Neither a theist nor an atheist

As a follower of the middle path I consider myself to be neither a theist nor an atheist.
No I'm not agnostic either. I'm not undecided. I have decided and I choose neither.Sometimes the answer to a question is that it's the wrong question to ask.
Whats north of the North Pole? Whats 1/0? Have you stopped beating your wife?
Do you believe in an absolute moral standard that you must live up to to avoid hell or do you believe that you can lie and cheat and steal and do whatever you want without any consequences?A rational person could answer the question "do black people exist" with a yes or no but a rational person would not be able to answer the question "Do n-----s exist" with a yes or no. A bigot would not be able to understand why not and would keep insisting that the answer must be either yes or no.The difference between a black person and a n----- is that we see the latter as being all bad
The difference between poo and s--- is that we see the latter as being all bad. Good for nothing. Fit only for damnation.In reality nothing is all good or all bad. Even God would have a shadow, though many people, consciously or unconsciously, think otherwise.
(the difference between a God with a shadow and a God without a shadow might seem trivial but a little leaven leavens the whole)The concept of God, like the concept of n----, is such that its impossible to answer the question "does God exist" with a simple yes or no.The false dichotomy of atheism vs theism is like the false dichotomy of selfless vs selfish. Its all-or-nothing.
The middle path, on the other hand, is not all-or-nothing. It is cooperation vs competition.Mark 8:15 (NKJV)
15 Then He charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven (all-or-nothing thinking) of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
(i.e. all-or-nothing thinking is like an infectious disease or a computer virus)hypocrisy = υπόκρισις = under-judge = hidden judging
to judge someone is to see that person as either all good or all bad with nothing in betweenEmpiricism is certainly not wrong but, without rationalism, it is a shallow and incomplete world view. In the purely empirical world view, a person is seen as just a "collection of atoms" and since it is not morally wrong to use, abuse, or manipulate atoms to one's own ends it is, therefore, not thought morally wrong to use, abuse, or manipulate people to one's own ends. On the face of it, this almost seems reasonable. After all, we are indeed made entirely of atoms (or some other units that can be modeled mathematically). It fails, however, to take into account the complex emergent phenomena that make a human being so much more than "just atoms". Atoms don't have thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, or aspirations but people do. These emergent phenomena may not be empirically observable but they are immediately perceptible to intuition just as one can "hear" things that cannot be "seen".(Psychology is an emergent property of biology which is an emergent property of chemistry which is an emergent property of particle physics).Clearly, being "made of" something (for example atoms) is not the same as "being" something. But this brings up an even deeper issue. What does it mean to "be" something? In the purely empirical world view it doesn't mean anything. In the purely empirical world view names are arbitrary and meaningless labels. This is confusion. (I would compare this to believing that its OK to be a thief as long as you don't steal anything). Words are categories and the phenomenon of Convergent evolution clearly shows that those categories are neither arbitrary nor meaningless.People subscribing to the purely empirical world view think that since we are "just atoms" therefore everything is, as the saying goes, "all-good" and that therefore "anything goes". (Following this sort of reasoning if people are just atoms and eating atoms is okay then it would follow that eating people was okay, which is clearly absurd) This is an example of all-or-nothing thinking. It is certainly true that nothing is a "sin" (nothing is "all-bad") and that people should not be "judged" (because nobody is "all-bad" and therefore nobody deserves condemnation or rather "damnation") but it does not automatically follow that everyone and everything is all-good. That is the opposite mistake. Everything is definitely not all-good and anarchy is definitely not freedom. the only laws people were ever required to keep are the Noahide laws. If you keep those then you are righteous and that is all anybody needs to be.It is true that if you want to be Jewish then you do have to keep certain other laws but there is not now nor has there ever been any requirement that you be JewishNoahidism - WikipediaNoahidism is a Biblical-Talmudic and monotheistic ideology based on the Seven Laws of Noah, and on their traditional interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism. According to Jewish law, non-Jews are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : added link to ontologyEdited by granpa, : moved a parenthesisEdited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : moved a sentence from one paragraph to anotherEdited by granpa, : removed an unnecessary periodEdited by granpa, : Added image

your brain is divided into 3 main parts each of which is capable of thinking and acting autonomously:
Forebrain (CEO) decides what to do
Midbrain (input) decides when to do it
Cerebellum (output) decides how to do itthe cerebral cortex (forebrain) is CEO.
The forebrain is the source of imagination
You are the forebrain.
The midbrain and cerebellum are your helpers that take care of routine tasks so you can concentrate on more important things.
Most information goes straight from input to output bypassing the forebrain.the midbrain is input.
The midbrain has thousands of eyes and can raise the alarm when something needs attention
These alarms exert an irresistible all-powerful force upon you.
Fortunately for us the midbrain only wants what is best for us and never asks anything for itself.
These alarms are capable of giving us infinite power.
The midbrain is the true "sun" that lights up our mind.the cerebellum (hindbrain) is output.
The cerebellum has thousands of hands and can juggle thousands of things at once but has no clue "what" it is doing.
The cerebellum takes care of simple procedures so the forebrain can concentrate on more important issues.
It also helps the midbrain accomplish its tasks.
You point at the target and the cerebellum shoots.
(But sometimes it "misses the mark" that you set for it)When we fall from the garden we become disconnected from the midbrain and the cerebellum usurps many of its functionsEach of these 3 parts is likewise divided into an input, output, and CEO each of which is likewise divided into an input, output, and CEO.
This continues right down to the level of neurons.
As a result your brain is a city full of independent units (See HOW THE MIND WORKS by Steven Pinker), organized into a fractal pyramid, that are constantly talking back and forth, buying and selling, living and dying. Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : removing some redundant stuff to make it more readableEdited by granpa, : added some line breaks that somehow got removed

Thread copied here from the Neither a theist nor an atheist thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.You have quite a hodge podge of ideas and theories within this topic, but looking back I see that you have not had a topic to call your own, so I'll promote it and see where the conversation leads us.Edited by AdminPhat, : No reason given.

Depends on how you define "atheist". Literally, it means "not theist", so there is no middle ground. Agnostic doesn't mean you're undecided; it means you don't know. Strictly speaking nobody knows so everybody is agnostic.

that's like saying that since Republicans and Democrats are opposites that everything in existence including rocks and trees must be either a Republican or a Democrat.And first of all, you have to define GodEdited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : Fixed quote

So you're an ignostic.

This isn't an argument that's going anywhere unless you feel like torturing the definition of god which just becomes a tedious language game.There's only two positions; you either believe that there is a god or you don't. If you don't know, don't care or don't accept the question, you're an atheist.

You seem to start your message by contrasting the differences between theist and atheist and leads me to believe you're going to talk about those two things.Then your message starts talking about empiricism and rationalism.I'm not sure if these are two different topics, or the same thing using different words.
But, if you're trying to place a similarity between empiricism and atheism... there is none, and you're very wrong.Atheists do not think people have no meaning because they're "just atoms." Or anything like that.
Atheists give people lots of meaning... they just don't think that meaning comes from God.The only people who think other people have no meaning are sociopaths.
Atheists are not sociopaths Actually, people were never required to keep any laws except the ones we make up. It's good to know that they're all made up.
And no, keeping Noahide laws doesn't make you righteous... especially if you're keeping the laws only to "be righteous."Anyone and everyone is righteous as long as they don't hurt other people. It's as simple (and complicated...) as that.

No, atheists are not sociopaths and I didn't say they were.
I do, however, believe that both theists and atheists are infected with all or nothing thinking and that the only way to rid oneself of this infection is to find the middle pathOne of the seven laws of Noah is the requirement to have laws and set up a governing body of justice (e.g. courts)Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : No reason given.Edited by granpa, : Added quoteEdited by granpa, : Minor rewording and capitalization

The middle path?What's that? Believing in only some gods? Or believing in gods on even-numbered days and disbelieving on odd-numbered days?The whole idea sounds pretty silly.

I suppose the words in some dictionary allow reaching this conclusion about the term agnostic, but of course this usage is wrong. An agnostic is someone who believes that the answer to whether or not God exists is not answerable given the information at hand. An agnostic is not the proper term for everyone who has some level of uncertainty about the question.I'm not an agnostic by any reasonable definition, and neither are Faith, marc9000 or Phat.

The difference between the two terms is that your mom won't make you sit in the corner when you say "poo". Whatever positive or negative qualities poo has are the same when we call it caca, number 2, or anything else.I think even less of your example using the "n" word. So I'll leave that one alone.What is the purpose for finding a middle ground between atheism or theism? Do you think finding a middle ground is the way to get along with both groups?

However, you have failed to be clear on what is this "middle path". That doesn't make much sense, either. You seem to be describing a position at the extremes of materialism. So why do you call that "empiricism?"

I didnt call it empiricism. I called it the purely empirical world view (i.e. complete rejection of rationalism)Edited by granpa, : No reason given.

Actually, no. In pure empiricism the best you could do is say 'everything I have observed sufficiently closely has been made of atoms'. Unless the empiricist has observe all humans at the molecular scale they cannot claim that a person is 'seen' to be a 'collection of atoms'.A pure empiricists that reasons that since everything they've seen closely is made of atoms, and since the theory 'everything is made of atoms' produces a coherent explanation that explains new things and produces predicts etc, therefore we can expect that person x is made of atoms...would be using rationalism plus empiricism. Emergent properties are just as observable (if not more so) as molecular ones. So no, empiricists would not fail to take emergent phenomena into account. Indeed - the observation of phenomena is their characteristic!Have you confused empiricism with reductionism?What does any of this have to do with Nohadism and theism?