You can choose to believe 2+2=5.
You do not choose to believe 2+2=4.

“I already believe that there is a God. I don’t need more evidence, and there is no such thing as less evidence.”
—There is such a thing as NO evidence, however. And that’s what you have. Very scientific of you, by the way… to start with a conclusion and then selectively look for evidence to support your conclusion. Very tricky, and the exact opposite of how scientists arrive at truths. Good work.

Finally, I didn’t say that you were necessarily wrong about the two famous psychologists you mentioned, especially Watson. I was reflecting on the utter inconsequential nature of invoking their names on this topic. Watson’s view is outmoded and relatively empty as a means of prediction, as it is void theoretically. Skinner continued his practice to some extent, and for that reason is also quite dated. I am by no means a strict behaviorist, and I don’t see how you could have gotten that impression at all. I study animal cognition and learning theory, which is quite rich in theoretical positions, and still is perfectly congruent with the ideas that I’ve expressed.

BTW, Skinner was correct with respect to your limited critique of him. Operant conditioning is, along with Pavlovian conditioning, one of the major fields of research in animal learning theory.

Frank, it’s not even a fair fight when you’re arguing with me on issues that are not instrumental to my career. Why you decide to tread deep into my home territory without having even a half of a clue is beyond me. Get help.

Nevertheless, I can see that you have no interest in discussing your beliefs. That’s understandable, really, since religion can’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Ask one or two questions yourself and the whole facade might just crumble around you. Wouldn’t want that.

Just for the record, though, my bullshit argument was based on what you think, not me. You’re the one who said that you think Atheists go to purgatory. You provided the link to the explanation of purgatory. I just asked a couple questions regarding the inconsistency of the whole idea.

But whatever. You just go on espousing your beliefs while deriding anyone who questions them, since it’s obviously the only way that you can feel good about yourself.

Also incidentally, C.S.Lewis was an idiot. Why would purgatory exist because humans want it to? How could human desires create a plane of existence where our souls go after we die?

You don’t have to answer that. I know you don’t like talking about your beliefs.

As for the guys in the foxholes, reality exists outside of our experience. Just because you believe something is true doesn’t make it true.

We’re down to the “Golly, Frank, you’re fucking ignorant” stage of this stupid game, aren’t we?

Here’s an example for you (not that I think it will do any good):
Soldiers A, B, and C are in a foxhole.

At a safe distance away is soldier D, observing the whole scene.

A shell lands in the foxhole, and explodes. Soldier D observes a flash, hears a loud boom, and no longer sees soldier B.

Soldier A, stunned by the blast, loses all memory of the blast, and only remembers that a shell exploded, and all that was left of his buddy soldier B, was his combat boots.

Soldier D observes that soldier A saw the whole thing, but A is convinced that he was knocked unconscious by the explosion, and saw nothing.

Soldier C comes to his senses, and “remembers” that he saw soldier B blown to pieces. He is traumatized by the event, and has flashbacks and nightmares for the rest of his life, as therapist after therapist tries to convince him, per soldier D’s account, that he did not see soldier B blown to pieces.

Do A, C, and D believe what they saw?

Which one saw the reality of the situation?

Which one will act as if they observed the reality of the situation?

You see? Things happen, happen to me, happen in front of me, happen to people I know, happen to people known to people I know.

I choose which of those things are clear evidence of God’s existence, and which are not.

I’m not running around like a butterfly collector collecting evidence in a butterfly net. I already believe that there is a God. I don’t need more evidence, and there is no such thing as less evidence.

For the record:
Watson wrote in 1924:
Behaviorism … holds that the subject matter of human psychology is the behavior of the human being. Behaviorism claims that consciousness is neither a definite nor a usable concept…
… The behaviorist asks: Why don’t we make what we can observe the real field of psychology? Let us limit ourselves to things that can be observed, and formulate laws concerning only those things.

Skinner maintained that learning occurred as a result of the organism responding to, or operating on, its environment, and coined the term operant conditioning to describe this phenomenon.

MB: Is that so? You were quoting _me_ in italics before. And I felt so special…

That’s why it was in italics.

Care to try that again?

You’re just being argumentative, and in so doing, proving my original point — that atheists are just contrarians.

MB: Yes. So? I don’t happen to know how to process information so as to belive in God. Unless you can explain that to me I can’t meaningfully be said to be choosing not to believe. Compare: somewhere out there is a person who is continually sick because he doesn’t know he’s gluten intolerant. he can’t meaningfully be said to have chosen to be sick because he doesn’t have the information to relate the things he can choose (i.e., eating wheat products) to the condition to be modified.

Now of course very possibly you’ll be able to tell what worked for you, but on past experience of people trying that it’s unlikely to work for me because I’ll recognize it immediately as either illogical or dishonest. And call me wierd, but as a result of information I’ve been exposed to in the past, I tend spontaneously not to believe things when I’ve seen illogic or dishonesty go into the derivation of them.

As I said before, I directed people, via the link, to an explanation of what purgatory was for those that didn’t know.

I don’t care where you went, or what you found. Every time we get into these discussions, I get treated like the “Answer Man”: “How come this?” “How come that?”, and then you make up some bullshit argument based on what you think, for me to unravel for you.

Figure it out for yourselves. The crux of the discussion / argument / debate is, “Are atheists really saying anything or are they just cranky, anti - religious malcontents, who wish they would be taken seriously”?

I say the latter.

Incidentally, C.S. Lewis has proposed an idea which I share: His idea is that no one would want to approach God (in Heaven) in a less than perfect spiritual condition — much as one dresses up to visit company. They would, therefore, want to be “purged” of their imperfections (”purgatory”, get it?) before approaching the Heavenly Throne.

That makes more sense than, “We’re not done with you yet, buddy boy!”

But “mockularity” is so much more fun than understanding, isn’t it? It makes you feel superior, doesn’t it? Too bad there’s no other way for you to feel good about about your self.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of people: one takes information as it is handed to them, accepts it, and that’s the end of it. The other takes that information, has a question, investigates that question, which leads to another question, which they investigate, which leads to more questions… and so on. I am of the second type. (Incidentally, a quality that ultimately led me to Atheism.) So there was no way I wasn’t going to dig around on that site.

Now, with regard to Purgatory, I have a question. According to that site, there are two conditions of the souls in Purgatory. One is that they can no longer sin. The second is that “they are to be delivered.” So once a soul is in Purgatory, they can not sin and they will go to heaven. However, it is stated (in the Bible) that “he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.”

So, if an Atheist, who has spoken against the Holy Ghost, goes to Purgatory, are they going to end up in heaven? It says they can no longer sin, but they have already committed an unforgivable sin. Shouldn’t all Atheists, therefore, go to hell? Purgatory was invented because “some die with smaller faults for which there was no true repentance, and also the fact that the temporal penalty due to sin is [a]t times not wholly paid in this life.” So it’s basically a place for people to be punished after they die until the big guy decides they’ve had enough. How long would that be for someone who denies his existence?

What someone believes in entirely dependent on the information he encounters, and the way he processes that information

a. I believe it OR
b. I don’t believe it.

Your Skinnerian / Watsonian view of the world was outmoded and disproven — years ago.

Of course, there’s a huge difference between choosing to believe something despite all of the evidence against it and not believing because of the evidence against it.

“Of course” = I have no idea what that difference might be, or how to explain it, so I’ll just say ‘of course’.

MB: And I could care less about that.

FD: Mark: If you had a reason for bringing being gay into this, please don’t tell me. I enjoy the mystery.

MB: For others’ benefit, I had compared the gay closet to the atheist closet earlier in the thread, and so when you sarcastically invoked the common gay talking point “I was born that way!” (which as I say I don’t particularly endorse), I assumed you were reacting to it. Whether you were or not, it remains a useful comparison for reasons I tried to explain.

For him it was a choice, so he assumes for everyone it must have been a choice.

Of course, there’s a huge difference between choosing to believe something despite all of the evidence against it and not believing because of the evidence against it.

No, come on. Even you can realize that’s ridiculous. What someone believes in entirely dependent on the information he encounters, and the way he processes that information. It’s somewhat analogous to sexual orientation in that I couldn’t wake up tomorrow and decide that men are more sexually appealing to me. There’s no choice here, Frank.

Atheism isn’t a belief, why is it so hard to figure that out?

“Why do you pretend to be intelligent? You’re not fooling anyone, certainly not me.”

If you thought I was smart, I would be worried.

Hilarious. As if the concept of purgatory, a place where small-time non-believers go to be punsihed before they are forgiven, just makes so much freaking sense it was necesary to wonder anywhere on the site to find something to critique.

Of course, who knows if this holy truth will stay one for long, as apparently the pope decided that concept of limbo needed a little updating. Ah, the mysteries of god’s ever unfolding vision … as determined by man. How totally awesomely divine.

Well, I’m sorry to hear that.

Mark: If you had a reason for bringing being gay into this, please don’t tell me. I enjoy the mystery.

People choose to believe things — is that a radical concept?

CSS: The fact that people choose to believe things is just that — a fact.
Since I don’t have any hatred for atheists, there is no need to justify it.

CSS: Why do you pretend to be intelligent? You’re not fooling anyone, certainly not me.

If that’s what you have to believe to justify your hatred, so be it. We’ll just add it to the list of things you are wrong about.

No, really, I didn’t choose it. The very concept choosing to believe or not is incomprehensible to me, and precisely because of that, I _couldn’t_ have chosen not to believe. If your theology requires that I chose it, so that me being thrown to the fires of hell or whatever for not believing is just, then your theology is simply wrong.

Also, now that you mention it, while I am gay (in the sense of exclusively same-sex attracted), I don’t claim to have been “born that way”, and I think other gay people are being sloppy when they say such things. For all I know, I could be gay because of a vitamin deficiency in infancy or having been shown scary pictures of penguins as an impressionable child. The only thing that I _know_ is that being gay manifested itself full-force and fully formed at the earliest moment it sensibly could have, i.e., puberty, and that it’s a totally spontaneous reaction to some people and not others. That is, it’s rather like believing which is a spontaneous reaction to some ideas and not others. And again, if that doesn’t suit your theology, then too bad - your theology is simply wrong.