Dennett lost me with the bullshit about "Brights" and Dawkins is sometimes just too shrill. I hadn't read that Sam Harris piece before, but I can scarcely imagine a more convincing assessment of the utter absurdity of religious faith.
Not smarter. People have faith, or they don't. The people without faith have no more absolute evidence than those with. I may not have strong faith, but one of the most intelligent people I know is a priest with strong faith.
Everyone has their own relationship with the mysteries and questions of the world.
i know lots of clever theists, some of whom take a questioning approach but still believe in a supernatural power.
many i've met have a faith-based approach - they simply know or believe or feel or whatever.
my impression is that some exceptionally clever and focused people rely almost exclusively on faith because it allows them to concentrate their mental energy on other issues. they accept a category of propositions in an unquestioning way, while maintaining a rigourous skepticism about propositions in other categories.
While I agree with almost everything Dawkins says, his messages have been woefully ineffective. But then, I don't think you should call people stupid. I think you should talk to them nicely, praise them even, while you look for a really big stick to hit them with.
That said, I really think highly of Moslems and Conservative Christians. From my perspective, its really too bad that they seem dead set on fighting each other when they have so much in common.
When you boil it all down, the argument is about who has the most correct grasp of reality. Personally, I don't think science proves that a deity doesn't exist. But, so far it hasn't proven that one does. So, until I see some proof that will satisfy me, I'll happily stay athiest.
Well, then its not really intelligence either. Intelligence is, generally considered, more about the ability to solve problems and use reason. Its more a question of who is better able to set aside what they want to be true from what actually is true. Who is less schizophrenic?
I really think highly of Moslems and Conservative Christians. From my perspective, its really too bad that they seem dead set on fighting each other when they have so much in common.
I'm curious why you assume we're fighting against each other? I imagine most Muslims who fight against "us" are actually against the perceived secular culture we live in, not Christianity. And as far as I know, conservative Christians aren't out blowing up mosques and slaughtering Muslims, much less doing so for religious differences. And before you respond with "But Bush says he's--"
STOP.
Bush may or may not be a conservative Christian. But regardless, he's one guy, and he's got a military at his disposal that executes national policy. That's a bit different than the assumption that conservative Christians are waging war against Muslims.
/steps off soapbox reserved for addressing this particular irritating canard
Its not a canard. The conservative Christians see no problem whatsoever with Israel, and so will continue to support men like Bush. Likewise, the Moslems will continue to view that land as holy perpetuating the situation. Its not "We're Christian so we're going to kill Moslems." Its "We have irrational beliefs about the world so we're going to make poor decisions that put us at odds with other people."
The canard is the terrorists hate us because we are secular. We have manipulated the world with incredible hubris, and we continue to do so, and guys like you come and apologize saying no, its not our religion or theirs, its somebody else's fault.
Anyway, I'm all for it. Please continue to kill each other.
And as for conservative Christians blowing up mosques and slaughtering Moslems, well, what is the religious makeup of our military? Oh, they aren't killing people for religion... but they are overwhelmingly Christian and they are blowing up mosques.
<--- is not really for the killings on either side... but really think the world needs to grow up
I do not believe in a deity. I certainly do not mind if others do. What I object to is "competitive religion", wherein one faith claims to be superior to another or to all others. That kind of thinking repulses me.
Dennett lost me with the bullshit about "Brights" and Dawkins is sometimes just too shrill.
Yes, because it'a all about tone, not truth...
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. --Seneca the Younger
In this day and age, convincing people to agree with you is ALL about tone.
Stupid people, maybe. Judge the message, not the messenger (I assume Christians would agree, not wanting the likes of Falwell and Robertson to single-handedly invalidate their religion).
rushmc Well, thats the thing. Everybody says advertising doesn't work on them. I'm smarter than the people that it works on. But yet when you do the study, it turns out that the people who think that they are not being manipulated are the ones who in fact ARE being manipulated.
Either that or everybody is stupid.
Heh, Harris says what I tried to say to f8x much more elegantly.
Religious faith is nothing more or less than a widespread, socially acceptable mental illness. Being smart is no protection against being crazy.
I pick B, Mord.
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. --Stephen Roberts
Science is a religion too.
All religions are equal on every level but a personal one. As for the personal one, it's just a matter of what you beleive.
I have yet to find a religion that encourages murder and violence.
The Truth is One, but the Wise call it many.- Hindu Proverb
I think that statement is going to cause alot of outrage.
I don't know how you can actually call yourself rational, and be an atheist. Because, even if religion is bunk, that's no proof there isn't a hidden spiritual factor in the universe. A rational being has to accept that they don't have all information at their fingertips, cannot know the full story.
To be atheist is.. it's assuming that you're omniscient.
You can't know that there is no god, because that entity may be non-interventional - it may not directly intervene in things that take place in this cosmos.
The best you can be is Ignostic - refuse to discuss the concept of god until it is defined properly. Everyone has a different idea of what a god is, so it's impossible to have a rational discussion on such a topic.
Religious fundamentalism is a source of conflict and suffering. But if religious fundamentalism went away, we'd still have the conflict. There's still political fundamentalism (capitalies vs commies), class fundamentalism (haves vs havenots) just to name two....
So I would argue it isn't religion per se that's the problem, it's lack of compassion and bloodthirstiness.
It would plausible for example, to envision a war between atheists and agnostics.
I think Chyren's onto something. To my mind, agnosticism is the logical take on religion.
And I think it's WAY facile to throw the baby out with the bathwater by flatly claiming "religion is evil." From where I sit, it looks like evil emerges from human nature, and religion can be a very effective way of dampening and/or coping with that evil. But by no means the only way.
That is to say, evil emerges from human nature, not from religion.
To be atheist is.. it's assuming that you're omniscient.
Bzzzzzt... wrong answer.
To be atheist is... it's assuming there are no deities unless and until there is convincing evidence to the contrary.
That's strong atheism, anyway.
Weak atheism is failing to assume that there are deities unless and until there is convincing evidence to the contrary.
Neither position requires omniscience.
The whole religion versus science thing is largely a beat-up on both sides, anyway. Science is a method (not a religion, just a method) of discovering and refining useful knowledge. Religions are primarily a set of traditions that purport to guide people toward healthy emotional responses to the things that happen to them.
The fact that every scientist alive has a religious position of some sort - whether atheist or agnostic or humanist or Baptist or Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish or deep green or just doing their best to ignore the whole thing - does not mean that science itself is a religion.
The only time a conflict arises between science and religion is when deluded people make heartfelt statements that contradict available evidence, or when certain scientists deficient in wisdom and common sense attempt to use irrelevant facts to tell people how they ought to live.
Science in general has very little to say about how people ought to behave. About the closest it can get is documenting the consequences of the ways that people do behave, and that only in medicine and some of the social sciences.
Science is a religion too.
No, it's not.
(What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.)
I don't know how you can actually call yourself rational, and be an atheist. Because, even if religion is bunk, that's no proof there isn't a hidden spiritual factor in the universe.
Do you believe in the Easter Bunny? Santa Claus? Do you believe that the whole world was actually created in a test tube by aliens yesterday and we were all created with fake memories about our pasts and tomorrow it will start to unravel and we'll be all like "hey man, what's happening, my memories are unravelling"? There's no proof against any of these things, and yet I'm not expected to go around saying "Well maybe there is an Easter Bunny, but I'm really not sure."
Dawkins is my god and I declare jihad on all of you muthers!
Achtung!!!
*trips over hardback copy of Ancestor's Tale, breaks kalashnikov*
Curses!
Foiled again!
As for atheism being irrational relative to agnosticism, I'd put it this way. I see plenty of arguments against Yahweh and Invisible Pink Unicorns. If there is a diety, it could look nothing like the pardoxical god of the Bible unless it is capable of feats of logic such as making true equivalent to false (the color pink invisible), and in that case, we can't discuss it because we will never be able to define what it is.
So, while I don't rule out the possible existence of diety-like entities, maybe the guys who are running this universe as we would a physics simulation on a mainframe, I know that they will still be bound by logic which is one up on Yahweh. However, I have no evidence for them and can make no claims as to their existence, and am not naive enough to pick one diety out of the infinite number of possible dieties on Faith. This is the extent of rational agnosticism. They could be there, but until we have evidence for them and can talk about them intelligently, they are pointless to discuss except as light conversation over beers because the odds are infinite to 1 that we're wrong about them.
What do you mean, believe in the Easter Bunny? You don't have to believe - he just exists. Else where does all that chocolate come from?
I consider the above to be a strong atheist position. There is no God as God are currently defined by the religious. There is not one mainstream religion on earth which possesses a factual, real God.
Things that are outside the realm of interactions with us, do not exist. At some point in the future they prove to exist, then we will have to revise our knowledge, but even if they do exist, they are not the Gods of any current religions which claim a number of impossible things.
I dare say that most religious people don't believe in their God either, if they did, if they believed in the tangible reality of God the way they do a truck barreling down the highway towards them, that would judge them on the basis of the way they live their life, well, there would be a lot more Gandhis and Mother Teresas in the world.
Instead they basically stand there in the path of the truck as if it wasn't real. So I maintain they don't believe in their God either, and the difference between me and them is I'll admit it.
I don't think many people believe in God out of rational conviction, exactly: it's more that they have, or believe themselves to have, a direct experience during prayer or whenever, of God's presence and love, no more deniable than their experience of their own emotions. Arguments about theodicy and so on may worry them to some degree, but they don't address the actual basis of faith, and therefore don't remove it any more than sound arguments for determinism persuade people to stop making decisions.
Personally, I don't find Jesus an appealing deity, but I do find that the idea of a largely indifferent God with a rather spiteful sense of humour, one who deliberately conceals himself apart from a few misleading intimations, is unpleasantly plausible at times. The redundancy of the hypothesis and the metaphysical problems attached to it give me perfectly adequate rational grounds for my atheism, but it may be true that there is an element of something like faith in my denial of this unloving God - my gut feelings are certainly in there somewhere.
Naysayers can go fuck themselves.
Both sides. Neither atheism nor religion hurt people. People, hungry animals and space aliens that fill volcanos with space slaves unleashing pain and misery in the form of alien ghosts hurt people.
Neither atheism nor religion hurt people.
Unless the religion instigates violence and murder in the name of its deity. Crusade anyone? Jihad HO!Mother Theresa and Ghandi?
What Chyren said. Almost everybody has irrational beliefs...even self-proclaimed atheists. Whether it's a belief in ghosts, UFOs, horoscopes, reincarnation, intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, or the belief that picking six 'random' numbers in the lottery is better than picking 1-2-3-4-5-6. They're all irrational and they're all without proof.
True rational agnostics will be content to leave the question of God unanswered, rather than creating an unfounded answer, whether it be yes or no.
intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos
Not an irrational belief, but more of a statistical probability.
With no proof...or for that matter even a shred of evidence.
No, but probabilities are determined all the time from available information.
There is solid information for life on this planet, and can infer a model from its various parameters (as has been done repeatedly in the field of astronomy).
There is, however, no data to support ghosts, UFOs, or the rest of that.
There is, however, no data to support ghosts
Actually this is completely false. Just last night I watched this documentary about a guy who died but still had yet to teach his wife how to do pottery. He had to haunt this medium chick, who could hear dead people talk - but she ended up sleeping with the guy's wife! It really was unchained mentally.
Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them. To be clear: an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; a religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. -- V.S. Naipaul
What Chryen and InsolentChimp said.
Chyren: yay for ignosticism!
From the interview with atheist Harris:
"And for all his insistence on reason and scientific study, Harris is surprisingly open ...to paranormal experiences like telepathy..."
That's really funny! So yes, you can be an atheist and still believe in...stuff. (Easter Rabbit included)
but she ended up sleeping with the guy's wife!
*beats head against wall to force down blasphemous Whoopie-Demi love scene*
I don't think its irrational to say that fairies and unicorns don't exist. Its not a statement of faith. I don't need any special, priviledged information to make the assessment that if they were real, there would have been tangible evidence of their existence by now. For them to be real is so fantastically unlikely, I should start believing in many OTHER fantastically unlikely things that I also dismess out of hand. So again, saying that one must be agnostic to be intellectually honest is completely baseless.
MonkeyFilter: if they were real, there would have been tangible evidence of their existence by now.
To be completely logical and scientific about this, one cannot say that the Easter Rabbit does not exist. You cannot prove a negative.
Real Scientists can only say that at the current time there is no evidence that suggest the existence of the Easter Rabbit.
*puts glasses back on*
*goes back to Bunsen burner*
MonkeyFilter: they're real, and they're fabulous
Absolutely. I find the odds very remote. But then even strong atheists are then agnostic. When in practical matters, the agnostic is one who assigns roughly equal likelihood one way or the other. He has no real opinion on the truth or falsity of the claim. Such agnostics are a lot less rational than the atheists. The agnostic somehow manages to disregard the total lack of evidence for the Easter Bunny and still conclude that it has a reasonable chance of existing, he just doesn't know.
If on the other hand he concludes that the Easter Bunny being real is fantastically unlikely, and then qualifies it with "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" which is always true, regardless of how unlikely the phenomena is to be real, then I'd call him an atheist.
And then maybe there are atheists who choose to ignore logic and have faithlike knowledge of the non-existence of God, but I'm not one of them and you can rightfully say that their beliefs are religious in character. They just happen to be on the right side of the evidence equation.
P(G|E)=P(E|G)*P(G)/P(E)
Arrr! Yon Mord's been messin' with me peg again.
My problem is that the religious, to justify their beliefs, will latch on to the fact that to be honest, one must accept the possibility of incredibly unlikely phenomena as incredibly unlikely to be true. But you can never say anything with 100.000000000000000000% assurance because you are not infallible.
Which is something those with Faith never seem to get called on, but the atheists do all the time.
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. --Mark Twain
Mord, I think the definitions of Atheist and Agnostic are in question here. I've called myself both. I'm reasonably sure that there isn't a god, as much as I'm sure ghosts don't exist. But I'm not so 100% sure of either that I would call those who believe in them mentally deficient, schizophrenic, or less intelligent than non-believers.
I think its time to start saying SOMETHING. Its truthful to say that there is something off about adults that believe in the tooth fairy because of pernicious, self-perpetuating social pressure to do so. I understand that its a pernicious meme, but its time to develop an immune system to it. And the meme of course HATES it, and recoils from it, but honestly, WHAT do you call people who believe in fairies, unicorns and the Easter Bunny? How is religion different except that its well established?
Oh, we should be nice about peoples beliefs. Even if they are wrongheaded in the spirit. My tolerance ended with the 2004 election when I saw what other peoples irrational beliefs (about gays and Happy Holidays and school prayer and abortion and every other faux issue) will do. I am supposed to tolerate the root cause of incredible bigotry instead of calling it what it is, a result of an unfounded irrational belief which could be considered a form of mental illness -- or perhaps rationality and atheism is the mental illness, and divine belief is an evolutionary adaptation. Illness is at least not particularly perjorative. I don't hold cancer against people for having it. But I don't like cancer either.
^, in the spirit of tolerance.
We must respect the other person's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart. --H.L. Mencken
rocket88, how sure are you? Do you think the Christian God has a 1:100 chance of being real (like trees are real and rocks are real?). Or is it more like 1 in 10 raised to the 300th power?
Because if its the latter, then you are well justified in saying "I'm sure" enough to tell other people they are wrong.
What do I gain by telling them they are wrong? What does anyone gain? If it makes my friend feel better to think her mother is in heaven, why on earth would I want to tell her she's wrong? The end result would be that we'd both lose a friend.
I've always said that there's nothing an agnostic can or can't do if he really isn't sure whether he believes in anything or not.--Graham Chapman
People and societies are better served by the truth than comfortable lies.
Thats my religious belief. And its beyond reproach and don't you dare disabuse me of it because it will make me unhappy :p
WHAT do you call people who believe in fairies, unicorns and the Easter Bunny? How is religion different except that its well established?
*switches off Bunsen burner*
There is a quantitative difference between the probability of Easter Bunny existence and the existence of God. The Easter Bunny is well-defined - a rabbit creature who appears on Easter to distribute chocolate goodies to grateful human offspring. Observations to date over the 2000 Easters we've had, has uncovered no evidence of EB existence.
But God is not well-defined. Is he "Nature"? Is he the "Oneness" of the cosmos? Is he "Mind" or "consciousness" or "the Unknowable"?. Thus we cannot even begin to establish probabilities. We don't know what we're talking about. Which for me is a confession that's been a long time coming.
*powers up cyclotron*
*shouts above the din of the cyclotron*
...if you don't know what you're looking for, you can't know where to find it, so how can you arrive at a probability of existence?
If you want a definition for something, pick something you can observe and describe it. Thats not been done for God. Wonder why.
As part of my 'Live and Let Live' philosophy, I will leave you to your apparent task of convincing 90% of the world's population to abandon their deepest beliefs.
Good luck. I await the opportunity of living in the resulting utopia.
What do I gain by telling them they are wrong? What does anyone gain?Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. --Frank Herbert
There is a quantitative difference between the probability of Easter Bunny existence and the existence of God. The Easter Bunny is well-defined...But God is not well-defined.
For most people, most religions, most sects, he IS very well-defined (and, ironically, well-constrained). The murderous old soul of the Old Testament, for example, is one pretty specific anthropomorphism of the concept, trivial to dismiss in its absurdity. If, on the other hand, you wish to leave him so undefined as to only be able to suggest that there may, perhaps, be something out there which we do not know...well, again, that is trivial (albeit trivially true), and doesn't address what the vast majority of human beings mean when they speak of a "god" to whom they "pray" and from whom they expect a respite from death.
As part of my 'Live and Let Live' philosophy
You say "Live and Let Live" in such dulcet, self-congratulatory tones...I say apathy and a disengagement from your responsibilities to truth, society, and your fellow man. ToMAYto, toMAHto...
I wouldn't bother trying to disabuse anyone of their beliefs. That's so much more effort than it's worth.
Apparently a Buddhist belief is that "God" is everything, including nothing such that nothing is not God. Even a falsehood. Therefore, what is truly God cannot be argued, because anything that is not God would also be God.
Sweet.
I could have that understanding of God wrong though, which would also be right in as much as it was a part of God. Although the early Buddhists didn't call it God because they didn't speak English.
Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. --Frank Herbert and every hardcore evangelical who has ever annoyed you.
Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. --Indiana Jones
A subtle distinction. We should probably be talking about objective truths. The truths that don't change when you stop believing in them.
Although the early Buddhists didn't call it God because they didn't speak English.
What if God's real name wasn't God but say, Goober? All this time people are wandering around asking, does God exist? But it's the wrong question! Anyway God really doesn't exist. Goober on the other hand really cares and is looking after you.
Simple, people. Really.
Is your God more powerful than me? Of course he/she/it is, according to you. Okay. Fine. Your God, here's a little challenge:
Join Monkeyfilter.
Make a nice FPP, and just to show a little class, make it NSFW. And comment on Louis' thread, he could use some help. Do a little dance on Daisy May while you're at it, we all do.
I can do all those things. You can, too, God.
Right?
Show us.
*Mofi crawls to a halt as simultaneous sock puppet God registrations jam the server*
We could throw down the same challenge to GW Bush, Ralph, another entity allegedly more powerful than you and revered by some: but his failure to respond would not establish his nonexistence (if only it were that easy).
Actually, God does exist. I've met him. He has a fluffy white beard and drinks real ale at a pub called the Champion of the Thames in Cambridge. He always looks very, very angry.
I say apathy and a disengagement from your responsibilities to truth, society, and your fellow man.
It's my responsibility to be an annoying iconoclast now? No thanks. The time and energy spent trying to manage other people's lives would only detract from my own. I guess I'm just selfish that way.
Selfscist!
I was always confused by how different God was in the old testament from the new. In the Old, he was so unforgiving and smiting, in the new, he is all about grace. Then someone pointed out -- he'd found Jesus.
Hey - I don't think there is a pub called Champion of the Thames in Cambridge. Besides, God would hang out at the Mitre. Or, if he were feeling contrary, at the Eagle.
I love it when I find Jesus.
Now, if I could only keep him from getting out of his cage.
It's on King Street. (And He wouldn't be seen dead in the Mitre since it refurbished however many years ago).
A fluffy white beard, eh? I think I might just have conclusive evidence...
Oh, wait...
Thats a false dichotomoy rocket88. Flag on play.
Apparently its iconoclastic and annoying to be honest now. At least now I know why so many people are f'ing liars.
Yes, everyone is. Most of us don't go around telling people that their wife is fucking stupid or their kids are ugly or their furniture is tacky. It's the same diplomacy and tact I use when I don't tell them their god is imaginary. Their reasons for believing are as valid as my reasons for not believing.
Most people don't go around making comments about other peoples lives.
However, I have an obligation to tell people that they are making stupid choices based on what their imaginary friend is telling them, especially when those choices directly affect me. Its self defense. I'm not about to give that up because of misguided notions of tact.
lives-> wives
Or I can sit back and let the millenialists and second-coming'ers keep buring all those trees, because you know, when the last tree is cut down Jesus will come back.
So, I think I have a pretty valid reasoning. Your distorted thinking is messing up the world that I live in. So cut it out. You're wrong and its a bad thing.
I don't really care what your wife looks like OR what furniture you buy or how stupid your kids are. Thats your problem.
Religion would be your problem too IF it stayed private.
*confidently waits for this approach to work as advertised*
Hey, I don't know if it would work, but I do know that outside of the internet most atheists are afraid to speak up. Because the turn-the-other-cheek Christians start throwing death threats and slashing your tires. Hell, thats what I got for putting a Darwin-fish on my car.
Free speach, turn the other cheek and love thy neighbor my ass.
In my country, at least, atheists don't need to speak up. Yet. It would be like proclaiming one's shoe size - what's the relevance? Although with a Conservative gov't in place, who knows what'll happen next? I am, however, pleased to say that my Darwin fish has not resulted in vehicular damage. Hope the next USA election brings you Tranquility Now, Mord.
I wouldn't drive your Darwin fish to Texas. My vehicle was vandalized in a university parking lot of all places, in front of the biology building, and judging from the epithets scratched into the paint under the fish, it was not because somebody got a bad grade on their final.
What university?
UTD.
Was it you? I'm sending you a bill.
Or maybe they thought it belonged to the guy who was writing letters to school boards telling them not to adopt "Of People and Pandas"
Suffice to say I know not all Christians are bad (misguided, perhaps), but finding my car vandalized over a Darwin fish basically got me to never put another statement on my car. I need it too badly to loose it to someones pissing contest.
^lose (I hate that typo)
Hey, as long as we're on Dawkins and conflicts with atheists there is The Root of All Evil on youtube. All three parts I think are linked on that page, at least as addresses.
Dawkins is his usual shrill self. But the section on how he is recieved by the big-time baptist ministry and the Israeli convert to Islam is scary (at least to me).
I agree with Mord in one respect, that you can't run for high office and expect to win if you say you're an atheist. There's something wrong there. Clearly a sizeable portion of the populace wrongly believe that atheism/agnosticism is distasteful. Our societies still need to grow up apparently....
I *heart* Dawkins.
you can't run for high office and expect to win if you say you're an atheist
This really does depend on where you live.
bobboggis - I'm sorry, I haven't been down King street much. But I can't help but think that name must depress the Cambridge rowers, who haven't been champions of the Thames in, like, forever. They are almost as bad at winning the Race as Yale is at winning the Game.
(for everyone else - these are, respectively, pointless competitions in rowing and American football which Cambridge and Yale just keep losing.)
bobboggis - are you living in Cambridge? Dreadnought and I live in Grantchester, at least until about June. We could have another Cambridge meetup, and make those Londoners all take the train up.
that you can't run for high office and expect to win if you say you're an atheist.
Stockwell Day claims otherwise about Canada - that he was pushed out because of his public statements of belief. But I just think he's bitter about the whole Doris thing. Oh yeah, and he is an incompetent idiot. I heard him talk in person - he's actually stupider in person. I'm not just trying to insult him - when asked an intelligent question (like how he expects to better support the military and to protect the North West passage, while at the same time cutting government spending), he just sits there blankly, and then jobbers some nonsense.
Not that I'm so bright - I meant to type "jibbers". But that's not a word. What word am thinking of?
gibbers
Thanks!
No, it's not.
(What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.)
Sorry, I havent had the chance to actually catch up on this thread.
Okay, I would like to break Religion down to it's component parts, and then equate them with components of science, which are surprisingly alike.
The generally accepted definition of religion according to theologists, and sociologists (of course there are arguments about each individual thing, but this is the most widely used definition) is, and I quote:
”The definition of religion...is a belief in a divine (superhuman of spiritual) being(s) or thing(s) and the practices (rituals) and moral code (ethics) that result from that belief.
Basically, religion is made up of three parts: beliefs, rituals, and ethics.
To continue to define: “A religion's theology (it's religious teachings or doctrine) and it's stories connect the beliefs.”
Rituals are taking beliefs and placing them into a physical form, and ethics are the morals that arise from beliefs, and they are essentially the same in every religion: this is called universal ethics or natural law.
Now, the equation. I can extrapolate on each of these points more later, if you ask me when I'm not in a rush, but basically:
Science is supposedly 'pure' from religion, a different take on life, grounded in facts and laws of nature.
Science has no god or divine 'power' which is usually the reason that there is a complete dismissal of science as being any sort of religion. But oh, Buddhism has no divine figure either, just humans, and we are our own saviors.
But science does have a belief in certain superhuman things i.e.: what are the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, etc but superhuman? Certainly, we can cause a chemical reaction to occur, but we did not create that chemical reaction, nor did we create a force that sends things back to the ground: gravity.
In science, ghosts and spirits have no mass or energy, therefore they do not exist, except in people's mind.
However, the laws of science have no mass or energy, and therefore do not exist except in people's minds either. (If I may use an example from Pirsing.)
It's a matter of different belief systems.
Rituals: putting beliefs (or ideas) into a physical form.
Science: putting beliefs or (hypotheses) into a physical form (the scientific method).
As for ethics, an example may not be needed, for there is an entire branch of science dedicated to scientific ethics. However the ethics in science may not be quite as clearcut as they are in certain religions, but that allows for individual beliefs.
And I would propose that theology in science is equal to the years of high school and college and other schools that we go through to learn the scientific method, the laws of science, among many other things.
Now I have to run, because I am late.
I would kind of help if we knew who/what you were quoting.
I think I was too late.
jb - I'm in London, too, I'm afraid, but the family home is in Cambridge so I go up every month or so. A Cambridge meetup might be fun: we could do the King Street Run. Haven't done that in twenty years.
The "laws of science", are just observations that have been made so often we assign a high probability to them being correct. There's nothing supernatural about them. Why do you have to conflate belief with observation?
In science, ghosts and spirits have no mass or energy, therefore they do not exist, except in people's mind.
Science doesn't say ghosts and spirits don't exist. All it can say is that there is currently no evidence that establishes the existence of ghosts.
In fact *that* is what distinguishes science from religion. Science's central concept is a search for evidence, reproducible results and formulation of theories based on this evidence. It embodies progress, as theories are refined over time.
Religion emphasizes faith not evidence.
Suffice to say I know not all Christians are bad (misguided, perhaps), but finding my car vandalized over a Darwin fish basically got me to never put another statement on my car.
There are other reasons why your car may have been vandalized. For example: your strident tone right now is grating at best. This tone may resonate in other aspects of your life. The emergence of a Darwin fish (which are so lame, by the way—self-aggrandizing "atheists" don't seem to solidly grasp the concept) may have been entirely coincidental. Do you enjoy hearing the "truth" about your beliefs?
MonkeyFilter: your strident tone right now is grating at best
At worst it's kinda Hitler-like.
Hitler!
I was born in Grate Britain. (Enemy of Hitler)
I heard a very interesting talk by John Cleese after this book came out.
The psychiatrist he cowrote with believed that the different ways in which a person approached religion could be compared to different levels of mental health. (Not that being religious in itself makes you crazy, but that crazy peple will religious in a different way. The "check your higher reasoning at the door" way.)
For all the condemnation of religion though, the most brutal wars of the past few hundred years have had other causes. When was the last religious war before the War on Terror?
Israeli war of 1968?
Does communism count as a religion by virtue of it's non-religious belief system?
The Church of Marx Mao-Castro of Latter Day Secularists?
Marxism is a millenarian religion, no question.
InsolentChimp: Meh, do your worst.
You don't see me destroying peoples property because the truth offends ME. Pretty pathetic to blame the victim because "he doesn't say things we like to hear".
Typical though.
Anyway, I doubt it. Nobody knew it was my car unless they took far more interest in my life than I can imagine. They saw the fish, got pissed off, and damaged stuff.
Man, can you imagine all the dubya cars I would vanalize? Because they are pretty lame too, something that self-aggrandizing neo-cons don't seem to get.
Arf! I can't keep up a decent argument if you pesky monkeys keep changing the definition! Religion = science, Religion = marxism, Religion = communism. Religion! Religion! Religion! YEAAGGGHHHH!
*brings in firehose*
HERE"S YOUR RELIGION: SPSSHHSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHSPPPPPTTHHHH!
Damnit, you made a clean spot. Now we have to do the whole thing.
You're nothing but a pack of cards.
*tries to scuff up the clean spot*
Wait, it's a thread about atheism and it hasn't defined religion yet?
. . .
Okay, somebody go get one of those word guys. Let's clear this up.
Wait, wait - here's one:
*wrangles in definition, throws on floor*
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source
re‧li‧gion /rɪˈlɪdʒən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ri-lij-uhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.
5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.
6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.
7. religions, Archaic. religious rites.
8. Archaic. strict faithfulness; devotion: a religion to one's vow.
—Idiom9. get religion, Informal. a. to acquire a deep conviction of the validity of religious beliefs and practices.
b. to resolve to mend one's errant ways: The company got religion and stopped making dangerous products.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Origin: 1150–1200; ME religioun (< OF religion) < L religiōn- (s. of religiō) conscientiousness, piety, equiv. to relig(āre) to tie, fasten (re- re- + ligāre to bind, tie; cf. ligament) + -iōn- -ion; cf. rely]
Hmm. Does communism have a theory of the creation of the universe? Oh wait. It's number two.
*snkkf* number two!
There have been many cases of "environmentalists" damaging vehicles (SUVs) because of their fuel consumption. Does that mean we can blame all environmentalists and label them as dogmatic idiots?
Yes!
Hmm. Does communism have a theory of the creation of the universe? Oh wait. It's number two.
Communism is a second-rate religion.
Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: re·li·gion
Pronunciation: ri-'li-j&n
Function: noun
1 a : the state of a religious person[a nun in her 20th year of religion] b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.
And the definition of religious:
Main Entry: 1re·li·gious
Pronunciation: ri-'li-j&s
Function: adjective
1 : relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity [a religious person] [religious attitudes]
2 : of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances [joined a religious order]
3 a : scrupulously and conscientiously faithful b : FERVENT, ZEALOUS.
AHA. So Science isn't Religion because Religion needs Faith! Boojah! ....er not so sure about the Communism though.
Man, Merriam-Webster screwed that one up.
Hey, in this day and age we call them folks what damage others property to make a political point "terrorists"
And we're always careful to make sure that we only get the individuals that are actually responsible, and not tar the entire group of individuals with sins they themselves didn't commit. LOL.
Man, can you imagine all the dubya cars I would vanalize? Because they are pretty lame too, something that self-aggrandizing neo-cons don't seem to get.
Huh? Are you equating the neo-cons with the religious, and saying that because you don't vandalize their cars you're better than they are? 'Cause if so, you're only recognizing a narrow slice of those who believe in god/God/gods. And revealing yourself to be just as much of a proselytizing ideologue as they.
And we're always careful to make sure that we only get the individuals that are actually responsible, and not tar the entire group of individuals with sins they themselves didn't commit.
Take a moment to think about how one set of your words conflicts with another.
I suspect that Mord is being, well, ah, mordant.
Merriam-Webster screwed that one up.
You know why they call it "Merriam-Webster"? Because it's online. "Webster", get it? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Two more beers, please.
Hawthornewingo: Think about the doctrine of original sin for a second, would you, before you start blasting me for holding a whole group responsible for the actions of a few (even though I didn't and don't).
I do tar those who messed up my car, but not because they are religious. And no, I'm not conflating neo-cons with the religious. I'm saying the dubya stickers offend ME but you don't see me, an atheist, who is not under any divine obligation to turn the other cheek, taking it out on their cars.
I understand you guys don't like hearing this and that you think I'm "strident", but you're perpetuating this conversation. If you're right, then what do you really have to talk about? You're going to convince me to think highly of people who believe in fairies, and provide endless examples of contradicting their moral imperatives with impunity and hypocrisy?
I don't report to a higher power. I admit that I am hypocritical. I don't see it here. I don't have to like you if you believe in fairies, and I'm not asking you to like me.
The problem with the fairies is that tehy never pay for their damn drinks.
And the more I think about the poor persecuted religious people being offended by those vindictive, strident atheists, the madder I get, so I'm taking a vacation from this thread.
I have a list of things I *hate* religious people for (lets see, laws restricting access to abortion, funding hoops for working with stem cells, all the time stolen from me in Sunday school, feeling guilty for everything I ever did when I was Catholic, enabling the attack on evolutionary theory, Terry Schiavo, the lack of right to die legislation, ... I could go on). Sometimes I'm amazed I don't take it out on them. But I don't. But I'll get the same old bullshit line "you can't hold us responsible for the actions a minority took IN OUR NAME, because of the virulent beliefs that we participate in propagating!"
You participate, if you are religios, in creating a reservoir of a pathogen, and in so doing you enable evil to happen, in your name. I hold you all responsible for that, and rightfully so. Grow up and start living in reality as if other people matter more than your absent God.
Religion needs Faith! Boojah! ....er not so sure about the Communism though.
You are joking, aren't you?
Mord, by the same bent of logic people hate Americans, homosexuals and GWAR fans.
Hate is for the lazy.
Hate is for the lazy.
Double-posts are for the non-detail-oriented.
You are joking, aren't you?
Yup more or less. But if we want to be serious about the question: "Is communism a religion?" I'd say it has that faith element of religion, but doesn't have the metaphysical, deity, "why are we here?" elements.
In the dictionary definition of communism, there is no mention of it being a religion. More of it being a political theory.
All of which is to go back to the original point which is that most of the bloodiest wars in the last century or so have not been over matters of God.
WWII was about racism/fascism. WWI was about imperialism. US Civil War was about slavery among other things. Vietnam and Korea was about communism with a measure of nationalism thrown in.
Having said that though, I agree with Mord that religious beliefs do get an easy ride. Most religious beliefs when you think about them objectively are exactly as flimsy as belief in fairies.
... religious beliefs do get an easy ride.
They are beliefs.
But so is everything else humans think they know.
I believe that if I put my left elbow into my left ear I will break my arm.
'Tis a poor sort of elbow has only one bend in it.
That might be the case within a certain framework of thought, were your arm still attached to your shoulder.
I believe that if I break my left arm I will put it in Wolof's left ear.
The Infirmament
An end is always punishment for a beginning.
If you're Catholic, sadness is punishment
for happiness, you become the bug you squash
if you're Hindu, a flinty space opens
in your head after a long night of laughter
and wine. For waking there are dreams
for French poetry, English poetry,
for light, fire although sometimes
fire must be punished by light
which is why psychotherapy had to be invented.
A father may say nothing to a son for years
a mother may keep something small folded deep
in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in
resembling the terrible things we believe
about ourselves, a rock comes loose
from a ledge, the baby cries
and cries. Doll in a chair,
windshield wipers, staring off
into the city lights. For years
you may be unable to hear the word monkey
without a stab in the heart because
she called you that the summer she thought
she loved you and you thought you loved
someone else and everyone loved
your salad dressing. And the daffodils
come up in the spring and the snow covers
the road in winter and the water covers
the deep trenches in the sea where all the time
the inner stuff of this earth surges up
which is how the continents are made
and broken.
-- Dean Young
MonkeyFilter: For years you may be unable to hear the word monkey without a stab in the heart
I believe that if I break my left arm I will put it in Wolof's left ear.
Wouldn't you rather just have a couple of beers and check out some music while your arm gets better?
Because I can arrange shit like that.
I can arrange shit into meaningful piles.
feeling guilty for everything I ever did when I was Catholic
mmm hmm mm hmmm . yes, yes . . . *writes in notepad*
Undt how did you fveel about zis?
Irrational things humans believe in:
1. God
2. Fairies
3. Life after death
4. Good luck charms
5. Ghosts
6. Karma
7. Psychics
8. U.F.O.s
9. Soul mates
10. Winning the lottery
11. Magnetic bracelets
12. Lucky numbers
13. Unlucky numbers
14. Prayer
15. Crystals
16. "He'll be nicer after the baby is born"
17. Intelligent life on other planets
18. Love
19. Homeopathy
20. Spirituality
21. Spells (paranormal)
22. Gut feelings
...I'm sure I missed a few.
But what a hollow, robotic existence it would be if we were all fully rational.
SYNTAX ERROR DOES NOT COMPUTE
But what a hollow, robotic existence it would be if we were all fully rational.
I dunno. Can't you be rational, that is, free from irrational belief, and still experience all the wonders of life, the things that bring you joy and wonder?
23. "he who smelt it dealt it."
24. third nipple = source of power
25. bigfoot/sasquatch/yeti
26. the "luck" of the "Irish"
27. demonic possession
28. that there is a little girl out there who can light fires using only the power of her mind, and the government wants her back in their clutches to use as a weapon against foreign agents and/or our own citizenry
29. the perfect lawn
30. Bermuda Triangle
Man, no love for the chupacabras.
> 17. Intelligent life on other planets
not sure i'm with you on that one. yes, earth's circumstances could be considered rare, but relative scarcity of these circumstances depends very much on the size of the universe.
not if time and space are illusory.
*passes joint*
not sure i'm with you on that one. yes, earth's circumstances could be considered rare, but relative scarcity of these circumstances depends very much on the size of the universe.
*takes joint*
Being open to the possibility of ILOOP is rational. Believing in their existence...even dedicating your life to searching for their communications is a little wacky, IMO.
*forgets which way to pass it next*
widdershins!
*snags the doob from the Rocket*
Mathematically speaking, it's nearly impossible that the universe does NOT have many other intelligent life forms. Believe me, the equations have a lot of infinity symbols and shit in them. The distances are such, though, that the likelihood fo them every coming down and visiting our rural little planet are slim enough to be negligible.
Also, we should get some Cool Ranch Doritos.
Woah.
But again "the universe" is hardly a known quantity, given that what we suspect about it is so immense that no possible communication could happen between our rock and someone-outside-the-milky-way in any one lifetime.
Oh, cross-dimensional, sure, but I thought you meant like normal-wise. Definitely cross-dimensional though.
*sssssssssstpthfffkknnkk!!kk!*
Aliens love Cool Ranch, man. That's why they came to Area 51, man. They were lookin' for Cool Ranch, but then saw a sign for a "Cool Ranch" out in the desert, man. Aliens got their directions wrong, man! Can you believe that shit?
True story.
I did hear about that, that is true. It was on In Search Of. Or Nova. Something with Leonard Nimoy.
Wait, wait, man...what if we are the aliens?
OHMYGOD -- Nimoy, man! Everything that comes out of dude's mouth is like, scientific fact, man.
FACT.
*pauses*
You could have, like, a Presidential debate, and Nimoy could moderate it, and Republican guy'd be like "tax cuts create jobs", and Democrat guy'd be like "bullshit, man", and Nimoy'd just say "Correct. Tax cuts creating jobs is indeed bullshit", and everybody'd have to agree.
Or -- OR -- you could have Nimoy be President himself! And he'd be like "Sensors indicate that there are no WMDs", and then we wouldn't have to go to war, man.
AW SHIT -- Nimoy would have to be born in the States. Bummer, man.
Yeah, he was born in Vulca, I think. He could definitely be National Science Dude, though.
Being open to the possibility of ILOOP is rational. Believing in their existence...even dedicating your life to searching for their communications is a little wacky, IMO.
Didn't we already have this discussion?
Am I getting senile?
wow. that's like a deja vu of something i've seen before.
1. Yes, atheism is smarter. Faith embraces irrationality -- belief without evidence. Irrationality is the hallmark of insanity, but is somehow acceptible under the guise of religion. And, yes, it is possible to enjoy (or suffer) emotions such as love, fear, etc. while understanding that they arise from synapses firing and hormones a-flowin.
2. Atheists are generally less happy than theists. It's hard to say exactly why this is -- could be despair of an unguided existence or lack of a loving support group -- but I've come to accept this as true. Since atheists tend to be less happy than theists, the merciful action is to let theists wallow in their blissful ignorance. Now this gets tricky when their theism causes misery to others, as in via politics, social pressure, etc. How would the social good be affected by more people living without the promise (and threat) of an eternal afterlife (mortal life becomes more precious, as this is all you got!) vs. less happy people?
3. Religion is possibly the most powerful "social glue" the world has ever knows. (followed by maybe nationalism and racism) Nothing so successfully unites people under a common banner, and a lot of people united in a common cause can accompish great and/or terrible feats. The funny thing is, the rallying point is pretty irrelevent -- it could be belief in "God" (pick a definition), belief in invisible pink unicorns, cheering a sports team, building pyramids, or putting a man on the moon. If only we could replace religion with, oh I dunno, something intrinsicly USEFUL, we could do some pretty amazing things.
4. Religion itself is neither good nor evil, in and of itself, but its power can be directed to some extent by politicians, theologens, and mob mentality.
5. Pass the blunt to the monkey on your right.
InsolentChimp: Yeah, people hate homosexuals because they pass legislation that actively restricts how they can live their lives based on beliefs founded on a base of bullshitonium. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
GRRR. I am not ready to come back to this thread. Some of you need a course in formal logic.
Wait, wait, man...what if God doesn't believe in us?
OH SHIT MAN -- I just realized! If Nimoy came from Vulcan, then he's the alien, man!
But if he's been on tv, then he must, like, have a green card and shit, which means he's not an alien.
Oh man. This's heavy shit...
y'ever notice that if you rearrange the letters in deity you get tie-dy? says something, doesn't it?
4. Religion itself is neither good nor evil, in and of itself, but its power can be directed to some extent by politicians, theologens, and mob mentality.
Exactly. Not all evil people are religious. Not all religious people are evil. Fighting evil is more productive than fighting religion.
Yeah, people hate homosexuals because they pass legislation that actively restricts how they can live their lives based on beliefs founded on a base of bullshitonium. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
There are atheists who hate homosexuals and support gay marriage bans, as there are devout believers who support gay rights. Obviously religion is not the sole cause of hatred...it just happens to coexist with it in a lot of people. Attacking bigotry and hatred is fine, but attacking religious belief is missing the true mark.
Some of you need a course in formal logic.
I hope you're not teaching it.
Si. Doing away with religion would not magically cure people of their desire to hate, control, and oppress. They'd just find another mechanism. We're pretty good at coming up with excuses for that kind of thing.
∃(x)(x∈"You", x"Needs a course in formal logic")
Couldn't agree more.
Belief without evidence IS the true mark. That is the source of all the problems you are talking about.
Eg., A bigot hates black people. Why? What are his reasons? Are they justifed? Where is the evidence? We don't have any. If we did have some, it would make sense to be bigoted. But, it usually boils down to we just don't like them.
Religion is the most egregious source of beliefs that fly in the face of any evidentiary support.
Your fear of hatred in any sort leads you to think that its hate thats the problem, and not the source of it, which is irrational beliefs without evidence.
If a bigot discovers that black people are just as moral, and equal, why then would he hate them?
*rubs third nipple with crystal*
*passes joint to chupacabra*
sorry man, didn't mean to leave you out.
"black people" above should have been in quotes. I do know the preferred term.
Rocket88
I hope you're not teaching it.
I only take on students that would provide an intellectual challenge.
A bigot hates black people. Why? What are his reasons?
Well, it could be that he sees so many black people in prisons, in gangs, selling drugs, robbing stores, shooting, etc, that he mistakenly equates the colour of their skin to their behaviour. It's wrong and irrational to do so, but it happens nevertheless.
Mord hates religious people. Why? What are his reasons?
Well, it could be that he sees so many religious people speaking out against homosexuals, supporting wars, voting against social progress, and generally being douchebags that he mistakenly equates their religion to their douchebaggery. It's wrong and irrational to do so, but it happens nevertheless.
*tweeeee!*
Offsides!-sides -sides
Number 297112! -112 -112
Five post penalty -enalty -enaRepeat first point!
*tweeeeee*
But rocket, wouldn't the difference be that institutionalized religions (as opposed to the one I just made up in my garage - btw, don't go in there) have codified behaviors and beliefs such as "homosexuality is a sin against God" whereas bigotry is neither institutionalized, nor codified?
Not that either one is closer to any possible "objective truth" but just to make the distinction re: religion
Ok rocket88. If you can't see the glaring difference in those two situations there's no point in continuing.
I already spelled it out for you. You think my dislike of religion is irrational when I already told you why I dislike it. Its not because of the things religious people do, its because religion is capable of justifying ANY evil thing people do. How do you criticise someone's morals when your beliefs are just as foundationless as theirs? You can't.
whereas bigotry is neither institutionalized, nor codified?
Except for that it is, albeit not on as grand a scale as religion. "Institutional racism" as a term inplies an inherent level of bigotry that is emplaced in the culture over a long period of time, such that only those affected tend to even notice; codification, in things like (as people allege) Missouri's recent Voter ID requirement, or (even more local) the recent ruling of the city of Blackjack, Missouri that two unmarried people of opposite sex may not be granted a residency permit for their home.
Both recently overturned in court, I might add.
religion is capable of justifying ANY evil thing people do.
this capability is less inherent to religion as it is to people. Religion is a tool, like any other, in this case an intellectual and moral tool. One may use a hammer to build a house, but one may also use it to pulp an ememy's skull. Indeed, one person may do both, at his whim.
Religion has been used to build many a house, and pulp many a skull, but which remains determined by the desires and aims of the user.
Interesting that you use the word "evil", too, since the adjudication of acts as good or evil (as opposed to legal or illegal, ethical or inethical) is historically the purview of theology.
Religion is a tool? An intellectual and moral tool? What it is, is an anti-intellectual and an immoral tool. You can not make moral decisions based on the whim of a being you have never MET! To do so is the height of presumption and a complete lack of reason. "I presume to know that God hates homosexuals!" Or... as I see much more often "I presume to know that God will punish you if you don't believe as I believe."
How is that moral or intellectual? You can't give me a reason why certain acts are moral or immoral outside of God makes it that way. And you can't question the behavior of God because you have no moral basis to judge him by.
Since theology is groundless, the idea of evil is also groundless? So, in the absence of God we can't make good/evil judgements?
Fine, replace Evil with Immoral as you see fit. Since I don't believe in an afterlife, most of my morals stem from self-preservation, but at least I know where they are coming from.
By religious arguments, however, I can justify the extermination of whole races of people, and you couldn't tell me otherwise. My God says I must eliminate the heretics or I won't spend eternity in paradise.
Ah, the problem isn't with the fact that I have a groundless beliefs that I accept without question, its just that I'm human and prone to accepting such beliefs. I get it now. I really should turn my ire towards people instead of the stupid things they believe.
But what is worse, is that a religious moderate, 'enables' the beliefs of the religious extremist. He says "its okay to believe certain things without question, such as (miracles, the power of prayer, angels, not eating meat on Friday, etc..), so the extremist, who you would say might have believed such things anyway, has a ready pool of people who have been taught that its okay not to question why when confronted with "God says..."
I can only say this so many different ways. Religion (or, more broadly, the idea of accepting things we are told without question) is to me, the source of this problem. And while we can say its the human condition, I can't do ANYTHING to fix that.
If it's in the swamp above, then my apologies for asking again but, is your suggestion then to abolish religion Mord?
If we take for granted that religion is bad, etc., are you saying the world would have less war & wrongnessness without it?
I mean, "religion is bad," ok fine - now what?
And while we can say its the human condition, I can't do ANYTHING to fix that.
Which is pretty much the point, Mord. Let's say you get a magic -- no a SCIENCE wand tomorrow that you wave, and all religion is eradicated. Boom. No resistance, no nothing, just gone as if it never existed. Nobody believes in God anymore.
The point is that we're miserable enough bastards that we're going to find another reason to keep killing and hurting and oppressing and restricting each other, often on a pretty grand scale. It's what we do. It's what we've done for thousands of years. It's practically our goddamned raison d'etre. Eradicating religion does pretty much nothing to stop that tendency. Unless and until we manage to evolve to the point where we're able to overcome that tendency, we're going to have this problem.
Look, I understand where you're coming from. I'm a theist who's come damn near to renouncing religion on several occasions, most recently over the whole Pope/Islam dustup. People getting killed over bullshit, and My God vs. Your God is at the heart of it, sure, and it absolutely fucking breaks my heart. But I've seen enough of life to know that this is the shit we pull, and we will continue to pull regardless of whatever mechanism is available to allow us to sleep at night. The human mind is a wonderful thing.
You can not make moral decisions based on the whim of a being you have never MET!
Of course you can. One can make decisions on questions of morality based on any old thing that pops into their heads, and they often do. Religion is often used, as most scriptural text contain very explicit and, often, highly analyzed and discussed moral codes. Indeed, one can make the claim that nearly all moral codes current inculcated into the largest cultuers on earth are rooted, most quite obviously, in religious tenets.
"I presume to know that God will punish you if you don't believe as I believe."
Most decisions of what is Right and Wrong are built on exactly this premise. Realize that, for the major religions, these presumptions are cushioned in various centuries worth of dogma, analysis, interpretation and history. One is no born, after all, as a moral being - babies are no more moral than puppies. One is taught morality.
You can't give me a reason why certain acts are moral or immoral outside of God makes it that way.
Of course I can. Let us take "thou shalt not kill." Under your argument, this is simply divine pronouncement and, indeed, since much of our legal system is rooted is religion law, one could make a good case. However, oen may be an athiest and still inculcate TSNK into their moral code: assume there is no god. Thus, there is no heaven. With no afterlife, an individual's existence on earth is, effectively, the entirety of their existence, a set amount of time before which is nonexistence and after which, same. Assume that existence has value, and that scarcity increases value - thus, existence is infinitely scarce to the individual, and thus infinitely valuable. Under religious law, killing someone simply sends them to the afterlife for adjudication by the supreme being. Doing so as athiest, however, prematurely brings to an end that individual's existance adn amounts to theft on the grandest scale imaginable, for which there is no recourse nor possbile justice. Therefore, killing from an athiestic standpoint is infinitely worse than doing so in from a religious standpoint.
And you can't question the behavior of God because you have no moral basis to judge him by.
One may analyze the acts of God to determine his Will and purpose, and to seek His lessons :) Judgement, as you say, is reserved for Him alone.
[more]
Since theology is groundless, the idea of evil is also groundless?
Theology itself is not groundless. Athiests, after all, cannot disprove the existence of God, they can only claim that science as it is now understood cannot test for His existence and thus must exclude it.
So, in the absence of God we can't make good/evil judgements?
No, we may, I was just pointing out that your ability to couch yoru adjudications in those terms is couched in theology. God, historically, decides good or evil, not man.
Fine, replace Evil with Immoral as you see fit
"Immoral" works equally poorly; barring discussions of the religious sources of moral codes, morality is inherently subjective. I say immoral, you say immoral, and we talk of wildly different things.
Since I don't believe in an afterlife, most of my morals stem from self-preservation, but at least I know where they are coming from.
And, even you must admit, self-preservation can be used to justify as much evil as religion. By eschewing religion, must we revert to the Law of Tooth And Claw? That seems a rather long step backward.
By religious arguments, however, I can justify the extermination of whole races of people, and you couldn't tell me otherwise.
As one could by arguments of self-preservation, and to which I could tell you otherwise, based on my own religious tenets. If you were a Crusading Christian, and I were a Quaker, would we not come in disagreement? yet both are religious, even offshoots of the SAME religion.
My God says I must eliminate the heretics or I won't spend eternity in paradise.
That is your God's prerogative :) However, being as devout as you'd like to will bring you in conflict with others rather quickly, I'd think.
I really should turn my ire towards people instead of the stupid things they believe.
Now you're talking! There is much about each other truly worthwhile of scorn - why be slipshod, when there is such fertile ground all around for the sowing of personal, vibrant discord?
I think the world would have less badness with less religion.
Look at the more secular societies; they are the ones with the most freedoms, the most happiness, the highest standards of living. Reason WORKS. You can't eliminate cholera if you subscribe to the evil spirit theory of disease.
Will it solve ALL problems? No. But I agree with Dawkins. Religion is a virus, it is not beneficial, it is actually very harmful, there is a window for infecting people, and if we want to raise people who will not be members of Fred Phelp's church, who will not be all "The Pope must die because he maligned the Prophet" we need to get people through this window without giving them the "Its okay to believe things for no reason" dogma. That means keeping it out of our secular institutions, not subjecting it to children in schools.
I would never presume to tell people that they can't believe things in their own lives, as long as it stays private, but I think for the good of society it MUST stay out of the public arena, and our officials must start having reasons for things other than "I spoke to God and he wanted me to liberate Iraq"
Mord, you and I both believe that God doesn't exist and the Bible as religious doctrine is bullshit.
Our fundamental difference is in how we treat those people who don't think like us...those who do believe the bullshit.
I think the religious have perfectly valid (to them) and understandable (to me) reasons for their faith. It probably brings great comfort and purpose to their lives to think of someone watching over them. The finality of death and the futility of existence are horrible things to contemplate and come to terms with. Not having to deal with them is much easier. You and I are more bound by our logic and reason, and thus have the misfortune of living without that comfort. We've made our choice and we live with it. Those who have chosen faith aren't delusional idiots, they aren't mentally ill, and they certainly aren't evil zealots bent on destroying the lives of others.
I'm curious how many religious (mildly or otherwise) people you know in your life - friends, family, neighbours. Are they unintelligent? Are they evil? Are they mentally ill? Do you hate them? I personally know a few, and they're almost all intelligent, kind-hearted people.
Like Fes said, religion can be used by different people to justify good or evil deeds. I think you'll find that those who use it for good are good people, and those who use it for evil are evil people. The religion itself is benign. Sure, many religions preach hatred and murder at the same time they preach love and forgiveness. They're contradictory and open to wide interpretation. Too many religious leaders with too many gullible followers have chosen to highlight the hatred and murder aspects. That trend needs to be countered and fought against by believers and non-believers alike, but the way to do that is not to tar the whole congregation with the same brush, or to foolishly attempt to convert them all to Atheism. We have to encourage proper use of the tool, not destroy it altogether.
As for the morality of self-preservation, it has a lot going for it. You would never think that a person who kills in self-defense was evil, or should not be a member of society would you? Thats not very tooth and claw. And he has a vested self-interest in fostering a peaceful and fair society, doesn't he? For his own good?
Tooth and claw is the most ignorant approach to self-preservation. Cooperation and the formation of stable social structures is far better.
But this is a religious canard, that without God, people would have no reason to be moral. Its completely untrue. Vested self-interest is a very good start. Do unto others and all that.
rocket88, we already had this discussion earlier in the thread. I think religion itself is an evil, so a religious person, by definition, is part of the problem. The religiously fervent members in my family were by far the most ignorant, most intolerant, and they thought of themselves as good people because they went to church every Sunday. It doesn't work that way. The people I respected the most were generally religious in name only, and if questioned, they would tell you that they were only going through the motions because it was easier and they don't really buy that a just and kind God would ever judge humans for temporal crimes, or be the type of being to create malaria and HIV.
theology is groundless
But lithology is groundful.
You can't eliminate cholera if you subscribe to the evil spirit theory of disease.
I think you misunderstand the historical perspective from which religion stems - two thousand years ago, relgiion WAS reason. You are assuming that the era an dcultures from which teh major religions of this workld sprang were are knowledgable as ours. Religion, at its core, addresses that which science cannot, and two millenia ago, there was much that science could not address. Since, we have learned so much, that religion's purview has grown increasingly smaller. But, historically speaking, the idea of atheism as a possible viewpoints is of rather recent vintage. Prior to the now, there was simply to much mystery in the world for their not to be a God.
"I spoke to God and he wanted me to liberate Iraq"
I don't recall him ever saying this. There are perfectly secular rationale for going into Iraq. Bush has admitted taht he considers himself a staunch Crhistian, but beyodn that I don't think I've ever heard him give purely religious justifications for political decisions.
You would never think that a person who kills in self-defense was evil, or should not be a member of society would you?
I can think of several scenarios where that might indeed be the case. After all, we amy have very differnt ideas as to what constitutes "self-presevation." What if you feel you are justified in killing me because I trod on your lawn? "Could be a prelude to an attack!" you might say. Law, secular AND religious, codify these things.
Vested self-interest is a very good start.
Enlightened self-interest, yes. You might be interested to know this concept is the underlying core of capitalism!
Do unto others and all that.
Haha! OK, you win, I give.
Goodness, I tipe like shat. My apologees.
So no, I view the religious members of my own family, even though I love some of them, as people deserving of sympathy. Hate them? No. Hate the fact they vote along religious lines? Oh Yes Absolutely. Think they are part of the problem with society? Absolutely. Have a good solution? Yeah, make sure my kids recieve a healthy dose of skepticism when they are young so they don't wind up like them.
I can arrange shit into meaningful piles.
I have piles because of a bunch of meaningless shit.
Enlightened self interest is the hallmark of democracy. Self-interest for the next quarter profits is the hallmark of capitalism. :p
I'm finding you the Bush quote, btw.
The religiously fervent members in my family were by far the most ignorant, most intolerant, and they thought of themselves as good people because they went to church every Sunday. It doesn't work that way. The people I respected the most were generally religious in name only
Well, now, that's a scientific study, isn't it.
You need to meet some smart folks who also believe in God, or hold open the possibility of God/meaning/whateveryoucallit. Look around; I think there's a fair number of monkeys who fit that bill.
"Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time" -- Commerce Secretary Don Evans
"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." -- Bush as quoted by Mahmoud Abbas
HE ASKED IF I KNEW RELIGIOUS PEOPLE PERSONALLY. I never SAID it was scientific!
But then the media isn't exactly an unbiased sample either!
So no, I view the religious members of my own family, even though I love some of them, as people deserving of sympathy. Hate them? No. Hate the fact they vote along religious lines? Oh Yes Absolutely. Think they are part of the problem with society? Absolutely. Have a good solution? Yeah, make sure my kids recieve a healthy dose of skepticism when they are young so they don't wind up like them.
You and I are in complete agreement here.
However, there ARE scientific studies, if you are really interested.
Enlightened self interest is the hallmark of democracy.
I think not. Perhaps of the social contract per Locke, but enlightened self-interst fails miserably when translated into the tyranny of the majority.
Commerce Secretary Don Evans
...Bush as quoted by Mahmoud Abbas
I'm not entirely sure that's a refutation.
A) then its not really enlightened, is it? Because the majority members may one day find themselves IN the minority
B) it rings true to me, you'll have to be the judge whether he said it or not
It wasn't recorded, but this guy says he heard it.
We're all left with the task of determining how big a grain of salt to take it with.
Well, the guy saying it didn't happen is someone with no credibility, so my grain of salt is very very tiny.
Sad that I will believe Mahmoud Abbas over my own government, but, I don't have any data on Mahmoud Abbas and I know my own government is a bad bet :-)
Just to stir the pot a bit, some info on Mahmoud Abbas (wiki). Considering that he was a (former?) Holocaust denier, one might want to take a bigger grain of salt with his words.
Just because someone is less of a scumbag than the person he's maligning, doesn't mean that person isn't a scumbag himself.
Mord, just a question: do you mean ALL religions are evil, or just your own Judeo Christian scope? Because if you don't know any Hindus, Buddhists, Shinoists etc... I don't see how you can make blanket statements like that.
Do they ALL accept things that they have no firsthand experience of without question or any evidence? Then yeah, damn them too. They are the problem.
Fortunately, some Buddhists don't, but they are few and far between.
And yes, they are both scumbags. I agree. But the quote fits Bush, I don't know of any reason for Abbas to lie about this, and I don't for a second believe White House denials. Maybe Bush was trying to get chummy with a fellow believer in a higher power? He may not have said it, its a translation of a translation of a translation, but everything in his character says he either claims belief for political purposes, or is an actual true believer, called upon by God to do whatever his administration commits to.
So, alnedra, let me ask you something. Is there something about Hinduism, Islam, Shinto, etc... that you think redeems them above Christianity? I mean, would it be okay for me just to despise Christianity for all its crimes against logic and think highly of all the others?
I'd be more concerned about the part of the quote where Bush says he'll give up on the middle east because the elections are more important anyway :-)
And of course, in his condemnation of religion for hatred, Mord will obviously not include the United Church of Canada (pro-gay marriage), the liberal rabbis in Canada who signed pro-gay petitions, and the half (or more) of the Anglican Communion which is pro gay rights (including the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the new Primate of the Anglican church in the US).
All very devout "irrational" people, whose "irrational" religion tells them they should love their neighbour.
Also, my two friends who are Anglican priests, who have done far more to spread love and understanding in the world than anyone who goes around hating on entire groups of people because of the actions of a small set of them.
There are lots of things I take without irrefutable evidence.
Like that people all over the world are basically the same. I haven't travelled the world, I don't have proof of this, I just believe it. It's part of my belief system. I believe that they are as smart, as complicated, as interested, as good or as evil as people I know.
I know, that makes me an irrational person, and thus a source of evil. God knows, no evil has ever been done in the name of rationality or science or the atheist communist regime.
Dreadnought would like to point out that atheists have devout faith.
Oh do I now?
Yes. You believe in Sparkle Motion.
This I Believe: That blackberry cobbler will one day lead us all to Valhalla.
Vested self-interest is a very good start.
Enlightened self-interest, yes. You might be interested to know this concept is the underlying core of capitalism!
enlightened self-interest is not the underlying core of capitalism, rather its presence is a necessary contributor to the smooth functioning of a capitalist system. the underlying core of capitalism is difficult to define, but it's closer to the privileging of capital, especially financial, over other inputs to the production process. you could imagine a system that privileges labour but still leverages enlightened self-interest to operate successfully.
for example, when adam smith talks about the invisible hand, he's not just commenting on individual asset ownership but on individual freedom in general.
Keep your invisible hands to yourself, thank you.
Mord totally set up shop in this thread.
I mean, would it be okay for me just to despise Christianity for all its crimes against logic and think highly of all the others?
Perhaps not think highly of them; heaven forbid I ask you to make such a great leap. But if you don't know how the religions are practised, can you rationally and logically make the blanket assumption that they are evil too? You are basing your assumption that religion is evil on your own experiences (not a problem), but then you expand that assumption to all religions, including those you have no experience with at all. How is that different from people believing in a God they have never seen?
Somebody's got his invisible hand on my individual assets.
Haven't we got enough cobblers in here already, mct?
it's a shoe-in.
Perhaps a nice plum upside-down cake?
Mothra enjoys all pastries.
*crosses mct off Smite List*
So, most religious people do good things in the name of their faith. The people who do bad things in the name of their faith are just cockbags, and were they not religious, they'd have other excuses for doing bad things.
But- some of those cockbags are religious leaders of some kind, and use their followers' faith to manipulate them into doing bad things too. Thanks to them, you've got otherwise good people demeaning homosexuals and firebombing churches.
Removing religion from the picture is not a solution. Some people just feel like something's missing from their lives- they need to know where we came from, why we're here, where we go when we die, etc. That need is what defines religion. You can't eliminate religion, because you can't eliminate that need.
The only way (that I can think of) to counter the religious leaders who are poor influences is to introduce the followers to other religious leaders who are good influences. The only way to fix the problems with a religion is from the inside. Any perceived influence from outside forces will generate resentment and tension instead of having the intended effect.
You believe in Sparkle Motion.
I don't even know what Sparkle Motion is. But that was still quite teh funny!
The sports talk crowd will say "thanks for bringing the passion" when a caller is quite emphatic about pass completion statistics or something. Mord is bringing the passion against religion, and I think that's a good thing. I note, admittedly with some bemused interest, that he states passionate pro-religious fervor was a part of his (it's his, right?) upbringing. That doesn't bode well for reason and logic, but then what does. We all rant because we love.
*writes-in MCT's name on Smite List*
mel gibson says "thanks for buying the passion"
*adds roryk*
Mel adds: "passion not Jews causes all the wars in the world"
*smiles for camera*
What, we've got to bring our own passion now? I thought I could just buy it there. Oh, well. I've probably got some in the bottom of my purse. *digs around*
let me put it this way then; any good religion would not be called a religion in the first place. If its defined as religion, and as such, based on blind appeals to faith, then its worthless as a human endeavor.
Just as you say people do evil things in spite of religon, people could do good things without it too, so there is no reason to keep it around.
So yes, I don't need to see them, because by definition, they would be bad. I know how to make logical blanket statements.
jb Not irrefutable evidence, jb. ANY evidence. At all. And that would be infinitely more than religion brings to the table.
"Some people just feel like something's missing from their lives- they need to know where we came from, why we're here, where we go when we die, etc. ... You can't eliminate religion, because you can't eliminate that need."
Really? And *I* make blanket statements lacking full knowledge of what I'm talking about? You said some people can't eliminate that need. You mean they are physically unable to? Its actually impossible?
Because thats funny. I know lots of people who are perfectly content not having all the answers, and haven't turned to making one up just because.
Hogging the microphone, anybody?
Just a few more comments, and I'm gonna change my mind.
You said some people can't eliminate that need.
No, he said you can't eliminate that need.
That's it, I'm sold. Let's kill anyone who is religious, yeah? Who's with me?!
any good religion would not be called a religion in the first place
Then what would you call it? You can't say, "All religions are evil" and then turn around and say "Any religion which isn't evil can't be called a religion". It's like saying "all ravens are black". If I show you a white raven, you tell me it's not a raven.
Dude, chill. That's just what the passionate anti-religion mongering logisticales want!
Buddhanistas? Dharmanazis?
*I* can't eliminate that need? Well yeah, I think convincing 6+ billion people to accept some things as unknowable would be beyond the capabilities of Jesus Christ, let alone little old me. That doesn't mean I'm wrong. So far the best argument was saying I'm bigoted against religion, and am making blanket statements. Nobody has said its untrue, nobody has offered evidence that ANY religion is correct. The best you guys can do is same Some People Feel Good To Believe In Fairies and I should play nice and not disabuse them.
Meanwhile Alnedra ignores the meat of what I was saying, namely that taking things on faith is the problem with all religions, by definition. Yeah, I guess there could be an albino raven. Just like there can be something thats omnibenevolent and omnipotent that allows evil to exist. Yay Alnedra. When you find a religion that can show evidence for the existence of a diety, then I'll believe in your white raven. Until then, its all fairy-stories that we'ld do better to do without. Just like lies.
Sure, you can lie to people to make them happy, but its still a lie.
I don't remember lashing out at other kids when I found out the truth about the tooth fairy.
*gets out can of kerosene, heads towards fire*
Sure, you can lie to people to make them happy, but its still a lie.
Dude, you're contradicting yourself. A lie is something with a discernable truth value. You've been going on and on and on and on about how there's no evidence for the existence of God. Without any evidence, there is no known truth value -- there is only a posited statement whose truth value is unknown.
It may all be fairy-tales, we can't know right now, but even fairy-tales have their uses. Not all those uses are evil.
I don't remember lashing out at other kids when I found out the truth about the tooth fairy.
*ding!*
Okay, making a voluminous argument that all faith is pointless and wrong is more than getting mad about the tooth fairy, but point taken. There's something to the loquacious condemnation that has little or nothing to do with religion or logic.
Yay indeed! Yay Teabashi! wh00t!
Since we've stopped being theists, my son sleeps better at night knowing that there are no demons lurking in the shadows of his bedroom, trying to eat his sinner's soul.
the family that apostatises together, desomnambularizes together.
or something like that
*underlines roryk's name on Smite List*
*lays out sacrificial cashmere sweater*
*underlines pete's name on the Smut List*
My cashmere sweater's missing.
I don't believe in sweaters.
For I worship the holey SOCK!
Ok, meat.
The laymen's understanding of Buddhism is that there is this omnipotent "god" called Buddha. That's not true. The idea is that all material things are illusory. The feeling of need people have (for material things, for love, for companionship, for money etc...) is likewise illusory. This feeling of need creates a sense of lack, and that sense of lack breeds negative emotions such as fear, hatred, anxiety, despair....
Buddha was the first to "wake up" from this "dream" of reality, and realised that people do not need all these. The cycle of birth, old age, disease and death can be avoided by removing desire from one's self.
Of course, you're gonna say this is all taken on faith. Let me ask you a question: What isn't taken on faith?
Compassion? Justice? Laws (laws are enacted, enforced and followed because of agreements between people that laws should be followed)? Love? Charity? Equality? Money? Those pieces of paper in your wallet are worth goods because it's taken on faith that they are worth something.
This is my last response, not because I've run out of things to say, but because you are making me angry, Mord. Your supercilious, know-it-all, you-people-are-so-stooopid attitude is driving me up the wall. So I'm not going to comment anymore, because it's just going to make me angrier. I don't mind having a discussion, but I really could do without all the aggravation of doing it with an asshole.
Making Neddy angry makes Mothra-larva cry.
Someone else making Neddy angry makes Mothra-larva cry, obv. Mothra-larva could never make Neddy angry herself. That wouldn't be within her nature.
It was Mothra that put the holes in Beeswacky's socks, no?
I take human rights on faith. Does that make me stupid?
Well duhh.
*buys low, sells high*
InsolentChimp: Yeah, people hate homosexuals because they pass legislation that actively restricts how they can live their lives based on beliefs founded on a base of bullshitonium. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
GRRR. I am not ready to come back to this thread. Some of you need a course in formal logic.
Mord, I should have quoted what I was referring to when I said:
Mord, by the same bent of logic people hate Americans, homosexuals and GWAR fans.
In the post previous to it you said:
You participate, if you are religios, in creating a reservoir of a pathogen, and in so doing you enable evil to happen, in your name. I hold you all responsible for that, and rightfully so. Grow up and start living in reality as if other people matter more than your absent God.
Just referring to that slippery slope.
God, I hate GWAR fans.
I was wondering if one could say that there are some religions that are more toxic than others. Also is there an inverse relationship between toxicity and creativity?
Namely, the passive religions, say Buddhism, Jainism, Bahai, etc have done less human damage in terms of death toll & persecution, but are they also less constructive? Whereas the active, empire-building religions, Christianity and Islam are correlated with great periods of creativity?
Mord: maybe you have no evidence of anything greater than human life, but I have evidence. I look up, and I see the stars, and I know that there are things greater than me that I will never fully understand, but that maybe, with luck and a little faith, they might touch me.
I mostly feel sorry for you if you have never had even the brush of something that made you wonder.
Also, what's all this about their being no Santa Claus or tooth fairy or Easter Bunny? What evidence do you have that these things don't exist? Maybe they don't visit you (have you been good?) but Santa came to my house last Christmas. I was asleep of course (he won't come if you are awake), and he left lovely presents (more than I deserved). And some yummy marzipan (I ate too much, I got a stomachache). The Easter Bunny still brings chocolate at easter, and the last time I lost a tooth, I got 25 cents.
Of course, they won't be offended if you don't believe in them. They understand that most adults are too busy, and they work gently and invisibly in the adult world.
But the Fair Folk - oh, please don't say anything bad about them. Or talk much about them at all. You might be far away, but I live just across the road from one of their haunts, and I am often glad for the iron of my bicycle if I have to pass through at night. We've seen them - they dance with firesticks by the river at night.
StoryBored, I don't think ye can make a reasonable case for the idea that non-monotheistic religions are any less constructive. Egypt's pyramids, China's Great Wall alone should pretty well knock that one in the eye.
Or did ye mean this in some less architectural sense?
*lays out sacrificial cashmere sweater*
posted by roryk at 03:05PM UTC on September 22, 2006
so this morning, about 16 hours after i posted this, mrs roryk woke me up to say that a very large moth had entered the apartment.
spooky, eh?
oh yeah, by "very large" she meant maybe two inches wingspan.
Mothra will make your sweater holey!
Or did ye mean this in some less architectural sense?
I think i'm whistling in the dark on this. So really, i'm gonna be quiet now.
*stops whistling*
a very large moth had entered the apartment
*hums theme from 'Jaws'*
a very large moth had entered the apartment
*waves*
*quickly douses the candles*
I heard about that moth. Vicious streak a mile wide.
*stops whistling in darkness*
2/
God - how
can I
ever
thank you
enough
for this
nothing?
-- from Cyd Corman
It reminds me of when some catholic nuns refused to help victims of the tsunami unless they converted.
Remember kiddies: God is love, but only if you love him first. Otherwise, you're screwed.
Here is a talk about religion by Daniel Dennett, one of the atheists cited in the FPP. (You'll also find talks by Steven Pinker, Michael Gazzaniga, Antonio Damasio, and Marc Hauser [whose talk I haven't yet viewed--but given that it's entitled The Evolution of a Universal Moral Grammar, I'm thinking it might pertain to the discussion in this thread, too].)
Really should have posted this, the full documentary about religion by Dawkins, from which the Dawkins vs. pastor bit was pulled. (Well, actually just the first part of the doc, but you'll find links to the other parts on the page.)
Also, video of Richard Dawkins vs. an evangelical pastor.
Has anyone else noticed that the same arrogant "evangelical" in the documentary is the same guy who recently got outed for homosexuality and drug abuse?
Life is beautiful.
that's what talking to Richard Dawkins does to you. First you disagree with him, then you phone for a massage and a little ecstasy.
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
- Terry Eagleton with a trenchant review of Dawkins' The God Delusion
The expurgated version?
Eagleton got some great responses in the letters page too Pete. AC Grayling called the linked piece 'emetic'. Ooh them feisty academics.
I actually got to meet him last weekend. He was in town to read from his book and do a Q&A at the lit festival. He offered to have a drink with me and my (pregnant) wife, citing that "in Ireland, Guinness is considered compulsory for nursing mothers."
I don't agree with a lot of what the man has to say, but I'll give him this: I've never met a more perfect gentleman in my life. He put everyone else at his table (other than a friend of ours who was dining with him) to shame.
> "in Ireland, Guinness is considered compulsory for nursing mothers."
That was quite some time ago.
Guinness in Dublin used to have a policy of sending someone to visit hospitalized workers with a six pack of stout. The bottles would be left by the bedside of the recovering person, visible to anyone coming into the ward. Part of the Guinness is good for you strategy.
Yes, well the right can jolly well stuff it.
Pass the secular popcorn.
disestablishmentarianists unite! you have nothing to lose but the first three or four lines on your t-shirts!
I am right now reading Dawkins' "The God Delusion". It's a real hoot, well written, irreverent, he really takes on all comers. Also I realize he's got a point, I used to be an agnostic but now after reading half way through it, I'm starting to buy into it. Gawd, i'm a sucker for a good argument.
Falling right into God's trap, as it were.
One can be an atheist and not be a hardass about it.
Also: belated, but thanks for the clarification, roryk, on enlightened self-interest as a core of democracy and/or capitalism.
The surprising thing is that when I saw Dawkins in that video documentary, i was turned off by his stridency. I was expecting more of that in the book, but the book is less strident and more reasoned argument (like this - .pdf). It's a shame really, the documentary may actually be harming book sales.
That's awesome; how freaking lame to censor her. Just about my favorite thing in the world to make fun of is pro athletes saying things like "This was all part of God's plan." Kurt Warner after the Rams won the Super Bowl? Pure comedy gold.
That's hilarious. If I'd been her I would have gone a slightly different route, thanking God for hating the other nominee's guts so bad that he made them fail on camera in front of millions of viewers like the big bunch of losers that they are.
Boo to the networks and that Catholic douchebag.
Yeah, gotta love it.
God loves ME and let ME win, and I can prove it because I'M holier than thou.
I'm angry about what happened to Galileo. Still. And I'm angry that it took the Catholic Church until 1992 to apologize for it.
This comes up again and again, but the thing is, Galileo was wrong. His heliocentric argument was based on his theory of tides, which was simply wrong. The final answer may have been right (and really, it's just a matter of perspective, one being easier to use than the other), but as his argument getting there was off.
Pope Urban VIII was a friend of Galileo's, and something of a man of science. It was only after Galileo's book portrayed Urban as a simpleton voicing the Aristotelean view that Galileo alienated his strongest protector, and largely forced the Church to act in the way it did.
For a smart guy, Galileo sure acted dumb. He needlessly pissed off his strongest protector on a point of pride, and especially after being cautioned not to do so. I'm not saying that the Church's response was as charitable as it could have been, but it certainly was predictable.
Not to mention that he was wrong in the first place.
Sorry. This is something that just irks me again and again. The situation wasn't nearly as one-sided as it's constantly portrayed. Anyway, please continue.
Does anyone with better google-fu or research skills in general know what specifically these "greatest forms of cruelty" are that Papa Ratzi is balming ateism for? The only one that any of the summaries I've found metion is the Russian Revolution.
Pardon bad typing. I has the influenza, so interestingly enough, it's a good analog to how I would sound if I was speaking the words.
If you weren't an evil atheist God wouldn't have given you the flu.
That poster reads like a Carlsberg ad to me. Am I deluded, or just thirsty?
That's incredible - hackles will surely be raised. Or would be if it was happening across the Atlantic, anyway.
Up to almost 41K now...
And that's real sterling-type money.
You can use that campaign for just about anything.
THERE'S PROBABLY NO ONE HIDING UNDER YOUR BED.
SO STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
THERE'S PROBABLY NO CHANCE IN HELL THAT YOU EVER WILL BE PROBED BY ALIENS.
SO STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
THERE'S PROBABLY NO KARMA.
SO STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
THERE'S PROBABLY NO PREVIEW BUTTON.
SO STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
Not to split hairs, but isn't "There's probably no God" more agnostic than atheist?
I want a bus with, "There IS DEFINITELY NO purview button*" written on it.
(*Purview button - a button that defines the overall scope of a thread).
THERE'S PROBABLY NO TRACICLE.
SO STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
Carlsberg: Beer of Heathens!
(ThinksTwice - atheism and agnosticism aren't mutually exclusive. The former refers to faith/belief while the the latter refers to knowledge. Most of the atheists I know are also agnostic.)
I think the "probably" more accurately reflects atheism. "Definitely" is more anti-theism, which is a belief-based viewpoint.
Yeah, even La Belle Dawkins says that there is a statistically greater probability of there not being a god than there is one. It's just so much greater that it's easier to say 'there is no god' for shorthand. This ad is just being pithy yet accurate.
Like all of my posts and comments.
It said in the Torygraph article on this that a couple of religious think-tanks stumped up cash too because they thought that any raising of the question was good for business and that it was a pretty crappy campaign. Icy Jesus burn!
Atheism has pinch points?
On the double-deckers there's definitely no driver on the top.
That you, Joni?
Ahem. As much as I adore Joni, Twisted was first vocalized by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, most especially by Annie Ross, and Joni's version is a cover of a cover of a cover.
And instead of one head, I've got two.
Well, y'know...as the London buses say, there probably isn't a god, so show us yer freakin policies, dickhead!
Not that this little election thing strictly has anything to do with me, you understand. Being in Albion and all...
But it is terribly entertaining!
You're from Albion? We're practically neighbors! ;P
chocolatechurch in mypeanut butterstate! You got yourpeanut butterstate in mychocolatechurch!