe in god" suddenly grants you super-science powers and makes you a modern 21st century humanist spreading your Light of Reason among the retarded folk of the past.

Disbelief in deities ain't gonna invent glass-grinding to let you discover germ theory.

 

[Rags17]

The really simple answer to this thread is... because almost everybody was religious to some extent in the CK2 times (and also before it). I'm sure there were people who had their doubts, but I'm willing to bet they were very few and I'm very willing to bet they would never admit it due to the fact that they would most likely be killed. Or maybe at best they would be simply treated as a freak and nobody in their village would speak to them.

People in those days just didn't have the knowledge to be Atheist. They had no idea about evolution, they probably had no idea that there are trillions of stars just like our own and trillions of trillions of planets. Most people couldn't even read or write.

All three of those faiths had localized influence for portions of the time period. Atheism wasn't even conceptualized as a political factor.

From the Wikipedia article on the History of Atheism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_atheism#The_Middle_Ages

"In medieval Islam, Muslim scholars recognized the idea of atheism and frequently attacked unbelievers, although they were unable to name any atheists. When individuals were accused of atheism, they were usually viewed as heretics rather than proponents of atheism. However, outspoken rationalists and atheists existed, one notable figure being the ninth-century scholar Ibn al-Rawandi, who criticized the notion of religious prophecy, including that of Muhammad, and maintained that religious dogmas were not acceptable to reason and must be rejected. Other critics of religion in the Islamic world include the physician and philosopher Abu Bakr al-Razi (865–925), the poet Al-Maʿarri (973–1057), and the scholar Abu Isa al-Warraq (fl. 9th century). Al-Maʿarri, for example, wrote and taught that religion itself was a "fable invented by the ancients" and that humans were "of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains."

I am dead certain that similar individuals existed in the Christian world, even if they kept their views to themselves or just their closest friends and family.

Again, if you are okay with the medieval world being conquered by a devout Hellenic or a Reformed Germanic the I see no reason why you should have any problem with it being conquered by an ahead-of-his-time Hrafnkell or Al-Maʿarri.

Again, to me the thought of trying to create a realm based on pure reason and then being violently suppressed has a sort of tragic romanticism about it - perhaps our ethical tracts will be rediscovered in time to fire up the Renaissance and Reformation hundreds of years later . . .

In fact, I reckon this would be a great mod - a new religion that EVERYONE could Holy War and that offers no great advantages apart from maybe greater technology gain and the ability of secular leaders to control "temples" or whatever these things get renamed to. I'd play that !