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Dr. Richard Dawkins On Education, 'Innocence of Muslims,' and Rep. Paul Broun
In this video interview (with transcript), Dr. Richard Dawkins discusses religious exceptionalism with regard to the teaching of evolution, and the chilling effect of fundamentalism on the production of scientists and engineers. He says, "I can think of no other reason why, of all the scientific facts that people might disagree with or disbelieve, [evolution] is the one they pick on. Physics gets through OK. Chemistry gets through Ok. But not biology/geology, and I think it's got to be because of religion." He also addresses the recent comments from Rep. Paul Broun, who denounced evolution and the Big Bang theory as "lies straight from the pit of hell," and the recent Innocence of Muslims video that led to unrest in various parts of the world. "Freedom of speech is something that Islamic theocracies simply do not understand. They don't get it. They're so used to living in a theocracy, that they presume that if a film is released in the United States, the United States Government must be behind it! How could it be otherwise? So, they need to be educated that, actually, some countries do have freedom of speech and government is not responsible for what any idiot may do in the way of making a video." He also has some very insightful comments about religion as one of the most arbitrary labels by which people divide themselves when involved in conflict. Hit the link below for the video.
Since he retired from "Family Feud", I thought he had passed. Good to know that he is still around.
Please, commence the interview in a room with no radio playing on a background, or use sound-filtering. All the background sounds are very distracting.
He is British, he must know what he is talking about.
The problem I see with Islamic theocracies - compared to the US constitution saying that we are endowed with unalienable rights by our creator - is that they get their laws from their god, not their rights. The are therefore free to trample on the rights of the individual in the name of their god. In the US, we are free to act like fools in the name of our god.
Rep. Broun needs to learn than belief in god and even Christianity does not mean the big bang or evolution are wrong. One cannot snap their fingers and make a cake; the ingredients must be mixed together and have heat applied. Why should god be able to circumvent the rules just because his cake is the universe?
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Very little consideration went into this audio. Vacuuming, background music? Amateur bro
Was there nowhere quieter to record? Piped music, other people chatting and moving about etc. A shame...
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
He's got it backward here -- it's one of the least arbitrary labels, since it reveals what underlying philosophy and values we stand for. It's similar to wars breaking out between existentialists and determinists, but we've found more interesting ways to encapsulate those philosophies in mythological symbolism.
Please provide links to downloadable files for future videos; please don't force your users to suffer some terribly inefficient and limited player like that of an embedded flash player—not only does, say, mplayer use far fewer cycles to play the same damn video, but I can also speed up playback to nearly 2x the rate (without comical effect!), which greatly reduces the time it takes to watch a video, thereby allowing me to spend more time viewing slashdot advertisements. :-P
The protesters there were religious, no, even if the state is not a theocracy?
There certainly were protests in Iran with Iran's supreme leader calling the making of the film "a criminal act".
Can you provide ONE example of his Bigotry? I can name thousands of example how Religions around the world are Bigots to non-believers! Mr. Dawkins doesn't go around beheading people for having different beliefs.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
We can make the building blocks of life from inanimate objects.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Also, you don't understand what evolution is. Evolution says what happens *AFTER LIFE STARTED TO EXIST* and how it changes over time. How those original life forms were created is an entirely different theory.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
have been both a Christian and an Atheist at different points in my life, so have a different perspective than most. Folks like Dawkins tend to be the loudest, but are the most ineffective at changing mids. If I were writing a play book for the Atheist movement, I would instruct all influential Atheists to model Michio Kaku. Dr. Kaku rarely strays into religous discussion, may make peripheral comments but doesn't seek to create a lot of controversy. Instead, he sticks to the main points of what he is proficient at and gives people, even those who are Christian or Muslim, someone to want to emulate. It becomes apparent that he is a non-believer in God, but doesn't alienate those who begin with a diferent viewpoint. Focus on living the life you should and people will follow.
I'd make a similar argument to Christians. Don't try to be like Ann Coultier or Rush Limbaugh. Like your lives like Mother Teresa who instructed people "to find your own Calcutta". Focus on living the life you should and people will follow.
-- MyLongNickName
(Slashdot keeps logging me out when I leave the main page)
This is some strange variant of "If we can send Men to the Moon, surely we must be able to..."
There are plenty of complicated problems that are not easily solved. That these problems take time to solve hardly seems to me to be justification for inserting "Goddidit" as an explanation.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...because you'd sound pretty fucking crazy sitting in a flying airplane denying Newtonian physics and most every man-made object in the modern world relies on chemistry to make it -- plastics, composites, even metals.
Those two fields start out so far ahead in working, every day examples of their basic truths that challenging their more exotic variants seems risky and many of them are too complex for the drooling religious zealots to even begin to criticize.
Evolution doesn't have those kind of concrete, hands-on examples in every day life (well, OK it does, but...). To most people it's been distilled down to MAN USED TO BE A MONKEY AND GOD DIDN'T CREATE HIM BECAUSE THERE IS NO GOD AND THAT MEANS GAY MARRIAGE IS OK and they just can't accept that.
You don't need to believe in abiogenesis in order to believe in evolution. When people say that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, they're not talking about abiogenesis. They're talking about the evidence for there having been periods billions of years ago when there were only single-celled organisms, and the evolution of those organisms into the complex life we have today.
If you like, you can imagine that a deity put life into those primitive origins.
Nonetheless abiogenesis seems plausible to me, and there have been experiments that demonstrate the processes that may have set things off. Look for the Miller-Urey Experiment, for a classic. Bear in mind that to go from primordial soup to single-cells, we're talking about a handful of freak occurrences, each one some 40 million years apart.
I don't think it is. In his own book, The God Delusion, he gives an example of a PhD Paleontologist who ignored all his education so that he could believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible.
Then there are the folks, like my father in law (BSME Texas A&M) who will say that current evidence _may_ show that humans evolved on this planet but one day there will be evidence that shows that we were put here. I am not joking or exaggerating. He uses science's own thinking to "show" that they may be wrong.
All the education in the World will not change the opinion of someone who puts their fingers in their ears and yells, "La la la la la la la ...".
Religion is all about people's emotional "thinking". When you ask a believer, their "proof" of God or whatever eventually boils down to a feeling. They "know" He exists and by "know" they're talking about their feeling.
It's that irrational trap humans fall into all the time and they confuse it with rational thought.
I think even beyond that we need to define life. It's almost certain that the earliest self-replicators did not behave much like life as we know it. The first "life" may have been little more than a pool of self-replicating organic molecules splitting through mechanical fission.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Google Venter and synthetic bacteria. They already made a synthetic genome from raw chemicals and created a new species by putting the genome into an empty cell. Does this not even create any doubt in your scientific mind that this is just as possible as curing cancer? My bet is we will create synthetic life from scratch a long time before we find a cure for cancer.
Korma: Good
Not to mention:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7745868/Scientist-Craig-Venter-creates-life-for-first-time-in-laboratory-sparking-debate-about-playing-god.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sciencebiz/2010/05/20/life-made-in-the-lab-but-dont-freak-out/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/tpna/
There were protests in almost every single Muslim majority country without few exceptions (such as Singapore, which had it blocked), as well as some western ones, such as France, where violence also broke out. Was it because of the video? I'm not so sure. A week after the video was released the french satirical paper Charlie Hebdo released cartoons that were by far more vulgar than Innocence of Muslims (for example, depicting Muhammad naked). There was almost no response at all to that. Either they're becoming desensitized to cartoons or as many have commented, this was just yet another excuse to blame the foreign devil yell "death to America", "itbach al yahud" and run rampage burning stuff down.
"I can think of no other reason why, of all the scientific facts that people might disagree with or disbelieve, [evolution] is the one they pick on. Physics gets through OK. Chemistry gets through Ok. But not biology/geology, and I think it's got to be because of religion."
Thats an easy answer. Biology and Geology are taught in school. For most middle-aged adults, these were high school requirements. Or the easiest versions were "Life Science" and "Earth Science". Physics and chemistry are electives for the nerds who are interested in the stuff.
Those that just don't "get it" are more apt to dismiss science and fall back on mysticism.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
I can think of no other reason why, of all the scientific facts that people might disagree with or disbelieve, [evolution] is the one they pick on. Physics gets through OK....... Rep. Paul Broun, who denounced evolution and the Big Bang theory as "lies straight from the pit of hell,"
Well, apparently physics gets picked on too.
Also, good job adding a transcript! I love transcripts!!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Since you're not a fundamentalist, you agree that compatibility between beliefs is a matter of degree. However, that also means it reflects agreement on a general principle. Thus, it depends on what's in dispute to determine who's going to cluster with whom. For example, if it's materialists versus supernaturalists, almost all religions will be on the supernaturalist side. But if we're talking about more precise measurements, they may represent opposition to each other.
Good question. The answer is both yes and no.
Was Hitler a Christian? on The Straight Dope
" They're so used to living in a theocracy, that they presume that if a film is released in the United States, the United States Government must be behind it! How could it be otherwise?"
-It doesnt help that the news, even our local news, headlined it as a "US-made" video when actually it was just some random guy.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
religion as one of the most arbitrary labels by which people divide themselves when involved in conflict
Really? I'm pretty sure a guy got stabbed this past weekend because he was wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey in San Francisco. People get shot in LA and Chicago for walking onto the wrong gang's turf. Other people get special treatment because they joined a certain fraternity in college.
It's not often that I say this, but South Park hit the nail on the head. Singling out religion as the culprit for mankind's tendency to find idiotic excuses to justify violence is absurd. It's like blaming gunpowder manufacturers every time someone gets shot.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Can you provide ONE example of his Bigotry? I can name thousands of example how Religions around the world are Bigots to non-believers!
Calling all religious believers "delusional" by definition, meets your criteria fully.
As for "beheading", can you name something within Darwinian Naturalism that argues against it, if it increases the propagation of the behead-ers DNA? Stalin certainly didn't see that reason for restraint that isn't there, and you can easily google millions of examples of his own citizens, believers and atheists alike, killed by this formally-atheistic state. How much of Dawkins' non-correspondence to this demonstrable history of an actual large-scale test case, rather than a fantasy utopian atheist projection, is due not to the fact he -wouldn't-,,but rather -can't-, seems like a germane question. As is the reality of existence before any religion existed to blame--it would have been an ongoing intertribal bloodbath that is the very reason offered for why we exist in our current form and capabilities. Most of these projections against religion, are, simply, an "Argument from the Never-existed" fallacy that doesn't even propose to offer hard metrics, such as statistics, for -relative- comparison on what is a -relative- normative question. Understandably so, since the atheist worldview would lose immediately and overwhelmingly if we introduced actual hard data, simply by reference to the 20'th Century alone.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
>There were protests about the film in Libya. How does his "theocracy" argument even apply to a country that was a secular state ...
Libya may not have been an official theocracy but it certainly was an implicit one in the sense that Islam was ingrained in everyday life as well as government policy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Libya#Islam_in_Gaddafi_Libya), but that's besides the point.
How do you explain protests in Libya against some inconsequential and unimportant "filmmaker" in California? One of his points was that there are those in the middle east that just don't 'get' free speech. For example, during the cartoon controversy there were organized boycotts of Danish goods. Think about that for a second, people were boycotting Danish goods because the government of Denmark "allowed" some little known newspaper to practice free speech! Sounds to me like those that participated in the boycott didn't really get it, no?
>Dawkins is a bigot.
In what possible way?
Video great - transcript better.
He should stick to something he KNOWS about - like biology.
His other claims are largely bias - uninformed by fact or context.
There were protests about the film in Libya. How does his "theocracy" argument even apply to a country that was a secular state - more like Cuba? Iran, with a religious institution at the head of government, saw no such unrest.
Dawkins is a bigot. He unfortunately uses his impressive scientific and academic credentials to bolster the audience for his bigotry, and conflate the domains of his expertise to support his prejudice.
I don't know if I'd go as far as saying he's a bigot, but I think you make some valid points. Dawkins has made a name for himself by attacking religion, so he isn't likely to stop. I tend to agree with you, though. Anything "bad" done by religious people is presented as evidence of religion being bad in general - whether or not non-religious people do the same thing (e.g. rioting). But of course anything "good" done by religious people doesn't count in favor of religion unless NO secular person would have done the same thing.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
The problem with a "Cure for Cancer" is that few people understand that cancer is just a name for hundreds if not thousands of diseases caused by just as many different cellular mistakes, each needing their own approach and treatment regimen.
You might as well say "Cure for Sickness," as in, "Medical science is useless: they haven't even come up with a cure for sickness yet."
No doubt. Education is caustic to religious fantasies that are outdated and primitive. Science undercuts the traditional religious foundations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
We can make the building blocks of life from inanimate objects.
Wöhler's synthesis of urea probably did more harm to religion than evolution ever did.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
since it programs what underlying philosophy and values we stand for.
For a website with so many coders, it should be obvious all religious texts are Basic HomoSapiens software hacks.
Viral reproduction, root access(Externalized authority), disabling malware-detectors(Will believe bullshit), it's all in there. Suxnet.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
People don't kill in the name of Atheism.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
So intelligent scientists were able to design an experiment that created organic matter from inorganic chemicals, and you think that proves evolution?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
You'VE MissEd the poinT.
But, nonetheless, Hitler's use of a Christian "us" identity (including the pressure his regime exerted on Christian Churches) and a non-Christian (and, most significantly, Jewish) "them" identity (targetting not only actual Jews, but also tarring other enemies with association with Jews, through portrayals of both conscious collaboration and being duped by Jewish conspiracy) is pretty typical of the way religious identity is used to divide people into "us" v. "them". (You see almost identical things being done with religious identity -- with Islam replacing Christianity, but Judaism still the enemy -- by authoritarian regimes today that are either overtly Islamist, or even mostly-secular totalitarian regimes in areas where the population is largely Muslim; and closely parallel things -- with Christianity retained in the "us" role, but Islam and/or secularism/atheism the leading "them" labels -- in a weaker form in the US; historically, almost exactly the same thing -- with the Christian "us" being specifically Catholic -- was pretty the hallmark of the Spanish Inquisition.)
No, you are simply wrong about factual history.
Review the defined worldview of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a political entity, and the millions of people killed, internally and externally, by it, to correct your error.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I cannot believe the kind of false equivalency you just shoved out there. You just compared Dr. Dawkins who publishes well researched biological and philosophical books and levels disagreements with the religious against Coulter who literally calls for the outright slaughter(on multiple occasions) of those she disagrees with, and Limbaugh who makes a profession out of repeatedly misrepresenting facts. That's completely unreasonable.
You make it seem like having publicly stated atheist opinions is somehow equally vitriolic as calling for the murder of those you disagree with. This is why people like Dawkins speak out, because right now, its perfectly acceptable to equate atheists with monsters.
Not to mention that if you have mutation, selection and replication, it's all-but-impossible for evolution *not* to happen. Once you have a single-celled organism with those properties, in an environment ready for colonisation, the evolution of complex organisms to exploit that environment is inevitable.
Getting that single-celled organism in the first place, that's more of a mystery, but there are several plausible non-religious theories.
(That said, Dawkins is far less confrontational than many theist portray him as.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Communist personality cults are religious in nature. Same mental bug, different exploit.
The French Revolution had nothing to do with religion or lack thereof.
Any other questions?
Is a man who wants to stamp out homosexuality a bigot? I would say he is. How is that any different than wanting to stamp out religion?
Just because many religious folks are bigots doesn't excuse Dawkins' bigotry.
Mr. Dawkins doesn't go around beheading people for having different beliefs.
You don't have to go around beheading gays to be a bigot, either.
Free Martian Whores!
Calling all religious believers "delusional" by definition, meets your criteria fully.
No it doesn't. Applying a descriptive label is not bigotry.
As for "beheading", can you name something within Darwinian Naturalism that argues against it
What you're basically arguing is: if it doesn't argue against it, it must be for it. You're an idiot.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
We're discussing Dawkins comments about the role of religious identity as an arbitrary basis to divide people into "us" and "them". Arguing that Hitler failed to meet any particular theological criteria for being a faithful Christian is not helpful to the attempt to refute Dawkins characterization; indeed, it would seem to undermine the argument that religious identity is one of the "least arbitrary" labels used to motivate "us" v. "them" distinctions because it "reveals what underlying philosophy and values we stand for", since it highlights the vast gulf between religious identity used to motivate "us" v. "them" distinctions and the underlying philosophy that is supposedly indicated by association with the religion.
Those people weren't killed "in the name of atheism" no matter how much revisionism you shovel at it.
The protesters there were religious, no, even if the state is not a theocracy?
There certainly were protests in Iran with Iran's supreme leader calling the making of the film "a criminal act".
The only problem is, we now know that Video was a smokescreen to cover up Government incompetence:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/white-house-told-of-militants-claim-two-hours-after-embassy-attack/article4650221/
It was not intended to be an equivalency. You simply read into it the way you chose to read into it.
Dawkins would have a name for himself with or without his opinions on religion. If you read his works, he has traveled the world trying very hard to understand religion and it's conflict with what he finds to be "very obvious principals of science."
I'm not faulting your observation about his general opinion on religion, I simply don't see it as a prejudicial thing. He's alluded to many of the benefits that religions have had in the formation of modern society. But today, on the balance are they doing more to enslave or to free mankind? Now that we have more advanced justice systems than "And eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth." is it time to put those old teachings to behind us and use our own reason, our own humanity to shape the next generation's world. I think Dawkins would argue "yes."
His arguments are predicated on the idea that we are ready to cast off "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." and can still retain "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
If you believe as he does, that we are, then it makes sense to focus on the problems caused by religion, and try to enrich the positive side of a secular state. I don't think anyone could argue that the Catholic Church doesn't do an amazing amount of good for impoverished African states. The question is, can we learn from their examples, adjust our foriegn aid policies to something nearly as good, but have the benefit of providing alternatives to the Rhythm Method in a country whose population has outstripped its food supply?
I think we can.
No, you are simply wrong about factual history.
And you are unable to read. What he wrote was "People don't kill in the name of Atheism", not "Atheists doesn't kill."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
No revisionism here at all. After starting with the very first sentence in the above link (and the provided references), I'd check the label on your Kool-Aid, actually.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
People don't kill in the name of Atheism.
Because Atheism is the existence of nothing, the denial of an existence of any kind of Lord and the lack of any belief in anything except what's 'visible' to the eye.
I never understood why faith and evolution stand so far apart from each other. I'm a devout Catholic, and evolution makes sense, both scientifically and theologically. The Bible talks about God creating humans, but it doesn't say exactly how, other than that he was formed from the dust of the earth... which sounds a lot like evolution.
The Bible claims that the earth was formed before the stars and the sun? Does that sound a lot like modern cosmology or early iron age myths. Does women being a secondary after thought and was formed later from the rib of man sound a lot like evolutionary history?
Further do you really believe that an Omni God would resort to a process that has been accurately described "'clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature" as a means to produce creatures in his likeness? You don't find any incoherency in this view.
Why is it bigotry to say that homosexuality should be stamped out, yet not bigotry to say religion should be stamped out?
There is one difference between the two: religion is a choice, homosexuality is not.
Though you did succeed in creating deep existential angst in me that I may be unable to read, I'll provide the same link to you as I did previously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
Yes, in fact, people -do- kill "in the name of atheism", provably, as a matter of simple historical fact, and do so by the millions.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Stamping out a biological diferences is very different from stamping out ignorance! Do you still believe the world is 6,000 years old? If not, should you blame so Bigot for changing your mind? Stupidity is the bi-product of ignorance.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I think the point is that Stalinist Russia is more commonly know for some other -ism that isn't atheism. The implication is, of course, that the other -ism is the real reason for the persecution of religion in Stalinist Russia.
I'm sure if you spend some more time studying the subject you will figure it out. While it's true that USSR was officially atheist, the question you need to answer is why it was atheist and why they persecuted religion.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I have no doubt that we will create a life form from "scratch". Though all that will prove is that an intelligent being can create life from basic elements... that won't exactly rattle a religious person's belief, now will it? :)
Far more interesting would be an experiment that replicates some early conditions on earth and then looks for life-building steps to occur. They don't all need to happen at once - you just need a good estimate of the chances of each step occurring. From that point, statistics should tell you how likely it was for life to pop out of those conditions. There was a pretty cool article in Scientific American a few years ago that I cannot find. This one is a good read, even if it's not the one I was looking for.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Jesus said there will always be the poor among you.
It's popular to conflate Stalin's insane need to kill people who were "out to get him" with atheism in general. Apparently he killed no atheists, had a sober mind, and his people weren't terrified of whether they would be the next ones to be dragged off to gulags. And yet, mysteriously, when the same thing happens in religious circles, it's always pinned on one or two people, not the whole religion.
In other words, we KNOW atheists can be brutal murders and dictators. We KNOW religious people can be the same way. And yet, we get dragged down by semantics simply because people are people, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. I would recommend everyone involved in these petty disputes stop leaning on this crutch. It's enough to say "look, both theists and atheists are perfectly capable of inhuman atrocities" without trying to blame the entire camp on a few nuts.
If you wish to point claims of revisionism, you first have to stop revising history yourself by using logical fallacies.
I find his comments to be interesting and insightful, but there's a sort of "why aren't people as smart as me?" arrogance behind it all.
I guess there's no reason someone can't be right AND insufferable.
It's altogether too easy (and becoming a little tiresome) to point at the excesses of religion and say "look how stupid that is". One can also point to the ample number of murders committed with guns and knives, yet it would be asinine to suggest that guns and knives are therefore valueless.
PERSONALLY, I suspect that religious faith has lost its attraction to the West largely because we have little to fear. We eat well, we live long mostly-healthy lives, we have comprehensive social systems that by and large will care for us regardless. We have little expectation that a passing famine, plague, or war will kill us, our children, or our community. Why would we NEED Faith or hope that a Supreme Being has some sort of great plan to explain some horrific tragedy we've suffered?
It's when life hands us inexplicables that we (as a species) resort to (as Dawkins might put it) contrived systems of belief, in order to try to put a human-comprehensible face on the unfeeling universe. Voltaire would call it Pangloss.
I don't know that this is bad. Genuine hope is a significant predictor of success in otherwise-hopeless situations. Faith can be a moral rudder in times of chaos and change. Sure, it can be (and has been) abused as a justification for horrible conduct and brutality. But it seems to me that humans in general are capable of ample brutality with or without the pastiche excuse of religious doctrine, so I'm hard put to BLAME such conduct on Faith.
-Styopa
I would like to point out that most of the people that Dawkins is allegedly bigoted against agree with him about most of the other people. The difference between Dawkins and most religious people is that they think that believing in any one of a thousand different gods is delusional, while he believes that believing in any one of a thousand and one different gods is delusional.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Actually, its pinned not only on the whole religion, but on "religion" as a concept. By lots of people. Including, you know, Richard Dawkins. The pointing out of which was sort of a major point earlier in this subthread.
realize that people have free speech but we also should stop apologizing so much. I don't give a shit if you are offended by what I say. Just because you believe something and I believe that that belief is complete bullshit doesn't mean I need to apologize each time I state my opinion. I'm not bound to the limits of your chosen superstitions.
Stalin, Russian for "Man of steel"'s, real name was, Jughashvili, a Georgian name. In fact if not by design "Communism" with a BIG "C" is a form of state religion! and it folds neatly into a theory I've had for years that religion and government only work well when harshly suppressed by an educated secular population!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I, on the other hand, see another correlation.... Singapore has one of the fastest internet connections in the area. I guess they just looked at this flick of Bernadette Rostenkowski and realised that being violent is not cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlQ0NBwaqjc
For the peoploe without broadband, here is whet she said: Being mean is lame. What's cool is being nice!
Oh, and for all the people who are STILL convinced that "being offended" is a good reason to petrol-bomb embassies and the like, watch this on of Steve Hughes.: http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1311191/704ed283/steve_hughes_offended.html
Thank you...
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
Why not? Is it not delusional to believe in a fairytale? Just because that fairytale has a huge church makes it not delusional any more?
The difference between a cult and a religion is simply the number of followers.
Technically speaking religion is a belief and homosexuality is a sexual orientation. There's a difference between being born with a sexual attraction to the same sex and thinking that magic underwear makes you pure. You are free to call him a bigot for thinking that religion is doing more damage than good, however, it looks to me like you're devalueing the words "bigot" and "bigotry" when you use them in that fashion.
I find the argument carries as much weight as it would if you tried to tell me someone who says that whole wheat bread is more nutritious than white bread is bigoted.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
No questions on your absurdity, no.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
How is that any different than wanting to stamp out religion?
He doesn't want to "stamp out" religion, he wants to persuade believers to abandon their beliefs. Persuading is not stamping.
Clue time: Go to North Korea and try selling atheism. They will send you home in a cheap pine box.
The god you worship must be the worst engineer in the universe(well, pretty much by definition). He couldn't even figure the simple reroute fix for this. Granted, I've met developers this dense before....
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
you need to talk to Socrates.
There may sometime have been a revolution in France that had nothing to do with religion or the lack thereof, but the late 18th century revolution commonly referrred to as "The French Revolution", which featured the rejection of religion, the establishment of the "Cult of Reason", with its accompanying "Festival of Reason", and radical and violent dechristianization, certainly wasn't it.
As much as Dawkins may get a little direct, considering the treatment he has been subjected to by some of the True Believers, it's little wonder he says things the way he does. Coreligionists of True Believers seem to be quick to attack Dawkins, but slow to admit that some among them are purely immoral vicious bastards.
Or as some holy guy who lived in Palestine once said: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Can Dr. Dawkins be mic-ed. so all the back ground noise is masked and he doesn't sound like he is in a barrel? The vacuum is louder than he is. Should be an interesting interview it I can hear what he is saying. How about posting the full transcripts?
They both involve orientations which have a demonstrated genetic predisposition and biological mechanism. They are also both used as labels for sets of behaviors which are choices (the propensity to make the choices are, of course, closely tied to the orientation, but also influenced by social context and other factors.)
Review the defined worldview of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a political entity, and the millions of people killed, internally and externally, by it, to correct your error.
This is a ridiculous claim. Stalin and friends were not motivated by there lack of belief in a God, they were psychopathic bastards following an ideological dogma. They had the writings of Karl Marx as their sacred books. They were killing everyone that they thought threatened their dogmatic truth, or they didn't like, because of their interpretation on Communism [1]. Their beliefs in Communism where a replacement for religion and in competition with religion. Atheism itself is not a replacement for religion, it makes no claims except "I don't believe there is a God." No sacred texts saying who goes to Heaven, who goes to Hell, who gets to live and who we must kill because of what they eat, love, say, wear, do, or believe.
And to preempt the whole Hitler thing, he was raised Catholic, alluded to God and a higher power all the time and seemed to believe all sorts of mystical stuff. He may not have been a "true" Christian, but he was no Atheist. And his foot solders were all Catholic and Lutherans. Again, all the killing was in the name of the Fatherland and patriotism fueled by ideology and dogma.
[1] I have no idea how close Stalin and friends actions were aligned with Marx's writings. It doesn't matter, all that matters is a group of people intent on enforcing their will on others through violence, in support of an unquestionable dogma.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Is a man who wants to stamp out homosexuality a bigot? I would say he is.
Stamp out by calling them homosexuals or gays? How is that bigotry?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Oh damn. I wish I hadn't commented. This is definitely the best comment I've seen today.
So, you are saying stamping out ignorance is bigotry?
I don't believe in spontanous generation, I am a creationist,
*blinks*
Dawkalds-Torvins: It's very evident that Representative Paul Broun is a fucking moron who should kill himself. Only fucking morons would vote for a fucking moron like that. There was a rather amusing tweet I saw on Twitter, which went something like this. "[Patient:] Doctor, I think smearing chocolate on my teeth is a good way to keep them healthy. [Doctor:] Here's a punch in the mouth, you fucking moron!" Whom do I have to fuck to make people understand that there is no controversy about evolution? It's a fact, demonstrated beyond all possible doubt by scientific evidence. If you look at the evidence and don't see that it's an absolutely secure fact, you are a fucking moron who probably would like using Gnome.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Back when the Tunisian uprisings started, and then started in Libya and Egypt the crowds on the street were carrying around posters of Mark Zuckerberg because Facebook would let them communicate and coordinate and let the world know what was going on. That was a full embrace of freedom of speech, and I even started to build a Twitter encryption tool to help make it even easier to for people to communicate freely (More complete projects have come out since *).
This was also right around the time of the State Dept WikiLeaks reveal, and instead of talking about how we need to encourage freedom of speech, and the press and assembly, Secretary Clinton made a big speech about the primary and absolute need for elections for a democratic transition in these countries. The ground could have been laid then that this was an expression of the peoples rights and take it as an opportunity to have an open accepting forum of competing ideas and that it was OK to have disagreeing views as long as everyone could express themselves.
Instead we got badly run elections more than a year later with the military pushing people around, and women mostly shut out of the process. And, no automatic thinking that uncomfortable ideas can at least be heard. As long as you have freedom of speech you can try to change the system. When that is gone certain changes become impossible. It was a huge missed opportunity to change attitudes about speech.
(*) My project was mostly done over a hackathon weekend and is on github: https://github.com/YasminApp/yasmin-client
Others include CryptTweet which needs improvement but is workable here: http://plexusproject.org/
And SilentCircle which is targeting a different user group https://silentcircle.com/
Is this the end yet?...How 'bout now...how 'bout now...how 'bout now?
delusion: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated
Many parts of religious believe is not proven wrong, but unfalsifiability. Wikipedia (and Wordnet) define delusion as
A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.
There is no superior evidence to the contrary, just a lack of evidence.
Calling religious believers delusional is accurate, not bigotry.
No, it is just crap. There are delusional believers sure, but many believers are not delusional.
Jan
Or put another way:
The difference between an atheist and a believer is only in how many gods they don't believe in.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What you're basically arguing is: if it doesn't argue against it, it must be for it. You're an idiot.
Worse than that, he's not even wrong! What the hell is Darwinian Naturalism? Whatever it may be, who's arguing that it encourages beheading, and why is the burden of proof not on that person?
What he has there is a strawman argument, based on the naturalistic fallacy and fuck knows what else. Empiric, what's your stance on Newtonian Naturalism, and can you explain how it doesn't condone artificial means of defying gravity? I'd also be interested in knowing precisely how atheism necessarily leads to murder - not even mass murder, just one murder. Here's a hint, the "god doesn't exist, so we can do what we want" argument doesn't work. The reverse - belief in gods, doesn't necessarily lead to murder. How about if the god in question abhors people who wear orange shoes? Let's get Biblical and say that this god specifically calls for the death of such people. Can the necessarily lead to murder? Of course it can. Could I point to many examples of "god breathed" scripture that necessarily lead to bigotry and murder? Definitely.
Could my failure to believe in this god necessarily lead to murder? No, it takes something other than this basic lack of belief.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
People will always murder, rape, torture, etc.. regardless of religion, simply because they are on a power trip, it's all about feeding their huge ego, like Stalin,Hitler, Mao, Castro, etc... . I know a lot of Christians who don't literally believe word for word what is in the bible, it's all metaphors and parables. Dictatorships, communism, theocracies, all about power and control over the masses, nothing more.
The "innocence of muslims" cheesy movie was available 3 month's on youtube before the september 11, 2012 benghazi attacks. Politicians #1 skill is lying. Yes, Obama said that this tragedy invoked terror, but, he did not clearly say that this was a pre-planned organized attack by a known terrorist militant group in regards to the sept 11, anniversary, which it was, for the past 2 weeks he and his administration insisted that the attacks were incited by that movie while those at DOD were saying otherwise.
"Yes, in fact, people -do- kill "in the name of atheism", provably, as a matter of simple historical fact, and do so by the millions."
I read your link. I see a lot of misbehaviour, but not a lot of killing - and certainly not enough to constitute "millions". For instance, "In Tsarist Russia, religion was a major source of violence and conflict between religious groups, and State Athiesm was designed to end these problems. Notable atrocities include the persecution and killing of over 200,000 Jews as "Christ-killers" due to pogroms."
So, confiscations, propaganda, suppression, sure... but please justify this claim of millions.
So recognizing something for what it is makes one a biggot?! No wonder we are fucked. Ideas like this make any meaningful conversation a figment of the imagination. Political correctness at its worst.
God is just a civil engineer, after all, who else would put the entertainment center and the sewage works next door to each other.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As for "beheading", can you name something within Darwinian Naturalism that argues against it, if it increases the propagation of the behead-ers DNA?
You make it sound as if theory of evolution made a distinction between right and wrong. A hint for you: Ethics is a completely different field.
Ezekiel 23:20
Are you sure that pines are cheap in North Korea? They have, like, next to no natural resources.
Ezekiel 23:20
So it's not a delusion to claim that Eve was created from Adam's rib? Or that Mohammed ascended to the heavens on a magical horse? Or that when you drink wine in the Communion rite, it's actually the blood of Christ entering your body?
Natural selection is an explanation of biological evolution. It's not a system for morality; it's simply the way the universe works.
you're confused.
The soviet union (and other similar crazies) didn't suppress religion because of some deeply held theological belief. they suppressed religion out of a desire to eliminate all competing power structures, both political, ethnic, historical and sociological. they wanted an absolute monopoly of influence over their citizens. once they had taken out the existing monarchy/elite the next most influential bodies in russian society were the churches. if there had been a widespread atheist church where every sunday folks gathered under one roof to talk about the non-existence of god and how they should do certain things in their daily lives to honor that fact (however rediculous that sounds) - that would also have been banned. they even decimated the striking power of the trade unions.
At least we have evidence of Dawkins existence. Do you know what God looks like?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
What does the start of life have with evolution? Evolution is what happens to life AFTER it starts. And you can demonstrate it, if you take some time.
Just take some bacteria and add small amounts of antibiotics to them over a few weeks. At the end, you'll have antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
didn't always get a free ride. It's just that most of the stuff physicists know today is either so obvious that even religious people see its truth, or so abstract that it's not even on their radar. On the other hand, evolution by natural selection is concrete and yet non-obvious enough for many non-scientists to have wrong opinions about it.
Moreover the fact that the riot was about the video has been debunked, a misleading suggestion that was put out early in the confusion to help promote the idea that the internet is bad and should be censored.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
Funny how "religion" is "christianity". This subject is not for you.
Again, another human being applying their petty knowledge and understandings against God. God could create a diamond in front of your face that science could test to be older than anything tested in creation, yet you witnessed with your own eyes that it is only days old.
Cosmology is better left to explain how God has set things in motion and the rules He has established regarding them, however it should not be used to explain things God has done out of order or contrary to the laws of creation. Those are one offs and it neither disproves or competes with cosmology. And neither does cosmology and its science compete with God, for His Authority is the very act that may arbitrarily bind and unbind these things upon whim.
Your attribution of clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horribly cruel is really just your own opinion and is only an example of your ignorance.
I have found that every person against God has zero hesitation in blaming God for everything that goes wrong, but seems silent regarding God when things go right. The incoherency is within you and your ability to hold a double standard is in obvious view.
God created Good and Evil and is responsible for their existence, however as beings of free will, we are responsible for the evils we created. If God is busy slapping down every person or stopping evil from occurring then we have no free will, and neither can we be judged for our actions as they would not be our own.
The reason appropriate relative association between the actions and the worldview is that mass-killing is -directly contrary- to the principles of Christianity, and therefore, by definition, -not Christianity-.
If that were true, Christians would be deluded. I got death threats from Christians for being an atheist. Where are those "peaceful Christians" that you're talking about, and more to the point, where have they been hiding in the previous two millennia? Where are all the "true Scotsmen" you're talking about?
By contrast, mass-killing is -directly compatible- with Darwinian Naturalism, by reference to what it -is-
You have no idea what the word "Darwinian" means.
Ezekiel 23:20
Clearly this must be about his beliefs, as any other notion is unfathomable. Especially that it's not about yours... That's the problem with the religious slant, you can't comprehend what it's like not to hold a belief.
I think the point is that Stalinist Russia is more commonly know for some other -ism that isn't atheism. The implication is, of course, that the other -ism is the real reason for the persecution of religion in Stalinist Russia.
I'm sure if you spend some more time studying the subject you will figure it out. While it's true that USSR was officially atheist, the question you need to answer is why it was atheist and why they persecuted religion.
Well, if atheism gets a pass due to Russia being communist and other political details, then Christianity and Islam should also get a pass though most of history and even in many parts of the current day world as religion again is just being used as political and cultural device of control.
When it all comes down to it, lots of people blame religion for various things, but if they got rid of religion, the same things would still be carried out in the name of nationalism. Get rid of nationalism and you'll end up with other idealogies being the cause. Get rid of those and it will just default to clan and family matters. Get rid of them and you'll still have the same things being carried out over resources and money, which it could be argued that they are being done for even in all the other cases.
Perhaps not bigotry, but he's certainly been labeled as sexist: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/10/sexism_in_the_skeptic_community_i_spoke_out_then_came_the_rape_threats.html
"Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get" - Jerry Avins
Or - a couple of points I wish more Christians would take to heart (two come to mind - I'm by no means a book/chapter/verse memorizer of scripture, but these seem pertinent)
"Do not pretend to be wiser than you are", which I take to mean that we should not pretend to know more about God, afterlife, etc. than we really do. It is fine to accept something that is unknown and unknowable on faith, but don't claim or pretend that you really do know it. I think this is from Proverbs.
The other is definitely from Mark, where Jesus berates his disciples for trying to take his teaching parables literally ("Beware the yeast of the pharisees...). To me, this is a clear instruction from Christ himself that scripture is a collection of metaphors and should be treated that way. Those who claim that the Bible contradicts biology, cosmology, or geology simply "don't get" what Christianity is supposed be, apart from them obviously "not getting" science.
(but I'm not sure how many on Slashdot care what normal, non-wacko Christians think about science. It is easier to lump all believers under the heading of "Bible-thumpers" and assume they are anti-scientific right-wingers, who of course oppose abortion rights, gun control, gay rights, admission of climate change, etc).
The motivations for many of Stalin's purges were political, realpolitik more than ideology or dogma. There's even some evidence that his purge of Jewish communists was motivated by political rather than antisemitic reasons (at least not his own personal antisemitism, which I don't doubt existed). Rather, it's possible that he purged Jewish communist leaders as a prelude to his pact with Hitler. And, yes, Christianity in quite a few cases supported fascism, in Italy, German, Romania, it certainly did.
That is, perhaps, one of the greatest delusions of those that claim to "believe".
One is verifiable real. The other is not.
You are welcome to produce a superior being any time you feel up to it. Too often people have a propensity to judge others works that they lack the expertise to reproduce or fully understand.
Our bodies are technically designed to repair themselves and live forever, yet for some unknown reason those functions are arbitrarily limited as well. We have any number of different mechanisms in place marching us down the road to death and they all seem like easy things to reverse engineer until we actually try.
Regardless of the God I worship it seems to be that most like you hold the notion that nature and evolution are pretty awesome while turning around and calling the idea of a Creator as being a bad engineer. So yes, you like to blame all the bad things on God, but none of the good things. God has already claimed credit for everything initially created good & bad... but its your fault for your creations of bad and good. So you see as much as you cannot believe in a Creator is the same that a rock could not believe you can create a stone for it has also noticed your horrible engineering as well.
Before there were the new atheists and their best-selling books, there was Paul Kurtz promoting humanism and skepticism through his many publications and institutions:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/remembering-paul-kurtz/2012/10/23/4d4dbdb0-1d19-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_blog.html
Dawkins is brilliant, as ever, but Paul Kurtz brought secular humanism an intellectual clarity that helped pave his way. They are tremendously complementary reads.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Communist personality cults are religious in nature. Same mental bug, different exploit.
Wow. So if it's killing in the name of atheism, it's actually killing in the name of religion. That's taking redefinitioon of terms to a level I haven't seen this election cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
The French Revolution had nothing to do with religion or lack thereof.
Any other questions?
I didn't ask any questions in the first place, but yes: what the hell history books have you been reading? The French Revolution was very much about religion, among other things.
As for "beheading", can you name something within Darwinian Naturalism that argues against it, if it increases the propagation of the behead-ers DNA?
Congratulations on mistaking a scientific theory - an attempt to explain observed evidence - for a codified belief system.
Let the atheist self aggrandizing masturbation begin!!!!
and.... GO
By saying that atheists are capable of self-aggrandizing masturbation, are you trying to imply that they are just dicks?
Ezekiel 23:20
I would be interested to see more evidence, other than the "god gene", as to the genetic basis for religion. From my understanding, the genetic predisposition has more to do with determining whether or not someone is susceptible to believe in religion, but does not predicate what that belief is. If religious belief was largely predicated on genetics, we would probably see a more random distribution of belief systems.
Most of us do have a genetic predisposition to adopt a sexual orientation, it is possible that social influence is a factor in deciding what that orientation is. However, I believe the body of evidence points to genetics as the determining factor.
Free speech is not what you like to hear or what you like to say. Free speech is hearing something that makes your blood boil, makes you see red in the front of your eyes, that EVERYONE agrees should be banned, and not banning it and defending its speaker right to say it.
Anything less, is not free speech. There is no free speech in this world. It doesn't matter whether you ban the pedo support group Martijn, give in to fears of protests from Islamic pupils and their parents in teaching about WW2 and/or homosexuality or create a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. All these cases are where a group decides another group should shut up because they are offended by their speech. And someone will ALWAYS somewhere be offended by someone's speech. Give in to one and the next will demand to get what offends them banned as well.
Would those some protesters you talk about STILL carry those posters on Facebooks "draw the prophet" day some while ago? If no... then they were not promoting free speech, they were merely promoting their speech. There is a difference.
One of the greatest western achievements, is it lack of culture. In the west, we have no culture. The US is the best example of this but Europe also has lots of no culture.
We instead got TONS of them often living in the same street and NO I am NOT talking about multi-culturism. I am talking about universities being just a short walk away from monestaries, people studying evolution and genesis dining in the same university hall together with the business students, doctors and lawyers while hippies are campaigning on the doorstep.
It used to be that if you wanted to study, you had to go through the church and you could be ensured that they didn't encourage free thinking. Quite great names had to deal with this, from the bans on anatomy to the line between chemistry and alchemy. Read up on Newton and Da Vinci and their skirting around the religious authorities if the day.
Slowly this changed to the point where you it is fairly common for even religious leaders themselves to say that the bible is just so much hogwash and shouldn't be taken literal.
But in places like Egypt and even China, they might have universisities, they might have bright students, but they are NOT anywhere close to becoming another Oxford or MIT. It isn't just about inventing a faster super conductor but about coming up with new ideas that totally blow humanities mind.
Darwin could ONLY do his work because the religious authority in his days, when he wrote the origin of th species, did not care. Nobody really did at first, it was in fact considered rather dull. People were in fact not a bit suprised about evolution, they knew that, what upset them most was that nature didn't care. They could see evolution in action, it made sense but that nature was cruel with each day a bitter struggle... that was a bit harsh. That man wasn't the prime result of a survival of the fittest but rather the end result of the monkey that outfucked all the others didn't entirely fit with the world view. But it didn't result in any major upset at the time. That happened later. Gosh where have we seen oddly delayed outrage recenctly?
Free speech means tolerating, accepting and not silencing speech that totally upsets your world view. And if you don't... you don't get the Darwins. You get students who know they should only think approved thoughts, those who don't disappear. See Malala/Walala. She thought girls should be allowed to go school, she was silenced and it is western, not Islamic medical care that saved her life. Once Islam lead the scientific world, what changed?
Some early Islamic rulers were remarkably open, allowed other cultures, tolerated different believes. Hollands golden age is contributed in all history books to it being open to all comers.
Free speech, it has huge benefits BUT if you start limitting it by not allowing people to say stuff that offends someone... then free speech dies. After all I can go to North Korea and say everything I want, as
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Anyone know where his statement that 50% of the US population are anti-intellectual and anti-education comes from? Is he assuming that "doesn't believe in evolution" == "anti-intellecual and anti-education"?
"Yet those same SS soldiers were also forbidden to believe in a god (other than Hitler)"
Citation DEFINITELY needed.
They swore an oath to Hitler HIMSELF, but swore to GOD for it.
Seriously, Hitler was a Good Christian.
Is mass-killing compatible with gravity?
I agree that your posts are logical, but they are premised on a category error.
Religion's economic function is to translate macro-ethics into micro-moral prohibitions. Where science infers with this, and because science must ultimate be concerned with nature external to our petty concerns it will, it is targeted for attack.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
In my mind, Russia's athiesm was an instrument used to promote communism. Religion was explicitly seen as an impediment to proper communism, so it was opposed not because it was thought to be false, but because it was thought to be a tool of oppression used by the elite against the common man. In that case, it was not a root cause. I'm not even sure it was used as an excuse, it seems atheism was enforced because it was supposed to benefit communism.
If that's the case, then that's not at all the same situation as using religion as a cover for other issues. If religion adds legitimacy to illegitimate conflicts, is that not bad? Is that not a harmful effect of religion? A key difference here is that I find it hard to believe that you could ever rally thousands of atheists to riot under the pretense that the god they don't believe in has been insulted (or not sufficiently insulted). Atheism can be used a policy to harm theists, but I can't say I've run into anyone who could be motivated to do anything more than prattle on about how smart they are by their atheism.
Additionally, as others have pointed out previously, both communism and libertarianism (and probably many other -isms) are pretty much godless religions. They have sets of beliefs that their adherents must believe, and they even have their own "holy" books. They may belong to a superset that includes them and religion that is occasionally the problem.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Why not? Is it not delusional to believe in a fairytale? Just because that fairytale has a huge church makes it not delusional any more?
The difference between a cult and a religion is simply the number of followers.
Is it "delusional" to "believe" that their is life on other planets? Is it "delusional" to believe that the "Higgs Boson" exists at some energy level? Believing in something that hasn't been proven isn't delusional. The difference in opinion you are having here is that you believe there is enough evidence to declare "no God exists" others believe that their is enough evidence to declare "God exists" and still others believe something in between.
[b]A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. Unlike hallucinations, delusions are always pathological (the result of an illness or illness process). As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information[b/]
Note the second and third sentence, so, yes it is wrong to consider them delusional. Note also that you and them would likely disagree on what is considered strong evidence for or against.
.. religion came about at the time of human transition from living in a subconscious state (as many animals do today) to the creation and use of higher level abstractions which needed a different mindset of consciousness. In simple terms religions are nothing more than different biased interpretations of what all we knew and still do on a subconscious level. Consciousness and abstraction, to separate them from subconscious requires a belief filter or philosophy as the conscious mind has its processing limits based on abstraction. We need abstraction to deal with growing complexity of society as population grew (tower of babel) but today the population if driving the next transition, where the choice of what we want to believe and the deception that abstraction use enabled are breaking down. World wide protest are the evidence of such breakdown as all have in common the people having grown tired of the few in positions of command messing things uo for the people, for only the benefits of the few.
Where we are going now is to re-integrate our subconscious access to all that is with our conscious abstract mind to see past the deception.... the bottomless pit of deception for which any troll can prove and where anyone in teh pit can only see a part of reality, in looking up out of the pit.
Evolution is basically a local optimization algorithm. You are right about that it will start running under the conditions you list. But even with these condition met, complex organisms do not necessary evolve. You will only get more complex organisms, if that complexity is beneficial in that environment. It is quite easy to imagine environments where less complex organisms are fitter than complex ones.
But even if complex organisms would in theory be fitter than simple ones in that environment under some conditions they will never happen. Remember that evolution is "local". Evolution to more complex organisms is only going to happen if there is a way from individuals of your current genpool to more complex ones where almost all steps increase fitness.
E.g.: If you have a rather harsh environment where only super simple or very complex organisms can survive, then evolution from super simple to very complex will never happen because there are no "medium complexity steps" in between that allow for evolution to very complex.
Jan
At least we have evidence of Dawkins existence. Do you know what God looks like?
William Shatner
And where did you got all your information?? Yea, I thought so!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
How should atheists call religious believers, then? People with special beliefs?
There is no way of saying that god does not exist without saying that all people who believe in god are delusional. But this is normal: anyone who claims that his god is the true god says that all the others are wrong and their believers are also delusional. If you want is us to keep completely mum about the issue? Of course we are not going to do that.
I am always puzzled by arguments things like this. Are you saying that god exists because of all the advantages religion brings? That's quite a fallacy there.
Because I can't create a god, your god exists? Is this what you are pretending to posit here?
The rational person would at this point figure out that our bodies were not, in fact, designed at all, technically or otherwise.
Very much so. Perhaps you have a problem conceptualizing the difference. Take yourself, for example. As a product of unguided evolution, you aren't so bad. You are a primate who is able to hold an abstract conversation across an impersonal medium. If someone engineered you, though, I'd point out that they didn't do a good job on the logic unit. It's prone to category errors.
Besides, if I really thought the god of the creationists actually existed, I'd be too busy condemning it as the most vile, genocidal being in the universe to worry about the lack of basic engineering skills.
You need to work on your grammar and writing clarity, too.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
... We need to make that part true.
I'm an Iranian and let me tell you...99.9% of the Iranian population doesn't give a damn to the movie or its content. Hey...Youtube is even filtered in Iran. What CNN showed was just a show organized by the Iranian regime to make _you_ (yes you) believe people care. I mean, does the fact that the foreign media was allowed to make reports from this "protest", not seem fishy to you? How come during all the protest in the Iranian green movement CNN and other media were not allowed to make reports !?
When your god shows up for an interview, let the world know.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Don't get me wrong AC, but that is semantic drivel and childish.
While you can't sensibly kill in the name of atheism, you can kill to promote it.
(EG, "those catholics believing in the fucking skyfairy do more harm to the world by telling people not to use contraception than pandemic communicable diseases go! In fact, their eligion *IS* a disease; a disease of the mind that afflicts young children and drives them mad, prompting them to infect others or die trying. The world would be demonstrably better off without them, so I am going to kill their pope, and smash their hierarchy. While it might not destroy the religion, it would greatly reduce the global impact they have.")
Many atheists have a very scornful view of the religious, theists or no. Instead of trying to systematically eliminate religion, (out of one psychological manifestation of the desire to see the stupid people gone or another) despite the fact that the "major offenders" have been subjected to far worse than textbooks and insults for over a millenia (they are quite adept at spotting attempted eradications of their ideology, and reacting with violence, both verbal and physical. This method of combating the problem only creates extremists and fundamentalists, much like widespread use of antibiotics creates resistant pathogens.), you should accept that the offensive ideology will likely never go away, only evolve and change.
The sensible atheist, I think, would approach the situation from that evolutionary perspective, and also evaluate that not all the things about religion are bad. For instance, for people with severe mood disorders or untreatable illnesses, the placebo effect of believing in a higher power has a profound and positive effect. In order for the effect to manifest via the placebo effect, the belief must be real. Take for instance, alcoholics anonymous. One of the staples of their program regimen is the adoption of a higher power, any higher power. No purely secular intervention group has the longterm effectiveness that it does. The afore mentioned "sensible" atheist would objectively recognize this, as their abstanence from religion is presumably based on scientific thought, which embraces empirical truths. That some people are really and truly assisted in ways that current medical and behavioral science cannot match, even if it is just through a known placebo, is an undeniably good reason to accept religion as a partner in the human condition, despite the educated choice to abstain. (At least I hope that is the reason you abstain anyway. Falling into the "us" and "them" mindset is 100% counter-intuitive to being a free thinker.)
Instead, the aethist should seek ways to promote the beneficial forms of religious belief, and religious practice, so that it simply displaces the aggressive fundie varieties, much like a smart person may encourage the growth of benign and beneficial bacteria in a wound to keep out dangerous infection, or to encourage same as intestinal flora, rather than suffer beholden to a flawed ideological position on grounds of belief in a philosophical view (Eg, "religion is always bad, and if you are religious, you are stupid.") And seek 100% eradication, and damn the consequences.
The only way to do that is to accept that religion *can* be beneficial to society at large, and then see to alter the environment subtly but consistently.
The issue here is that many atheists would see this approach as being "apologetic" toward "clearly factually wrong ideas", prompting them to be intolerant of all religion, and instigating the "education resistant religion" plague.
I presented no logical fallacies. The reason appropriate relative association between the actions and the worldview is that mass-killing is -directly contrary- to the principles of Christianity, and therefore, by definition, -not Christianity-.
It is with reference to sanctimoniousness hypocrisy that people criticise religion as violent. Logic has nothing to do with hypocrasy. Christianity has a lot going for it, but fundamentally, when people start to believe that they have special insight, and that they know better then others, then the greater good will justify all sorts of dangerous and irresponsible behaviour. It really cuts to the heart of psychosis -- religious or otherwise.
Your defence of Christianity would be more coherent if you acknowledged that violence is a direct result of moralism. By comparison, the evil psychopathic murder is only responsible for a drop in the bucket of human misery.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Clue time: Go to North Korea and try selling atheism. They will send you home in a cheap pine box.
Can you expand on that ? It doesn't seem like religions are very much welcome either.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
You can kill in the name of "Atheism". Just like you can kill in the name of people who don't believe the Earth is the center of the Universe. You can believe something exists that there is no proof exists. Or you can believe nothing exists where there is no proof does not exist. They are all just beliefs. Some may be more rational than others, but that belief can still be the source of atrocities.
Putting it simply, your opinion about how good or bad something has been engineered has no real impact on whether or not that Creator exists. The equivalent is to say that I do not believe in the person that coded a line of script because I could make it better or because I can perceive flaws in it.
Regarding the rest, its is all supposition that you believe and I don't. I claim God as fact and you don't. Neither of us can prove the other wrong because we see the evidence and arrive at different conclusions. However, the fact that you can consider a particular object good or bad depending upon who made is is a bit intellectually dishonest. If it is crude, it is crude, whether by Creation or Evolution. Additionally your understanding of crude will change as your understanding of things change, so it only goes to show that we as humans constantly judge things with the shortest possible sight we can muster, while believing we have considered all that should be considered.
I Believe in God but I have no qualms with Science until it starts to posit unrealistic things like, Science and Christianity are at odds. The only Christians at odds with Science are the ones that have problems with their own Faith. And the only Scientists that have problems with Christians are the Pseudo Scientists.
Obviously you lack comprehension, so no point in anyone pointing out the facts to you
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I presented no logical fallacies. The reason appropriate relative association between the actions and the worldview is that mass-killing is -directly contrary- to the principles of Christianity, and therefore, by definition, -not Christianity-.
That depends on your particular interpretation of the principles of Christianity. Something that seems incredibly simple, such as "Thou shalt not kill", is anything but. The quakers were devoutly religious, and yet they burned innocent women for being "witches". There were also the Crusades, and the Inquisition, etc. People are certainly fully capable of cognitive dissonance, but its not even necessary for interpreting a given religious text in a completely different way than another person interprets it. All that is need is a different set of axiomatic beliefs.
The root of the problem is the belief of a class of received knowledge that is absolutely true. Once questions and doubt are forbidden, conflict ensues.
"Calling all religious believers "delusional" by definition, meets your criteria fully."
facts are facts, bigots don't use facts because they don't have any
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I would assume the peaceful Christians are out doing things that don't include threatening you.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
"The reason appropriate relative association between the actions and the worldview is that mass-killing is -directly contrary- to the principles of Christianity, and therefore, by definition, -not Christianity-."
Genocide is a feature of the bible , try reading it sometime
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
they suppressed religion out of a desire to eliminate all competing power structures, both political, ethnic, historical and sociological.
But that is also true for all to almost all "religious" wars. People do not go to war for religious dogmas but for power.
Jan
"Yes, in fact, people -do- kill "in the name of atheism", provably, as a matter of simple historical fact, and do so by the millions."
we are still waiting for real facts on this "claim" of yours. Stop reading things into history that are not there.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The question remains open as to in what respect Darwinian Naturalism is incompatible with mass-killing if that's the optimal DNA-propagation strategy for a given context.
How about: because the idea of mass-killing is exactly opposite to the ideas that were presented by Darwin? Darwin's ideas were that evolution works by the selection of the best traits in species with consideration of their natural surroundings. It would be a bit of a stretch to claim that the psychological traits associated with mass murderers would be naturally selected for as that runs counter to the ultimate goal of most species (to survive).
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
Gimme a T...Gimme an R...Gimme an O...Gimme an L...Gimme an L...What's that spell!?!
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
Your dictionary is broken:
So is your understanding of what your own dictionary says. "Bigotry 'a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices'".
Sounds like Dawkins to me. And you, to, if I may say so.
Your belief that there can be no god despite any evidence whatever takes a lot of faith. Without indication one way or another, the only logical conclusion is agnosticism. However, many of us have had such an indication.
Free Martian Whores!
Putting it simply, your opinion about how good or bad something has been engineered has no real impact on whether or not that Creator exists. The equivalent is to say that I do not believe in the person that coded a line of script because I could make it better or because I can perceive flaws in it.
Oh, don't misunderstand me. My mockery of the supposed engineering abilities of your deity are not the basis of my disbelief. The bit where there is zero evidence of a deity is the part where we deviate on that point.
Regarding the rest, its is all supposition that you believe and I don't. I claim God as fact and you don't. Neither of us can prove the other wrong because we see the evidence and arrive at different conclusions.
No. I can't prove you wrong because you offer nothing to disprove. Perhaps you need some remedial Sagan to catch up, like this.
However, the fact that you can consider a particular object good or bad depending upon who made is is a bit intellectually dishonest. If it is crude, it is crude, whether by Creation or Evolution.
If my toddler draws a somewhat anatomically correct picture of a dog, I'd be thrilled. If a professional artist drew the same picture, I'd critique it as crude. Do you really not understand the basic difference here?
Additionally your understanding of crude will change as your understanding of things change, so it only goes to show that we as humans constantly judge things with the shortest possible sight we can muster, while believing we have considered all that should be considered.
Given that you can't prove the relevance of the mythological framework that you think makes these deeper understanding valid, you are left with nothing to prove. Again.
I Believe in God but I have no qualms with Science until it starts to posit unrealistic things like, Science and Christianity are at odds. The only Christians at odds with Science are the ones that have problems with their own Faith. And the only Scientists that have problems with Christians are the Pseudo Scientists.
I believe in science(no capital letters, it's not a being in itself). I have no qualms with Christianity(or any other religion) until makes unrealistic claims about the universe. Even then,if it is not trying to push those mythological ideas on the rest of society, I'm content to let them wallow in their own ignorance. But, somehow, they always show up and try to do just that....
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
But the soviets never suppressed religion itself, even though they certainly discouraged it. You are confusing religious belief and religious institutions
Not really true. Teaching at state schools and stuff done by the state sponsored League of Militant Atheists aimed at suppression religion itself. Also almost all religions require some kind of institution. So we have brainwashing and measures to make practicing religious belief nearly impossible. What else could they have done to suppress religious belief?
Jan
Do some research. Turns out feathers had a lot of uses before they became wings.
In my experience, discussion with a handful of atheist on and off led me to believe that they are only topped by extremists when it comes to discussion on existence of God. Majority of the believers are busy living a life and thanking God once in a while.
I prefer agnostics to atheist. Atheists, IMO follow a religion that does not believe in God.
Apparently if you talk about wanting evidence for beliefs too much, you will inevitably lead to the gulag. No other way around it.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Because that's a natural way to read it.
It takes the format that "X takes too strong a stance and should be distanced from; Y also takes too strong a stance as an opposite", that naturally implies a similarity that is not there.
You seem to be saying that you can streatch the words in the bible to mean anyting you want. So why even bother with them at all, since really it is you making the bible say what you want it to say.
Man was made from a handful of dust means that proteins turned into single cell beings, that further evolved etc. If you believe in evolution, why even bother with those mental gymnatics to make the bible fit with scientific theory?
This article links at least 7 ; one of which I donate to, and one of which is such a fixture in British life that "the Oxfam Shop" is synonymous with charity retail.
You don't have to behead someone to be a bigot.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
You ought to brush up on your history. Read about the French Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, Chairman's Mao's purges, Stalin's purges. Hell, Atheists have killed more people in the name of atheism in the last century than all of the religious wars in all of history.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Religion so easily uses itself to conduct evil acts. Atheism implies no actions or motivations for actions. And most atheists will scoff at state dogma just as obviously as we scoff at religious dogma. Believing something for which there is no good reason to suppose is true is not desirable. Were there social aspects to the witch trials, sure, people made money hunting witches and got to closely examine the breasts and genitals of young girls, but is there a religious aspect too. Yes. Whereas there's no atheistic reasons to do anything, much less enforce an absurd form of biology on pains of death. You either believe wheat gets coldness power from having their seeds frozen or you go to the gulag, that's not a cry for too much rationality or too much logic. Those are both idiotic dogmas. Dogma is the enemy.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I'll reply to you, because you're the only non-AC.
Where's your evidence? You've got evidence that someone who claims to be Richard Dawkins exists, but I can go and find any bum in the park who will claim to be God or Richard Dawkins or anyone else, if you give them enough lighter fuel to huff. So, if I bring some guy along who smells a little bit like butane but claims to be God, will you accept that?
Your grasp of logic is weak, little grass hopper.
Life on other planets - name me some credible scientists who believe in that. Until actual evidence is seen, no one of sound mind or body will *believe*. We can conjecture, and extrapolate, but we don't *BELIEVE*.
Did we believe Higgs Boson existed? The theories said it did. So we tried to find it. Do unicorns exist? I know of no theories that claim it does. But if someone actually finds one, I'll believe it.
You seem to believe that you have this non-testable book that made claims, is the actual truth. Sadly, science and reason does not work that way. Show me a testable hypothesis. If it is not testable, it is not science, it is religion or philosophy.
If you want to continue this debate, please provide me reasons why your God is better or more "true" than my Flying Spaghetti Monster. I have a holy book too. Well, more so a menu. But still holy, damnit!
Nice try, but you're free thinking has left out Logic and Reasoning. If you can't discern whats true, then you might as well jump off a bridge.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
"Why is it bigotry to say that homosexuality should be stamped out, yet not bigotry to say religion should be stamped out?"
Homosexuality is a fact of life, religion is a delusion.
Dawkins is NOT a bigot, he uses facts to back up his assertions and he probably knows more about religion than most of the religious bigots
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Oh good, I was missing the no true Scotsman fallacy. Bingo!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"No, you are simply wrong about factual history." :)
Hearing that from you is hilarious. It's funny how the more clueless someone is, the more confident he/she is
Millions were killed or died in USSR not b/c of their religion, but b/c of their social/political views (or what the government thought were their political views). The government actively discouraged and hindered religion/religious, but it never had an official policy to kill the religious.
no it fits survival of the fittest, the fit live the weak die or are killed. natural selection is the force killing of bad genes but their is the nastier side to nature as well.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Now that we have more advanced justice systems than "And eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth." is it time to put those old teachings to behind us
We Christians did that 2000 years ago. Our religion says love your enemies as you do your friends, forgive everyone who harms you, if you're punched in the face, turn the other cheek. It says he who lives by the weapon, dies by the weapon. It is a religion of love.
Forgiveness is the very heart of Christianity. The "eye for an eye" was the old covenant, Christ brought a new covenant.
Free Martian Whores!
Clue time: There is no such thing as a "communist personality cult". There are, of course, people who claim that their particular personality cult is somehow communist. Like the North Korean elite. Or Stalin's bureaucrats. Or even misguided but honest-to-$NONEXISTENT_DEITY communists. That doesn't make it true, any more than that humans were brought to Earth by Xenu in DC-8s.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
Christopher Hitchens put it most eloquently:
Name a moral action undertaken by a believer, that you believe cannot be undertaken by a non-believer, or name a moral statement made by a believer, that you believe cannot be undertaken or made by a non-believer.
I miss that guy. :\
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
If one person were to label Dawkins a stud-muffin, would that make him a stud-muffin? I see nothing sexist in the Dawkins quote in that article. Dawkins, perhaps a little unfairly, it depends on the full context, took the piss out of her whining, and she pulled the sexist card, that's all. Dawkins was showing *more* sympathy for the plight of a female facing sexism than the whiner was - assuming you understand how irony works. Having said that, pretty much everything else she complains about was indeed perpetrated by dicks who I wish weren't atheists/skeptics, as they do give it a bad name.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
It's easy to discern what's true - the Dawkins believers have no more proof than the God believers.
Although, one shred of proof might be that God probably wouldn't be so offensively smug. Dawkins just comes across like the worst kind of Southern Baptist preacher.
Just out of curiosity: what principles are you talking about? Because people caring whether they offend other beings seems to follow logically and obviously from "survival of the fittest" (making enemies makes you and your offspring less likely to survive).
We need to distinguish between two concepts here: what is the common definition of christian (makes noises about Jesus), and who would Jesus consider a genuine follower. Also, you need to understand that the latter is relevant in theology and personal spirituality of christians, while the former is relevant in sociology, which makes it the correct one here. If a bloodthirsty mob led by a firebrand preacher murders an alleged witch the culprits may or may not have stamped their one-way tickets to Hell, but that doesn't change the fact that the murder happened in the name of Christianity, and deserves to be credited on the "religion" side of whatever tabs anyone might be keeping of these things.
In other words, you can't refute critique of religion just by declaring all critique-worthy people "not really religious". They might be, they just don't agree with you on the tenets of your religion. You, them, the both of you, or neither of you might be heretic(s), but that's between you and your god(s) and is certainly not something you could reasonably expect outsiders to know or care about - and thus you shouln't except such an argument to work on them, either.
TL;DR: "Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No, you are simply wrong about factual history.
Review the defined worldview of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a political entity, and the millions of people killed, internally and externally, by it, to correct your error.
Saying Stalin killed people because he was atheist, is like saying Hitler killed people because he was vegetarian.
There are plenty of people, deeply religious to atheist, who lack morals. Just ask the victims of 9/11 just how 'moral' their attackers were.
That's a very ignorant point of view... No book in History is more responsible for hundreds of Millions of deaths all in the name of sociologist⦠Karl Marx book âoeThe Communist Manifesto 1848â is a heartless godless book and is filled with every human depravity there is. Read it. Set the conditions and man will commit to breaking every law that God has passed down to man. Tell man he is not a sinner and there is no God, the moral judge and or teach him religion and he has to work for his salvation and you will have the ultimate weapon. We see the effects today do we not?
Though you did succeed in creating deep existential angst in me that I may be unable to read, I'll provide the same link to you as I did previously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
Yes, in fact, people -do- kill "in the name of atheism", provably, as a matter of simple historical fact, and do so by the millions.
I love who you quote the wiki as "facts" when everyone knows it's done by volunteers with agendas.
Be seeing you...
Merriam-Webster
"BIGOT: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance."
Please use your feet according to their intended purpose. They don't belong in your mouth.
Stamping out a biological diferences is very different from stamping out ignorance!
A 15th century man comes home to England from Africa and tells tales of elephants. Nobody believes him. Who is ignorant? You are telling me that something I have experienced does not exist. That is just foolishness. You have to have a great deal of faith to be so sure that there is no god, since there is no evidence one way or another (unless you have been touched by God).
Do you still believe the world is 6,000 years old?
I never did believe the world is 6000 years old, and in fact the "6000 year old universe" is not a tenet of Christianity and is obviously false. I have never met a single person who believed that, but I've met a whole lot of ignorant athiests who are certain that Christians do, despite being told otherwise repeatedly.
Stupidity is the bi-product of ignorance.
You're showing your ignorance of the meaning of both those words. Ignorance is not knowing. Stupidity is not being able to learn. If you still believe that Christians think the world is 6000 years old, despite being repeatedly told otherwise by Christians themselves, that is an indication of an inability to learn.
Free Martian Whores!
Is it really bigotry if it's true? Typical religious beliefs *are* delusions. The real world does not work the way religions typically describe. I know because for many years I used to suffer from such a delusion. Now that my eyes are opened, it's the only way to explain how I could have possibly believed such nonsense without ANY evidence to back it up.
The only place religion really belongs is in the DSM.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
"Anything "bad" done by religious people is presented as evidence of religion being bad in general - whether or not non-religious people do the same thing (e.g. rioting)."
Have you ever heard a religious/conservative person in the US say anything good about atheism/socialism/communism/etc.?
E.g. the religious keep pointing out what Stalin/Mao/etc. did as an example of why atheists are bad. Why can't Dawkins do the same?
Foot, meet mouth.
Merriam-Webster
"BIGOT: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance."
Lack of proof, doesn't mean the opposite must be true, otherwise you might as well believe in Santa Clause, Fairies, Gnomes, Boogieman, etc.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Is a dead one.
nice, really nice. Do you hit babies for an encore?
Be seeing you...
It's popular to conflate Stalin's insane need to kill people who were "out to get him" with atheism in general. Apparently he killed no atheists, had a sober mind, and his people weren't terrified of whether they would be the next ones to be dragged off to gulags.
Ah, so no members of the NKVD, the army or the politburo were purged by Stalin, only the religious.
If you wish to point claims of revisionism, you first have to stop revising history yourself by using logical fallacies.
So who taught you logic?
The difference between an atheist and a believer is only in how many gods they don't believe in.
No.
The difference between an athiest and a believer is that the athiest finds the concept of God delusional while the believer does not. The number of them is irrelevant to this.
Dawkins should not be surprised that "physics gets a pass" while evolution does not. Physics deals with things you can actually measure and the concept of falsifiability. While micro-evolution (adaptation) is arguably scientific (and not an argument that I am either making or interested in having), macro-evolution (the origin of life) is pure religion.
A 15th century man comes home to England from Africa and tells tales of elephants. Nobody believes him. Who is ignorant? You are telling me that something I have experienced does not exist. That is just foolishness. You have to have a great deal of faith to be so sure that there is no god, since there is no evidence one way or another (unless you have been touched by God).
Some people believe in Fairing, Gnomes, Santa Clause, Boogieman. Should I believe such nonsense without any evidence? Only a fool believes in things blindly.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
So you agree that because there's a lack of proof that Richard Dawkins exists, it's very likely that he doesn't and is in fact a figment of the deluded and silly "minds" of the Dawkins believers?
Because people caring whether they offend other beings seems to follow logically and obviously from "survival of the fittest" (making enemies makes you and your offspring less likely to survive).
It could, in certain situations. Alternately, one might take the viewpoint that the two seconds needed to listen to the "that's offensive" objection is two seconds of unneeded inefficiency, and simply wipe out the speaker and his entire culture. The only means you have to differentiate the two proposals of correctness, is which was more successful in DNA propagation (or, at minimum, you have provided and demonstrated validity for no other means). By those standards there is not the least reason to object to the latter if the context is such that it, in fact, worked by that DNA-success criteria. In short, it addresses no normative or ethical question at all--for any given proposal, the exact opposite can be proposed, and if we actually follow up to evaluate the alternatives by that worldview, it rapidly becomes an inane question of projected and assumed "survival success". The fundamental philosophical problem here, though, is that the worldview of Darwinian Naturalism -needs the opposition to reject its standards-, and -needs the opposition to retain its own standards, while simultaneously attacking them-. In the wider cultural conflict between theism and atheism, application of -your- position would be to simply note we are the numerically-dominant subculture, and should feel no constraint, by -your own- standards, in taking yours out entirely, and sooner rather than later. You count on this not happening, and rather for us to continue to behave with Christian behavioral norms as you reject and attack them. This is what makes your position fundamentally unsound as a proposed objective (applicable to all) worldview.
In other words, you can't refute critique of religion just by declaring all critique-worthy people "not really religious".
Do you prefer that I refute your critique on the basis that, regardless of what the worldview is, your evaluation is such that whatever is numerically more prevalent in the population automatically "loses", as a simple matter of generating more statistical opportunities for what you see (though don't formally support) as "negative" occurrences? If you have statistical backing for the notion that -per capita- atheism leads to better outcomes (by some standard) than religion, then present it. Notably, this is assiduously avoided--we have finger-pointing anecdotes as the limit of what advocates of atheism are willing to present that could be of -scientific- value. And, understandably so, as the outcome of such an analysis is already clear simply by our USSR test-case alone.
Evaluate it "sociologically". Do so using valid methods. The outcome is the same.
"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
It's one of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing more definitional as to what Christianity is, and is not. That these are not listed in a dictionary definition is, for any intellectually-honest person, simply a question of the economy of presentation of a dictionary, as "communism" would not include more than a couple lines descriptive of the ideology of Marx and Engels (et al), yet a wider set of principles would be quite unambiguously part of the meaning of "communism". If you want to make such a semantic argument, may I suggest a better one.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Macro evolution is micro evolution on long time scales, and has nothing to do with origin of life. If you think the two are truly different you have quite some explaining to do how isolated populations undergoing micro-evolution are *not* going to evolve arbitrarily apart from eachother. What mechanism would make sure that they stay within the same species?
Lie on. You are charged with advocating Christianity in the face of opposition, by Christ himself.
Don't blame me for your failure on that point, nor for your failure in wishing that being right is altered, not by a logical argument on your part, but merely by calling what's right "self-righteous".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Again, another human being applying their petty knowledge and understandings against God. God could create a diamond in front of your face that science could test to be older than anything tested in creation, yet you witnessed with your own eyes that it is only days old.
You are begging the question.
Cosmology is better left to explain how God has set things in motion and the rules He has established regarding them, however it should not be used to explain things God has done out of order or contrary to the laws of creation. Those are one offs and it neither disproves or competes with cosmology.
One offs... wtf. Claims the earth was created 4 days before the stars? That women was created from man's rib? Your ignorance is appalling.
Your attribution of clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horribly cruel is really just your own opinion and is only an example of your ignorance.
I have found that every person against God has zero hesitation in blaming God for everything that goes wrong, but seems silent regarding God when things go right. The incoherency is within you and your ability to hold a double standard is in obvious view.
I am not against God but your very twisted and primitive concepts of God.
Though you did succeed in creating deep existential angst in me that I may be unable to read, I'll provide the same link to you as I did previously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
Yes, in fact, people -do- kill "in the name of atheism", provably, as a matter of simple historical fact, and do so by the millions.
From your link:
During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled. Believers were harassed and persecuted. Most seminaries were closed, and the publication of most religious material was prohibited. By 1941 only 500 churches remained open out of about 54,000 in existence prior to World War I.
Such crackdowns related to many people's dissatisfaction with the church in pre-revolutionary Russia. The close ties between the church and the state led to the perception of the church as corrupt and greedy by many members of the intelligentsia. Many peasants, while highly religious, also viewed the church unfavorably. Respect for religion did not extend to the local priests. The church owned a significant portion of Russia's land, and this was a bone of contention – land ownership was a big factor in the Russian Revolution of 1917."
Essentially, then, the killing of priests wasn't so much 'in the name of atheism' as it was 'in the name of breaking the power of the bourgeoisie'. It was a consequence of the Marxist philosophy of the Soviet Union, not of it's atheist position.
Or maybe Stalin was just a twisted and sadistic despot.
I notice that there have not been a lot of mass killings by the government in Sweden.
The only "-ism" that has anything to do with Stalin's mass killings is "despotism".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Check the discussion page, friend.
There is quite a bit of debate as to whether this Wikipedia article is agenda-driven.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...and yet it sounds like a distant camera mic with a bunch of background noise. Please look into making these videos sound better. Yes, it does matter.
"Provably" based on an obscure and biased Wikipedia article?
That's what passes for "proof" in your universe?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem of evil and the problem of free will are actually fairly good disproofs of the existence of God. There's no existing proof for the existence of God that causes my atheism to be a problem.
1) i wasn't talking about religious wars. i was talking about the non-theological basis for the anti-religious campaigns in the soviet union.
2) while not all wars are religious in nature, there's certainly no shortage of examples of overtly-religious conflicts. take the crusades, the french religious wars, the 30-years war, global islamic jihad, the lebanese, iraqi & sudanese civil wars, just for starters.
Can you name one single athiest charitable organization? I certainly can't think of one.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=atheist+charities
The difference between an atheist and a believer is only in how many gods they don't believe in.
That's an amusing quote that is somewhat nonsensical.
1. Atheists are believers; they believe that no gods exist, rather than that a god/many gods exist. You're trying to distinguish between a subset and the set that it is part of. "The difference between an atheist and an atheist ..."
2. "disbelief" is only meaningful with respect to the beliefs that drive the disbelief. "Adding one more god to disbelieve" makes it sound like an insignificant addition when totaling up all the gods one can disbelieve in, but it only happens because one has a stronger belief that excludes the disbelieved notions. So it is not the number of disbeliefs that matter, but the number of beliefs that do matter.
Here's an illustration for why the saying is really silly. There are an infinite number of wrong answers to 1 + 1 = ?. But the person who looks at the number of wrong answers to 1 + 1 and then decides that there is no right answer to the question is also wrong. The person who rejects "1 + 1 = 3" because "there is no right answer to 1 + 1" is right for the wrong reason. No matter how many wrong answers to 1 + 1 he can find, his core belief is still wrong.
What matters is not how easy it is to adopt a conclusion. ("just another god to not believe in") What matters is truth. That's something we can all believe in.
soviet communism was definitely a religion:
- belief system? check
- cultural system? check
- world view? check
- spirituality? check
- morality? check
- clergy? check
- hymns? check
- laws? check
it had pretty much everything except maybe for proscribed creation or afterlife myths.
Name names or be known as a liar. Christians don't hate athiests, we fear them.
I've corrected this on your behalf.
Ever wonder where all that money Christians put in the collection baskets goes?
To the churches. Some of it does trickle down to humanitarian programs, and sometimes there are "Special Collections" in addition to the regular one, usually for some particular charity, but most of that money in the collection plate goes to running the church, not to the poor.
Can you name one single athiest charitable organization? I certainly can't think of one.
You apparently fail at Google, too. There are plenty of non-theistic charities, including several you may have encountered, but didn't realize they aren't non-theistic. Amnesty International? The American Civil Liberties Union? OxFam?
Here's a list: http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Secular_charities
So it's not a delusion to claim that Eve was created from Adam's rib? Or that Mohammed ascended to the heavens on a magical horse? Or that when you drink wine in the Communion rite, it's actually the blood of Christ entering your body?
Believing the two historical claims is not delusional if they actually happened. Would you like to offer up irrefutable historical proof that said events did not happen? Eyewitness accounts? Video recording? Time machine?
Disdain is not a disproof.
(I do not believe that the wine in Communion literally becomes blood, and do not defend that belief).
So yes, I do think they are very different things, and I think the context explained sufficiently.
The point I was making is that Dawkins simply talking about "evolution" and how it doesn't get a pass from religious people implies he's using the "origin of life" term and not simple adaptation term. It is always hard to tell because the two concepts are repeatedly switched mid-discussion. A believer will talk about the origin of life and an evolutionist will talk about all the scientific evidence to prove evolution, as if the evidence of adaptation of a species was sufficient to prove how life began. The fact that Dawkins calls religous believers delusional might be another clue that his reference to religion and evolution involves creation.
Origin of life Evolution is, indeed, a religion. Dawkins should not be surprised when science steps into religion and religion responds with less than an open-armed invitation to join the congregation.
Only theirs.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mr. Dawkins doesn't go around beheading people for having different beliefs.
Beheading isn't bigotry, it's savagery. No one accused Dawkins of beheading anyone.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
More to the point, "we can do what we want" doesn't imply "we should randomly kill people". Which is a good thing, because whether or not God/god/gods exist(s), we most certainly can kill people. This has been tested numerous times in human history and proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
sign me up. i'm absolutely an anti-religious bigot. i don't care if you're gay, straight, black, white, rich, poor, fat, thin, whatever. you're a person, that's great. but if you believe in fairies in the sky, you're delusional by definition, and if you change my laws to align with the will of your sky fairies, and you use my money to delude my kids in school then I have a problem with you and as such I don't give a fuck if your so-called-sacred sensibilities are singed. deal with it.
Those people weren't killed "in the name of atheism" no matter how much revisionism you shovel at it.
And most 'religious wars' aren't fought over religion - they were usually fought over land, resources, or power. The Crusades were not fought just because Christians wanted to vanquish Islam or they wanted the Holy Land -- Islam was the fastest growing religion by means of military take over. In a way, it was a preemptive attack because if the trend continued, Islam would have taken over the world. Before even the first Crusade, armies of Islamic Moors had made their way onto the Iberian Peninsula (Spain).
The normal foot soldier may have being fighting in the name of Christianity in the Crusades, but the knights and Papacies who initiated them actually saw it as a defensive measure -- fight Islam on its own land before it spread any further into Europe.
It's too bad Dawkins and his parrots don't understand that history, society, and government are complex. Considering how complex biology is, one would think this type over oversight wouldn't be one that Dawkins would make. I don't think it's really an oversight, he just learned that he can make a whole bunch more money being a controversial ass than by being a biologist.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
We Christians did that 2000 years ago. Our religion says love your enemies as you do your friends, forgive everyone who harms you, if you're punched in the face, turn the other cheek. It says he who lives by the weapon, dies by the weapon. It is a religion of love.
Forgiveness is the very heart of Christianity. The "eye for an eye" was the old covenant, Christ brought a new covenant.
2000 years ago? Did you forget about the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition?
You don't need to believe in abiogenesis in order to believe in evolution. When people say that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, they're not talking about abiogenesis. They're talking about the evidence for there having been periods billions of years ago when there were only single-celled organisms, and the evolution of those organisms into the complex life we have today.
Which is horribly inadequate to prove that you can get higher order lfieforms from lower order lifeforms through random mutation.
Estimate how many steps there are between humans and bacteria. (Compare the size of the genomes). Check the amount of time we have to evolve each step, and then consider the number of chances you reasonably have, compared to the tiny chance of success.
How many steps to go from no brain, to human brain? How many steps to go from asexual reproduction, to the human sexual reproductive system? Don't forget that many of the complex systems you need to evolve are highly interdependent for development, growth, and maintenance. Either they evolve the interdependence, or they happened to evolve together, all of which requires more steps (and lower the probabilities that they could occur by random chance).
Total up the probability of all of those steps, and the combined expected value goes to zero, to the point where it will not happen, statistically. The evidence for evolution is inadequate, but we've done an excellent job of insisting that it's overwhelming.
Look for the Miller-Urey Experiment, for a classic. Bear in mind that to go from primordial soup to single-cells, we're talking about a handful of freak occurrences, each one some 40 million years apart.
That experiment doesn't mean much. No evidence to show that there was an ancient Earth atmosphere like that. An elaborate system to trap organic compounds away from the heat, so that said compounds could accumulate, rather than being destroyed by heat within the main mixture. All that, and only a dilute solution with a few amino acids.
Organic compounds don't usually accumulate and stick around for 40 million years - so how do is the right environment maintained so that freak occurences 40 millions of years apart can chain together to create life?
Just to add to the Hitler thing... Regardless of Hitler's own personal Christianity, the vast majority of his generals (though not the SS), and probably the majority of the Wehrmacht (possibly including the SS as a whole) were Christian themselves. In order to perpetrate mass murder, you need people to perpetrate it. This is the root of the Pope's calumny. Most of the killing was done by religious people. And I still don't blame religion for it
People like Dawkins generally think about whether religion is causing more harm than good. It's a solid, worthwhile topic to debate.. more so because so few people of religion consider it.
Without people to challenge your convictions about "that which cannot be known" you might as well just write off the whole religion thing. It's gone beyond faith and HAS become a delusion, once it's a certainty.
Atheists aren't exempt from this, of course, but if all you do is get upset when you hear such things, then you probably need a little more of it in your life to remind you that we SHOULD be striving to better ourselves, rather than pretending we're better than the others.
If you're going to hate the more militant atheists for being that way, then don't forget to look in the mirror to see if you're there too.
Stalin didn't pursue an anti-jewish agenda until after the war; from what i've heard, and this makes most sense to me is, there were only two people to have ever fooled stalin, hitler was one (stalin refused to believe that the germans were going to invade the USSR during WW2, even all the spies were reporting that it was imminent, yet stalin refused to believe, having faith in hitler instead thinking that the nazi-communist alliance [see molotov - von ribbentrop pact] before the war was real), and the second was david ben-gurion, who made deals with, and subsequently misled stalin into believing that israel was going to become a communist satellite state.
One bit of evidence that supports this to me, because it isn't talked about much, is that the haganah before israel was established, but after ww2, were equipped with, ironically, german, nazi stamped, K98 rifles, they were sourced from czechoslovakia who i presume got them from the USSR, since it was the red army that would have collected them as they went through germany at the end of the war. Now considering how restricted arms were in communist countries, this would have never happened without stalins permission, all those satellite states just did what stalin ordered.
Mr. Dawkins doesn't go around beheading people for having different beliefs.
No, instead he merely calls them "uneducated, ignorant, probably stupid, too". And: "You've only got to talk to people who call themselves creationists to realize they haven't the faintest idea what the evidence is, or indeed, what evolution is."
Now, I am personally aware of a number of highly educated and intelligent people who also happen to be creationists. Each one of them can explain exactly what evolution is, and what the evidence is for it. They're not convinced. They have good reasons... reasons which I personally have trouble with, but which I can nevertheless respect.
But Dawkins has no respect for their dissent. He will call them stupid simply because their interpretation of the world is different to his own - as if he is omniscient, and in possession of all the facts. Is this not the height of arrogance? Is it not, in fact, intellectual bigotry?
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Isn't that what soccer is for?
Homosexuals don't generally have a driving urge to make everyone else into homosexuals, or to run governments under homosexual principles.
Apparently Dawkins did not mind making negative comments about the muslim video while complaining about the comments that religious folk make about scientific claims.
Pot calling the kettle black much?
Nice straw an there -- the only negative comment he made about the video was this:
It's quite astonishingly badly done, as everybody agrees.
Have you not seen it? The production quality was beyond terrible, and was so amateurish a group of 8 year olds could have come up with someone better. And from the bits that have been released on YouTube, it doesn't even make any sense. Voices are obviously overdubbed in places, the sets are comical in how bad they are, and the dialog is incoherent. By any rational standards, it was "badly done".
Excuse me if I completely fail to see the equivalence you're trying to setup. He made a single negative comment that the film was bad, so somehow that should mean that religious fundamentalists should get a free pass when they use ignorance to criticise a well tested scientific fact? Really?
Yaz
Well especially when the books he's written that are critical of religion are much better known, than those that deal with science alone. I think he's a philosophical flyweight, because he deals with issues of philosophy in such a brutish, pedestrian, unreasoned, manner that's it's palpable; he conflates science and philosophy to a ridiculous level and in my opinion, making a meal of both at the same time.
An obvious fallacy he engages is that he groups religion as one homogenous group, this is an absurdity, it purposely muddies the waters, and i think it's not so that he convinces people, it's more to entrench his existing supporters, probably to keep on buying his books.
Have a search on youtube for Ayaan Hirsi Ali . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFvklPpGZtA
...
See http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0103/p01s04-woap.html, for example.
In a Stalinist personality cult, deities are treated as threats to society because they compete with the authority of the infallible leader. These systems are atheistic only in the most literal, technical sense, because the leader acts as a God-substitute in all ways but the purely spiritual.
North Korea takes the above idea and mingles it with spirituality as well. Their official state faith is more like some sort of wacky variant on ancestor worship than a classical theistic religion.
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether you're living in Pyongyang, North Korea or Lynchburg, Virginia. Faith-based bullshit corrodes civilization.
I wouldn't have taken you as an advocate of Intelligent Design. But there it is, right in your own words.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
See, honestly, I'd like to sympathize with atheists and atheist rhetoric, even on the most basic of levels. I just can't get past how arrogant it all sounds. This post is a rather glaring example of that tone. If an observation is made by anyone who doesn't self-identify as an atheist or "non-believer" the observation is generally tossed to the side with a clicking tongue about how "deluded" the observer is or a off-hand comment about how they don't "get it." Incidentally, this tends to position them into the same sort of special field they themselves reserve for religious people. Its holier than thou without the holy. I also can't get behind it because it turns the whole argument into a debate between a moving target and a characature. If people who preach (and I use that word intentionally) atheism against religion want to be taken seriously they had better start attempting to be understood and not working so hard to obscure their meaning.
People who are determined to kill will pick whatever convenient label is available so they can convince themselves that their cause is just. The better the label, the more noble the cause, the easier it is to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing.
No, people don't kill in the name of Atheism. That's because it makes for a terrible cause.
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I wasn't going to comment on this, but you've reminded me of a pet peeve.
Some atheists call us delusional.
You know, Richard Dawkins calling religion "delusion" is kind of like a new ager talking about "energy" or "vibration", or Deepak Chopra throwing around the word "quantum".
"Delusion" is a fairly well-understood scientific word, used in the field of psychiatry. Its definition (in the DSM) specifically excludes any belief which is culturally normal, and specifically identifies religious beliefs as one class culturally normal beliefs.
Yes, he noted that he was using "delusion" in a non-technical sense. Deepak Chopra said the same thing about "quantum", in an interview with Dawkins no less. It's kind of like defining "evidence" to mean "that which I feel strongly", and then using that odd definition to conclude that evidence is unreliable.
Normally I wouldn't care about this nitpickery, but Dawkins is a scientist. The word "delusion" gives TGD air of scientific authority to a claim which isn't scientific. He's One of Us(tm), and hence I expected better.
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So if it's killing in the name of atheism, it's actually killing in the name of religion
That is exactly what it was. There's room for only one infallible authority in a totalitarian state, and that means no Gods allowed. Also, no typewriters, copy machines, or radios that didn't have the dial glued in place.
Atheism was a common feature of the Communist personality cults, but this is no more relevant or enlightening than the fact that Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Kim all drank milk as children.
I didn't ask any questions in the first place, but yes: what the hell history books have you been reading?
Evidently ones that weren't published by Bob Jones University.
Because Atheism is the existence of nothing...
No. That is called Nihilism.
...the denial of an existence of any kind of Lord...
Yes.
...and the lack of any belief in anything except what's 'visible' to the eye.
LOL! No. How did you come to this conclusion. Few atheists would deny the existence radio waves, bacteria, electrons...sounds...
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
I got death threats from Christians for being an atheist. Where are those "peaceful Christians" that you're talking about, and more to the point, where have they been hiding in the previous two millennia?
On behalf of the human race, sorry about the death threats. We primates should have evolved beyond that by now.
Having said that, it might help to step back and think about raw numbers. How many individual people did you receive death threats from, exactly? And what is that as a proportion of the billion or so Christians currently in existence?
And why stop at "Christians"? Assuming that you're an English speaker and the death threats were in (possibly bad) English, you could have said that you got death threats from "English speakers". Where are all the "peaceful English-speakers"?
For that matter, it's probably a reasonably safe bet that all of the death threats were from males, or from people in your own country, or from people who come from dysfunctional families. There are so many categories that these death threats fall into that it's hard to identify one as being any more important than the other, from the point of view of an unbiassed observer.
It doesn't take very many people sending someone death threats to make your life grief. I totally get this. It's like how many intelligent, outspoken women feel that the world is full of misogynists based on the number of threats they've received. I suspect that not very many people are actually misogynists; I'm sure that you're not, for example. However, intelligent, outspoken women are precisely the sort of people they target, and it doesn't take very many misogynists for that to preoccupy your thinking.
Those "peaceful Christians" exist. Just like "peaceful humans", they're the majority. The death threats you've received are from the tiniest of tiny majorities. Unfortunately, it only takes a handful to cause you a problem. And for that, I'd like to reiterate my apology on behalf of humans.
Oh, and males.
Hell, and English-speakers.
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One could equally argue that "Roman Catholicism != Christianity".
Look, you're right. "Atheism", defined as "the lack of belief in gods", has arguably never caused violence. There's always been something extra, such as the statist ersatz-religion of Communism. But that raises the obvious point that "Christianity" defined as "adherence to the beliefs and practices taught by Jesus" has also arguably never caused violence. There's always been something extra there, too.
It's just as hard to point to instances of violence committed on the pretext of Christianity before it became the state religion of Rome, as it is to point to instances of violence committed on the pretext of atheism before it became the state religion of the Soviet Union. Before that happened, when it came to religious violence, Christianity was always on the receiving end.
I bring up Christianity because we can trace its origins to a specific time in history, and from its beginnings it was not tied to a specific ethnic group or political entity. Hence, Christianity is the first successful religion in history for which we can identify a period of time where church and state were (and had always been) completely separate, and usefully compare before with after.
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Soviet Union never killed "in the name of atheism". It pursued people who acted or even openly thought contrary to its ruling ideology (which itself was akin to religion). It specifically persecuted some Christians (not all - those who accepted communist rule were spared; this movement inside Russian Orthodox Church was labelled "sergianism", and gave birth to the modern Church as it exists today), because what they preached was contrary to that ideology. There's a hell of a difference between that, and "killing in the name of atheism".
The official NK propaganda is that Kim the Elder was born according to some ancient prophecy, on a sacred mountain, with their spirit descending from heavens. So they have the religion, it's just their very own one (in the usual spirit of juche).
Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion...
...and we'll kill anyone who says otherwise.
(Actually I don't single out Islam, they're all as bad as each other).
Singapore is not a Muslim majority country
Of course it is excluded for scientific reasons, and pretty simple ones at that: delusion is, by definition, pathological. False beliefs which are held because of incorrect or incomplete information are not pathological, and hence not delusional.
Are you arguing that people who believe that Christopher Columbus was trying to prove the Earth was round are mentally ill?
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I got death threats from Christians for being an atheist.
There's a contradiction in the terms. To me, that sentence sounds like "Linux kernel hackers refused to share Linux source code with me because I had a Mac at home." Of course, it's possible that one particular guy who happens to be a Linux kernel hacker took a stupid stance one day, but that stance is nonetheless in direct contradiction with fundamental Linux values, namely that everybody can access the source code.
Similarly, "thou shalt not kill" means you can't be a Christian and make a death threat. You can call yourself a Christian and make a death threat. You can call yourself a Linux kernel hacker and refuse to share source code changes. In both cases, you are going nowhere.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
You can empirically test for what others tell you is Dawkins, observe the actions of something that is purportedly Dawkins and communicate with what you believe is Dawkins. You can't prove any of that is actually *true* though.
Dawkins may or may not be a bigot, however I can't agree that he is based on labelling religious believers delusional. For one, it is a conclusion that is based upon evidence, not obstinately held. Secondly I don't see how that comment shows Dawkins treating the religious with hatred and intolerance.
Delusion is commonly used to describe belief in anything without evidence. The anecdote you linked to perfectly fits this definition. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Without indication one way or another, the only logical conclusion is agnosticism. However, many of us have had such an indication.
Logical conclusion? That argument is actually a logical falacy. See Russell's teapot. Your ancedote shows that more investigation is required as currently the workings of the brain are not fully understood. Using a god of the gaps argument is not very convincing or a reasonable position to take.
Oh, a nice and civilized point of view. Pity I've ran out of mod points, your post clearly deserves +5 Insightful. But to assume this point of view one must be a fully-formed individual, grown-up and psychically defined. And most of the religious fundamentalists or hardcore atheists are still cannot get over their teenage complexes and maximalism - thus the need to prove that they are undoubtedly right outweighs the need to find some sensible and effective solution for their disagreements. What we really need is not a rule of some religion or denial of any of them, we need a rule of maturity and common sense. But that, sadly, seems far more utopical than even the most fantastical religious descriptions of Heavens.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Why is it bigotry to say that homosexuality should be stamped out, yet not bigotry to say religion should be stamped out?
Because: "Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities". However don't be under the mistaken belief that it is an attack on religion, it is not. It is an attack on anything that is based on tradition, faith and revelation, as it happens religions are just a large target.
But where does consciousness come from? Where does the "soul" come from? This is where the Christians have a hard time dealing with evolution. Single celled creatures "obviously" do not have a soul. How could they evolve to have a soul? (yeah, there is no objectively clear definition for soul)
I am not saying they are correct. I am just pointing out why they (I am clearly not part of any organized religion) are having a hard time believing humans evolved from single celled creatures or even complete animals.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
You still cannot prove that he exists. Dawkins is just another "Russell's Teapot".
Oh such complete and (n)utter bullshit.
We can device proper scientific models complete with repeatable predictable and falsifiable tests which show that Dawkins exists*.
This is not true for god.
* Repeating these tests on a regular basis would likely greatly annoy Dawkins who may refuse to participate but it is no way impossible.
There were protests about the film in Libya. How does his "theocracy" argument even apply to a country that was a secular state
His point was absolutely dead-on correct regarding Libya. Here's a translation of the relevant Libyan law:
Article 291 (Insult of the State Religion): Whoever publicly attacks the Islamic religion â" that being the official religion of the State under the Libyan constitution â" with verbal terms not befitting for the Divine Being, the Messenger, or the Prophets, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
Libyans were raised under the implicit expectation that a movie such as Innocence-of-Muslims could not be published and allowed without the U.S. government's approval. They are unfamiliar with our concept of Freedom of Speech. They are unfamiliar with the notion of a government so divorced from the views and speech of the citizens under it. They are unfamiliar with the concept of a government which is unwilling or incapable of imprisoning people for speech which government finds abhorrent.
In their experience a government can and does control the speech of it's citizens. Such speech is only allowed with the explicit or implicit consent of the government, and the government is therefore in agreement with and responsible for any such speech.
You called Libya a secular state - as if theocracy were a binary thing. Theocracy is a matter of degree. While Libya was more secular than most mid-east countries, the law quoted above clearly demonstrates that Libyan law contained significant theocratic elements.
Dawkins is a bigot.
It seems either you have been misinformed about what Dawkins has been saying, or you are using a grossly erroneous definition for "bigotry".
Studying a subject is the exact opposite of prejudice. Disagreement is not the same as intolerance. Studying a subject and providing reasoned rational arguments why he believes certain ideas are false is not bigotry.
Just because you may disagree with him is not a valid basis to label him a bigot.
Just because you might feel upset, angry, or offended by his conclusions is not a valid basis to label him a bigot.
Even if he were wrong, that would not remotely be sufficient basis to label him a bigot. People obviously can make errors in reasonable rational arguments without being bigots.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Calling all religious believers "delusional" by definition, meets your criteria fully.
It is a statement of fact, not bigotry. Religion is, by its very definition, superstition. Strong belief in something that has zero probability of being true is being delusional. Don't confuse a statement of fact that some people can feel offended by for a bigoted comment. Scientists can come across as cruel or harsh or demeaning or bigoted when facts are presented, that doesn't mean they are.
As for "beheading", can you name something within Darwinian Naturalism that argues against it, if it increases the propagation of the behead-ers DNA?
Yes. Genetic proclivity towards altruism is documented in science, and from a selfish gene perspective, altruism makes perfect sense. The survival of the herd increases the survival rate of the original DNA strand, therefore animals, such as prairie dogs, have bred altruism into their behavior. Not particularly controversial. You are just looking at it from the wrong perspective, it isn't you as an individual that is seeking to have your lineage survive, it is your very distant ancestors DNA that is looking to survive, and for that DNA, altruism is perfect. It couldn't care less about any one individual, just as enough of its descendants make it.
How much of Dawkins' non-correspondence to this demonstrable history of an actual large-scale test case
Really, you're going to be that dumb?
the atheist worldview would lose immediately and overwhelmingly if we introduced actual hard data
Elaborate please.
"Delusion" is a fairly well-understood scientific word, used in the field of psychiatry. Its definition (in the DSM) specifically excludes any belief which is culturally normal, and specifically identifies religious beliefs as one class culturally normal beliefs.
I'm just wondering here how long it will be before this effect of social inertia is rectified and this exception is removed from the definition.
Ezekiel 23:20
False beliefs which are held because of incorrect or incomplete information are not pathological, and hence not delusional.
Are you arguing that people who believe that Christopher Columbus was trying to prove the Earth was round are mentally ill?
When you tell them that he was looking for the way to India, they stand corrected. By way of counterexample, what is most likely to happen to a Young Earth creationist when you provide him with an introductory, easily accessible geology textbook?
Ezekiel 23:20
These people were a group of about half a dozen of Catholics who were publicly toying with the idea of having my country's constitution amended to make atheism punishable by death sentence. Try to explain that to them. I already did. They didn't budge.
Ezekiel 23:20
Believing in something that it is possible to prove isn't delusional. If you believe in something which is utterly impossible to prove, and in fact hugely unlikely to be true, is rather delusional.
Delusion: a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Are you some kind of clueless guy?
North Korea is one of the most atheistic countries in the world.
No, it's not. The official state religion says, among other things, that their leader was born according to some ancient prophecy, on a sacred mountain, with their spirit descending from heavens. The national leader is claimed to have an aspect akin to the Pope/Jesus/Muhammed/Divine-right-leader/Divine-spirit. That is religion.
Some people have the comically narrow view that religion equals Christianity/Islam/Judaism. Newsflash: Christianity accounts just about about 30% of all world religion. Islam accounts for slightly less. Judaism is a whooping 2%. There are in fact far more religions than that, and they make up about 40% of all religion (which as you may note is substantially more than Christianity's 30%).
Richard Dawkings is an expert at sounding smart, but he really isn't that smart.
There are a great many people I absolutely loath, and whom I am quite certain are completely wrong about many things, whom I admit are undeniably very intelligent. Regardless of whether Dawkins is right or wrong, his intelligence level is unimpeachable. It is well established broadly and impartially by any reasonable standard. When you try to dismiss Dawkins as "not smart" merely because you disagree with him and dislike him, it only reflects negatively on your intelligence, reasonableness, or rationality.
If he was in it for the science, he would be doing something to help advance science
Did you bother watching the video? One of his central motivating points was exactly the advancement of science.
There are tons of other scientists who believe in evolution yet don't shove it in people's face on all televisions every time they get a chance.
And his point is that science is suffering for it. If nearly half of Americans believed that atoms weren't real and that chemistry was a lie, that would be enormously harmful to the progress of science as a whole. Every scientist should damn well stand up every chance they get and declare how wrong and destructive that is. It's shocking how few scientists stand up on the issue, and it's shocking how much deference this veritable flat-earthism is given by scientists and journalists and society in general.
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Did you forget about the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition?
No, the crusaders and Spanish unquisitors forgot what Christ actually taught. They were like a pork-eating Muslim beheading someone for not being Muslim. The crusaders and inquisitors were exactly like the hipocritic Jews who insisted on Jesus being crucified.
The popes and Spaniards of the time were abusing their power. They may well have been secret athiests -- there are a lot of them in churches everywhere. I know one woman who calls herself a Catholic but states that God can't possibly exist. I can't figure that one out, how can one be both athiest and Catholic?
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Honestly, I'm really sorry to hear that stuff like that happens! It's a real shame.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
Review the defined worldview of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a political entity, and the millions of people killed, internally and externally, by it, to correct your error.
Wow, you really are that stupid. Sorry, I didn't think anyone was still retarded enough to spout this nonsense. The USSR was a socialist state. It's actions were dictated, not by atheism but by socialism. Hitler was a devout Christian, but, as opposed to you, I am not retarded enough to blame his personal beliefs and his government's official position on religion (Christian) for the actions of that regime. Sorry moron, but if you blame the actions of the USSR on atheism then you also have to accept that the actions of The Third Reich was a result of it's Christianity.
By contrast, mass-killing is -directly compatible- with Darwinian Naturalism
Ignorant bullshit.
Apparently he killed no atheists
Nonsense. You need to lay off the hallucinogenics. He killed thousands of those closest to him. Did his closest allies not share his world view? Also, Stalin regularly cooperated with the Russian Church. Were they part of or cause of the mass killings? Hitler was a devout Christian, he felt that his actions were according to Christianity. Some would argue they are not, some would argue they were. Are you seriously going to say that Hitlers actions were a result of his religiosity?
I would never accept a theocracy. Religious law should only apply to the religious. And theology should stay out of the classroom, except perhaps in a philosophy class where all religions and philosophies would be given equal time.
And I don't give a fuck what any damned bigot thinks of me.
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But that raises the obvious point that "Christianity" defined as "adherence to the beliefs and practices taught by Jesus" has also arguably never caused violence. There's always been something extra there, too
Then I will ask (and answer) two very simple questions.
1/ Has any government/organized entity ever set out to kill with Atheism as a motive? The USSR never did, the motives behind the mass murders were based in two things, the moving of personal property into state ownership and the purging of "dangerous" individuals. Neither of those motives are grounded in atheism, one is grounded in a communist world view that private property is undesirable, the other is grounded in personal paranoia.
2/ Has any government/organized entity ever set out to kill with Christianity as the prime motive. This one is actually harder to answer. Most people would argue that The Crusades were motivated by Christianity, I will argue that politically (from the leadership) they were not, though for individuals participating, they probably were. The same could probably (but less strongly) be said for the Inquisition, which appears to have been politically motivated at the start, but primarily motivated by Christian teachings later on.
While you can't sensibly kill in the name of atheism, you can kill to promote it.
You can kill to promote anything. Did anyone ever kill to promote atheism? Answer is a resounding no.
Since the people who most vocally support evolution almost always conflate the concepts of "evolution" (small-e, adaptation of a species over time) with "Evolution" (capital-e, origin of life)
What? As the GP told you, "Evolution", regardless of how you chose to capitalize it, says nothing about the origin of life. It explains the origin of *species*, not *life*, i.e, the observation that the biosphere today is wildly different than the biosphere several million years ago, giving an explanation of how it happens that is accurate enough to make predictions based on them ("if we do this, we should see speciacion... oh, look, speciacion!"). There is no "origin of life evolution". There is "abiogenesis", but claiming that abiogenesis is science stepping into religion demonstrates a severe lack of knowledge of what "science" and "abiogenesis" are (hint: the evidence for abiogenesis is more than "this self-contradictory book says so". The Miller-Urey experiment was a confirmation of a prediction based on the primordial soup theory -- that's science at its finest).
Why are you so sure? Last Wednesday a friend threw her lesbian roommate out, who wound up staying at my house for the last week. Despite the fact that she was an avowed lesbian, she seduced me. That doesn't seem so verifiable to me.
As to "not", if you ever have a religious experience (not likely of course) you will change.
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Homosexuals don't generally have a driving urge to make everyone else into homosexuals
Then why do gays hit on me even when they know I'm straight?
or to run governments under homosexual principles
I don't quite understand, what are "homosexual principles"? If the religious wanted to run our government under Christian, Jewish, or Muslim principles they would be stumping for outlawing adultery.
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he wants to persuade believers to abandon their beliefs
Good luck persuading me that something I have experienced personally doesn't exist.
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Religion isn't ignorance, even though many religious folks are indeed ignorant.
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A secular charity is not an athiest charity. None of those seven are athiest charities. Note, I don't posit that athiest can be generous, many athiests I know are indeed generous.
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This focus the definition of "delusion" is largely hair-splitting, but perhaps there are some interesting hairs to split here.
"culturally normal" isn't excluded for any scientific reason
Of course it is excluded for scientific reasons, and pretty simple ones at that: delusion is, by definition, pathological
Your answer is loaded with a rather significant assumption. It assumes that a cultural norm itself cannot be pathological.
Let's consider a hypothetical example. Lets take a society with a cultural-norm religion which states that babies are born without souls, and that with each birth a ritual human sacrifice *must* be preformed to transfer an existing soul into that infant. To be fair lets add that they reasonably and rationally select the oldest or sickest members of society for their sacrifices. Ideally that practice would maintain a fixed population size, but of course occasional individuals/souls will inevitably be lost to accidental deaths or whatnot.
A person born into that society may be physically healthy, and according to the definitions of psychiatry a person in that cultural norm may be mentally sane, however I think the cultural norm itself is indisputably pathological. The human-sacrifice issue may be set aside as a matter of "subjective morality", but from an absolutely objective point of view the cultural norm inevitably results in extinction. I suspect we can all agree that extinction is a pathological result, and that any belief directly causing self-extinction inherently qualifies as pathological.
I think this points out that context matters. In the context of psychiatry is is reasonable to define people as "sane" when they accept cultural norms. This naturally requires defining "delusion" within-a-psychiatric-context to exclude belief of cultural norms. But clearly the word "delusion" is reasonable and useful beyond the field of psychiatry. Clearly some cultural norms can be pathological.... can be delusional. The individuals within that society may be physically healthy and "sane" within-their-culture, but the culture itself "pathological" and "delusional". In this context the members of this society clearly are suffering under a delusion. Members of this society are being *KILLED* by their delusion, by their willing participation in their own ritual sacrifice. Because of their delusion that newborns need to be infused with souls.
Your nit-picking wasn't unreasonable, but I think Dawkins really hit the nail on the head there. Even if Dawkins were wrong about the existence of god, in the context of explaining his case his use of "delusion" was appropriate.
Are you arguing that people who believe that Christopher Columbus was trying to prove the Earth was round are mentally ill?
An essential element of "delusion" is that it is a persistent belief, one which is stubbornly resistant to evidence and reason.to the contrary. Casual cases of misinformation or misunderstanding do not qualify when people are well able to update their mental belief-set.
Setting aside that problem with your Columbus example, based on what I said earlier a person may both have a "delusion" in the broad sense while also being "sane" in a psychiatric context of functioning adequately within within his culture.
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Homosexuality is a fact of life
And sadly, half of all gays have attempted suicide. Personally, I pity my gay friends. How can one "back up with facts" the absense of proof of something? Absense of proof is not proof of absence. Unless you have experienced God ("be delusional" according to you) the only rational belief is agnosticism.
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The muslims need a reformation and this desensitization is the thin edge of the wedge, more and more desensitization and you get a creeping reformation. This suppression of education is very bad for the muslims, already they can not keep up in science - yer prior to islam the Arabs were leaders in science and mathematics. Algebra - google it.
The teachings of Malthus will harvest many muslims if they do not smarten up. They will overpopulate their areas and few other countries will admit millions of illiterate muslims - already there is push-back in Europe.
That sounds like Dawkins to me.
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I'm not so sure. That may certainly apply in some cases (it's one of the theories of Neandertal replacement, and was to some degree true in the Americas), but I think that a lot of the claims of invaders replacing pre-existing populations have been shown to be false. Generally speaking, invaders come in too small a numbers to outright wipe out a pre-existing population. The Anglo-Saxons didn't really wipe out or chase away every Celt in England, the Turks didn't wipe out and chase away every Eastern Mediterranean, and even where there is a legitimate claim of attempted genocide in the Americas, particularly Latin America and French North America, there was plenty of intermarriage, and many native peoples simply took up the language and the religion of the conqueror. My mother-in-law's family came from Quebec, and though she denied it, I heard from others that it would be hard to find a Quebecois family that did not have Amerindian ancestors somewhere in the last five centuries.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think you're a bit too optimistic when it comes to Europe. It's not a huge secret that the vast majority of immigrants into countries like, say, France, are from Muslim majority countries and the reason it continues is that left leaning parties wish this to continue as the vast majority of Muslims vote Socialist. In essence they're importing their own voters at the expense of the native population and the right (except the far-right and often racist FN) doesn't generally challenge this as they're hoping they can tap into some of those voters and don't want to alienate the center by making alliances with the far right. As Muslims have far higher birth rates, immigration continues, and the native population stays steady, I can't see things getting better. It wouldn't be so bad if the Muslims integrated well (and many do... at least a lot better than the UK), but the newer immigrants don't seem to see the need to. And as they mingle with the native, much less radical, French muslims, I can see a lot of that radicalism rubbing off. That and Saudi, Wahhabi mosque funding is what's caused the UK to be in such a shitty situation. It's only a matter of time before the rest of Europe follows suit.
Some people believe in Fairing, Gnomes, Santa Clause, Boogieman.
Most Harley hogs have fairings. Gnomes are those little concrete casted statues. Boogiemen? The boogie man is a racist slur from the '50s, and in fact a boogie woogie musician is the boogieman. From the more modern useage of the term, there are indeed boogiemen.
As to Santa Claus, when my youngest was about four, she asked me if Santa was real. I said "Of course -- I'm Santa Claus." She skeptically said "No you're not." I said "yes I am -- I'm your Santa Clause." Every parent is Santa.
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When God shows up, the world will know.
While I agree that cultural norms can be delusional and pathological, the cultural norm exception cannot and should not be removed from the psychiatric definition.
Psychiatrists themselves exist within cultures. They will inevitably be influenced by those norms. A psychiatrist either has to measure patients on the basis of his subjective and personal beliefs of what people should believe and how they should behave, or he can make a best effort to objectively measure them against the cultural norms within which the patient lives.
A psychiatrist's job is to assist dysfunctional individuals better function within in his environment. That means helping the patient better function within the cultural norms of his environment.
Identifying delusional cultural norms, and working to "cure" a society which suffers under a pathological delusion, is indeed an extremely important and valuable. However it would be Utter Fail to attempt to do so in the context of a psychiatrist treating an individual patient who is already suffering from difficulties functioning. It is not a patient who is ill, it is the society at large which is ill.
You will probably suggest the theoretical case of a non-delusional person being "treated" by a psychiatrist in a culture with a delusional norm. I have two answers to that. One, there simply doesn't exist any magic solution which can perfectly avoid it. However my second point somewhat mitigates that appalling first answer. A reasonable rational well functioning individual who finds himself in a society with a delusional cultural norm should be able to recognize that fact. The only sane and well-functioning response to such a situation is to acknowledge that fact, and to deal with that fact in a reasonably productive manner. The "worst case scenario" is such a person who stubbornly and unsuccessfully battles against the delusional society of his environment. At which point I will note with the utmost irony, the very definition of "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
A person who is unwilling or incapable of adapting to such a situation winds up falling under the most wildly cliche definition of insanity. Someone who is "right" and "sane" yet persists in futilely martyring themselves against the cultural-norm is (debatably) not reasonable, (debatably) not rational, and (indisputably) not functional.
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Actually, its pinned not only on the whole religion, but on "religion" as a concept.
I have this crazy theory. It goes like this, "If people had the sense to reject the blind faith advocated by priests, they would also have the sense to reject the blind ideology advocated by politicians."
This is what I meant earlier when I suggested that religion and Communism are just two exploits of the same mental bug. I don't see a distinction between what's depicted here and what's depicted here. None at all. And that's without even dragging North Korean juche symbolism into the picture.
Regardless of whether I'm personally taking the comparison too far, the idea that the Stalinist purges were done in the name of "atheism" is at once incomplete, insulting, desperate, and silly. Allowing it to stand unchallenged is unacceptable.
To the churches. Some of it does trickle down to humanitarian programs
I can only speak of my own church, but we sent $90,000 to Africa last year, much more around the US and other countries. We completely remodeled the public elementary school in the poorest neighborhood in town, and gave two weeks worth of groceries to every family with a child in that school over Christmas break, because school breakfasts and lunches are the only meals some of these kids get, and they go hungry at Christmas time.
I didn't ask for names of secular charities, I asked for names of athiest charities. None of your list fits that bill.
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When God shows up, the world will know.
IAnd He will touch you with His Noodly Appendage at that point!
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
How would you define an atheist charity? Religiously affiliated charities clearly trumpet those affiliations in all of their advertising, so it's hard to mistake those. However, if you're drawing a line between a secular charity (which have a lack of affiliation with any religious group or institution) and an atheist charity, please define that line.
The ACLU, at the very least, have been attacked for their godlessness by numerous Christian groups over the years.
It's too bad Dawkins and his parrots don't understand that history, society, and government are complex.
You have it precisely backwards. We do think that these things are complex. Far too complex, in fact, for religion to be useful as a tool for understanding and navigating them.
Depending on whom you ask, we live in the Atomic Age, the Space Age, or the Information Age. One thing that's certain is that we need to stop relying on Bronze Age fairy tales for moral guidance. We need to be smarter than those guys were, or the age we're living in now will be our last as a civilized species.
I didn't ask for names of secular charities, I asked for names of athiest charities.
Atheists rarely organize on the basis of atheism, and even when they do they generally see it as idiotic and counterproductive for any effort to help people to be organized or identified on any sort of exclusionary basis. If I want to feed hungry children or help cure cancer, I'm equally happy to accept assistance or money from anyone of any race, religion, gender, or anything else. The only priority is the charitable goal.
The question isn't "what's wrong with atheists for not organizing specifically atheist charities", the question is what the hell is wrong with theists for organizing so many exclusionary charities. Such people really need to get their priorities straightened out, and put the actual charitable work ahead of their personal religious affiliation.
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You remind me of those muslims who said that "insulting Mohammed" was terrorism.
Is there anything you dislike a lot? Does that make you a bigot?
Religion is, by its very definition, superstition.
A directly-false, that is to say, directly lying, statement. To be "by definition", something has to, you know, be constituent of a concept's definition. You don't succeed in making something true "by definition" merely by using the words "by definition".
Strong belief in something that has zero probability of being true is being delusional.
A directly-false, that is to say, directly lying, statement. Firstly, it is false to say there is "zero probability", and you have literally no basis for this claim. -Even were it true-, this does not meet the criteria of "delusion", as this is a term with particular criteria--that is, maintenance of a belief in the face of -direct factual presentation- otherwise. It could, in fact, be the case that there is a zero probability of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM being true (a question yet indeterminate, scientifically), and belief in it would -not- be "delusional". Only in the presentation of -direct sensory proof- that it is false, would the view actually be "delusional". We have an alternate, accurate word for the millions of such situations apart from such direct proof, that come up daily, when lack of factual correctness is applicable: "Mistaken".
Scientists can come across as cruel or harsh or demeaning or bigoted when facts are presented, that doesn't mean they are.
Find me a scientist, and have him comment on the thread, then. You are, as demonstrated, simply an ill-informed liar. For a scientist, in the proper sense, his goal is to educate, not to intimidate, which is the -only- added objective of the term "delusion". It adds no informational value whatsoever.
Genetic proclivity towards altruism is documented in science, and from a selfish gene perspective, altruism makes perfect sense.
Addressed already. It hardly matters that this is a plausible evaluation. Although you almost manage to fail to convey even a true statement with a baseline level of coherence, with your direct equation of "altruism" and "selfishness", the reality is that for any given behavioral norm, the exact opposite could be claimed to be a plausible survival strategy as well. There is no sensible way to proceed from that point, other than conjecturing and attempting to validate the relative effectiveness of the two alternatives by the criteria of actual survival effectiveness, a practice which rapidly becomes impossible, and inane in terms of proposing that this methodology of guessing at the effectiveness of DNA propagation objectively resolves any -ethical- question.
Really, you're going to be that dumb?
Given that your post is among the stupidest, most directly dishonest ones I have ever encountered on Slashdot, I can only smile at this. I am going to be "as dumb" as to make the true, backed statement I made, correctly, yes.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Bad analogy. Theists never say 'some god exists'. They point to a specific one and go on to describe him/her in great detail. This is the difference between 'I believe that life exists in the universe outside of Earth' (and the implication is usually that this is a statement of probability, not absolute certainty) and 'I believe that there is a planet orbiting the third star on Orion's belt and there is intelligent life on it'. It is quite delusional to believe a bunch of claims with zero evidence. Making a guess about the existence of something (falsifiable that we can go out and test at some point) based on past experience and probability is perfectly reasonable.
Wait, are you saying that the universe does not conform to my beliefs about morality?!?! But that would mean bad things happen to good people, not everything works out for the best, and evil sometimes goes unpunished! To accept your claim, I would certainly require some evidence that these phenomena are even possible!
Holding a strong belief with no evidence MIGHT not fall under the category of "delusional", but it is certainly an unreasonable position to hold and shows a deliberate disconnect from reality. There exists the same amount of evidence for a Judeo Christian God as there does for pixies. If someone claimed that pixies exist, you would probably say they were delusional. If they said they saw pixies, and that this was the reason for their belief, then you would definitely say they were delusional. If they said the believe in pixies, but do not have any good reason to, you would perhaps not say they were delusional, but certainly intellectually dishonest.
I'm an atheist. I think gay marriage is an awful idea. Really, you can be an atheist without being OK with homo stuff.
We don't celebrate any other birth defect, either physical or mental. Decent people try to avoid abusing those born with problems, but we don't let them remake our world in their image. Homo issues are no different than self-mutilation issues, gambling issues, or any other in-born mental defect.
A little piece of me died inside reading that.
Congratulations. Where countless fundies have failed, you have succeeded. My atheist-superiority complex has been taken down several notches.
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A directly-false, that is to say, directly lying, statement
Rubbish. Religion is belief in the supernatural. That is the very definition of superstition. "A widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation". Superstition.
Firstly, it is false to say there is "zero probability
From an external point of view, each religion ever concocted has an equal probability of being true. Since there are so many, they all have a statistical probability of zero of being true. That is the only way to look at it objectively. Since you have a belief in one of these superstitions, you are incapable of looking at it objectively.
maintenance of a belief in the face of -direct factual presentation- otherwise
Direct factual presentation: Each religion has an equal probability of being true. There are enough religions in our history to make the probability statistically zero. Holding to a belief that has a statistical probability of zero is "maintenance in direct face of factual presentation". "Mistaken" would be appropriate if there was any probability of the belief to be true, there isn't any. Statistically.
For a scientist, in the proper sense, his goal is to educate
What on earth gives you that idea? Delusions? Most scientists I have met will do anything they can not to have to teach.
Given that your post is among the stupidest, most directly dishonest ones I have ever encountered on Slashdot
Find your self a mirror.
I don't. Why would you expect that of me?
I've known at least two young earth creationists who were "cured" by doing a science degree.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Where is the other half of the vid and what the fuck is the point in splitting it into two halves you utter prick? Did you have to go wee wee' s halfway through talking to Richard Dawkins or something? Are you unable to absorb information without some pretentious form of artificial suspense, and therefore busy working on the recap of the first half in order to pad the second half out, to reflect the fact that your attention span has been calibrated specifically to follow the rhythm of the show Jersey Shore?
Lots of love, The United Kingdom
big difference. the elephant exist - you can go back to africa and say "look there are elephants!"
Neither do religious people generally (with regard to their religion.) The minority that do, on the other hand, are quite visible, and overlap with people who are power-seeking in general (because its largely religion and power seeking in the same person that produces this behavior), and so disproportionately represented among religious people who attain power. (The same is true of heterosexuals, and I'd bet its true of homosexuals, too, its just that there are few enough of them that even most of the power-seeking ones can't even delude themselves into thinking they would have a chance of imposing conformity on that basis, and also often find it more convenient to pretend conformity to heterosexual norms in the pursuit of power.)
The formal discipline of logic has undergone one major change since Aristotle. The language of computers is over 2000 years old. Is it too old? Has its usefulness expired? What we do with it has become much more complex, but the fundamentals remain the same.
Scientists, of all people, should understand that human knowledge and understanding is accumulated from the work of previous generations. You don't scrap an idea just because it's old, you scrap it because it's become invalid in light of new information.
If Dawkins or you or anyone else has a moral philosophy to replace religion I'm all ears. In fact, if Dawkins wanted to disuade people from religion that would be the correct course to go rather than trying to argue that religion is stupid. Argue in favor of a better philosophy, don't argue in favor of any philosophy that's not religion. But the fact of the matter is that I find more wisdom in Aesop than Ayn Rand, a better moral framework from Jesus Christ than from L. Ron Hubbard. What era these people belonged to is irrelevant. I love Robert Pirsig's philosophy of quality but I would find it just as intriguing and just as worth studying if it were first written down 2000 years ago (which Pirsig actually argues it was, in the form of the Tao Te Ching, a document Dawkins undoubtedly disdains for spawning a religion, Taoism).
We need to be smarter than those guys were, or the age we're living in now will be our last as a civilized species.
Yeah, that's not a knee-jerk reaction or anything. That's quite a bold assertion to make, especially considering you state it as if it were self-evident.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
The difference in opinion you are having here is that you believe there is enough evidence to declare "no God exists" others believe that their is enough evidence to declare "God exists" and still others believe something in between.
Athiesm is a lack of belief in a diety, not an affirmative belief in that unprovable non-God (that was a fiction invented by the church to attack agnostic-atheists).
Learn to love Alaska
The language of computers is over 2000 years old. Is it too old? Has its usefulness expired?
No, because unlike superstition, formal logic and Boolean algebra actually work.
Yeah, that's not a knee-jerk reaction or anything. That's quite a bold assertion to make, especially considering you state it as if it were self-evident.
Really? Read the Bible, then imagine the same guys with nukes.
I don't actually disagree with your main point, though, in that if one is not prepared to offer an alternative, it's pointless to complain. However, Dawkins and others like him believe that rationality is sufficient for us, and I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary yet.
US voters do. That's why an atheist president is considerably less likely than a muslim one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Verb tenses. Look it up, bonehead.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Are you retarded?????
"....I don't think anyone could argue that the Catholic Church doesn't do an amazing amount of good for impoverished African states....."
AIDS + no condoms????
I suspect that the reason that Europe has a large Muslim population is the same as the reason that America has a large Mexican population: cheap labor. That and colonial ties to their countries of origin (this is certainly the case of France and Algeria, and the U.K. and Pakistan, India, and much of the Middle East) , as well as the fact that they are just much closer to the Middle East than we are.
Radical Islam in Europe seems to be the new punk for disaffected Muslim youth; their parents had enough of that crap back home, which is why they moved. What better way for a surly teenager to annoy his parents than to hang a bin Laden poster on his wall. Kind of like Che in the 60's (who was, by the way, every bit as batshit crazy as bin Laden, if not more so.) This will pass. Eventually, standing on the sidelines and watching life pass you by loses its charm.
If the European left seems crazy, a recent history of genocide will tend to push the needle into the red in any conversation about immigrants, outsiders, or other races and cultures. As for Muslims voting socialist, that doesn't seem likely, as socialists tend to be atheistic. Canada's recent turn to the right is largely attributed to an influx of immigrants who find the right's regard for religions more appealing. It's more likely that poor Muslim immigrants in Europe don't vote at all.
Then I will ask (and answer) two very simple questions.
The simplistic answers to your very simplistic questions are:
1/ Almost certainly not.
2/ Almost certainly not.
The difficulty is the qualification that we're talking about government or "organized entity". However, I suppose it depends how you define "organized entity".
You could argue, for example, that the KKK was an "organized entity" which used Christianity as a motive, even though it was really about Confederate nationalism and racism. But then, so were the European anarchist groups of the early 20th century (you know, the ones who invented the car bomb) used atheism as a similar motive, even though their violent opposition to established churches they attacked were just a proxy for political motives.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The mere presence of a factually-false but culturally-normal belief is not, by itself, evidence of a physical or mental illness. That is not an assumption, it is an evidence-based conclusion, and it's not even a controversial one.
You're using "delusion" in the broad sense, which is fine. And just like a new ager uses "energy" or "vibration" in a broad sense, or Deepak Chopra uses "quantum" in a broad sense, you're allowed to. It's just not scientific, even though you used a scientific word.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
How? It was stated that "Athiesm is the existence of nothing". That's not what atheism is, but it is often what theistic people believe athiesm is. Ironically, whenever it's pointed out to them that this is not the position an athiest takes they argue tooth and nail from their own interpertation, arrogantly dismissing alternatives that do not even argue about God's existence. For whatever reason, it's either you believe God exists, or you believe he does not. Shame, really, as I take neither position, and I am not agnostic by any means either. If these are the only 3 categories you're aware of, it is likely that someone like me will utterly confuse you. They simply do not describe me.
You're using "delusion" in the broad sense, which is fine. And just like a new ager uses "energy" or "vibration" in a broad sense
Expanding the application of a word from the individual level to a societal level is hardly equivalent of making up arbitrary woo.
I gave an example of a cultural-norm belief with an objectively pathological nature. Do you dispute that extinction is pathological, and that any suicidal belief and practice which directly results in extinction is inherently pathological? An individual may be physically healthy and and "sane" in the sense of normal and well functional within a society, while that society exerts pressure (potentially highly coercive pressure) beginning in infancy to impose objectively pathological false beliefs. Do you seriously claim that using the word "delusion" in a broader societal level context is the equivalent of random new age woo?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Interesting that a negative opinion of Dawkins is modded flamebait. Mod me down some more, that's my honest opinion and I backed it up with logic and reason.
Antitheists are even worst than the fundamentalists.
Free Martian Whores!
Yes, but these people had never seen an elephant, and getting to Africa wasn't just anyone could do.
Free Martian Whores!
Is there anything you dislike a lot?
There are things I dislike a lot; thievery, for instance. But it's the act, not the person, that I abhor.
Free Martian Whores!
Religiously affiliated charities clearly trumpet those affiliations in all of their advertising
Most religious charities don't advertise.
The ACLU, at the very least, have been attacked for their godlessness by numerous Christian groups over the years.
Numerous Christian churches are full of fools. The ACLU is faith-agnostic and will defend anyone whose rights are being trampled. IMO the ACLU is an excellent organization.
Free Martian Whores!
the question is what the hell is wrong with theists for organizing so many exclusionary charities.
Any exclusionary charity I would agree is not a good charity. But I know of very few exclusionary charities outside the Mormon church. You don't have to be Catholic or even Christian to eat at the St. John's bread line. They feed anyone who walks in. You don't have to be Christian to benefit from any of my own church's charities, a poor athiest or Muslim or Hindu is as welcome as a poor Christian.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm pretty sure claiming that it is the religious people that Dawkins dislikes is groundless. Can you provide any quotes that would corroborate this?
that's probably the weakest argument i have ever heard.
getting to Africa doesn't require a leap of faith. just a boat and some patience.
I never did believe the world is 6000 years old, and in fact the "6000 year old universe" is not a tenet of Christianity and is obviously false. I have never met a single person who believed that, but I've met a whole lot of ignorant athiests who are certain that Christians do, despite being told otherwise repeatedly.
For what it's worth, I *have* met people who believe this. I grew up in the American Bible Belt, and spend some time on a financial web site with a large Evangelical following, and there are biblical literalists out there who insist this is true. However, I also know this is not true of ALL (or even most) Christians, and the ongoing meme about this in every single Slashdot science thread is most certainly: -1, Overrated. Still, these people do exist, your not having met them doesn't change that, and their insistence in this belief despite the obvious falseness of it is part of what gets the atheists all riled up.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
You misunderstood me.I wasn't talking about exclusionary in terms of who they are willing to help. I mean exclusionary in their membership, or even just exclusionary in identification of who the people helping supposedly are. If your first priority really is to feed hungry children or help battered women or cure cancer, then founding a charity named "Lefthanded Redheaded Lutherans for X" is a really BAD way to actually achieve X. That makes the entire organization about Lefthanded Redheaded Lutherans, and any minimal charitable-X you actually manage to achieve is obviously secondary.
You were arguing, or at least strongly implying, that theists are superior or "better" people because there are almost no charities specifically labeled as "atheist".
Seriously, who is the better person if an atheist volunteers helping kids at the local YMCA? The atheist who considers religious affiliation completely irrelevant and who's only priority is helping kids, or the Christians who placed an exclusionary title on a youth organization to take credit for the good works that the atheist does under their label?
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. When atheists create charitable organizations they don't put some asinine "atheists only" label on the name. It's like there's "Stamp collectors against cancer" and "Baseball card collectors against cancer" and "Coin collectors against cancer", and you're saying people who don't collect stuff are inferior because they don't have any charities. You're saying that "secular" groups like the American Cancer Society don't count because it's not labeled "Americans who don't collect random crap Cancer Society".
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Expanding the application of a word from the individual level to a societal level is hardly equivalent of making up arbitrary woo.
The word "delusion" gives a veneer of scientific respectability to a statement which is not scientific. That is what woo-woo artists do.
While we're on the topic, Dawkins also claims that "the existence of god is a scientific question", and chooses to make his case not in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, but in the popular press. That is also what woo-woo artists do.
Yes, there is a huge difference in degree. However, as I've noted elsewhere, Dawkins is an actual scientist, and hence he should know better. I think it's right to hold him to a higher standard.
I gave an example of a cultural-norm belief with an objectively pathological nature. Do you dispute that extinction is pathological, and that any suicidal belief and practice which directly results in extinction is inherently pathological?
As I recall, it was 100% hypothetical and unrealistic. But I'll play along.
Yes, I do dispute the use of the word "pathological". That is, once again, a scientific word which denotes an indicator of a mental or physical illness. Using that particular word in that particular context is scientifically inaccurate. Such a belief may be harmful. Indeed, it may be very harmful. But it is not, in and of itself, pathological.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
It's one of the Ten Commandments.
No, it is not. The Commandment is probably closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder Fellow Jews" -- often translated as "Thou shalt not kill", but within the Christian tradition (which includes all the books of the Old Testament, rather than just the first 5 books of the Jewish Torah) this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide (e.g. 1 Samuel, Chapter 15) and has Saul removed as King of the Israelites in favor of David when Saul refuses to actually commit a complete genocide.
So... yeah, the God of the Ten Commandments era is totally down with mass murder. Jesus might have been against it, but you went back too far. Want to try again?
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
No, it is not.
...this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide...
Yes, it is.
The Commandment is probably closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder Fellow Jews"...
Anything else you'd like to entirely make up on the spot, while you're at it?
Here's a slew of English translations, all rendering it as "kill" or "murder":
http://bible.cc/exodus/20-13.htm
Here it is in the original Hebrew, with no qualification of "fellow Jews" or anything else for that matter:
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0220.htm
Or, your inference is entirely erroneous. Outside of stating it is "clearly" meaning what it clearly is not, your other term of characterization is disingenuous as well. "Genocide" is a term implying a great deal that isn't present in your example. Most would consider a counterattack against a culture which had previously been an extreme aggressor to be an act of "war", not "genocide"--as "genocide" is used to imply an "innocent", victimized group. The Amalekites were nothing of the sort.
More information here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalek
You may wish to note the particular mitigating ethical factors given by historical Rabbis, none of which are necessary to demonstrate your characterization is without merit.
Being that "mass-murder" is definitely an instance of the category of "murder", and rather than using the verbal construction "genocide" to misrepresent the historical facts, we use the appropriate term of "war", my statement, and its proper qualification, stand.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This is brilliant.
> A key difference here is that I find it hard to believe that you could ever rally thousands of atheists to riot under the pretense that the god they don't believe in has been insulted (or not sufficiently insulted). What about "the Catholic church is poisoning the world, let's kill its leaders"? That's something many atheists might idly think, even if they'd never do it. With the right set of circumstances, atheists could commit murder, genocide, etc. just like Christians etc. have. One thing lacking is a formal structure to provide leadership which, as another commenter mentioned, isn't far out of the realm of possibility given atheist meetup groups. Not to mention the reverence some atheists seem to hold for Dawkins, and the possible substitution of nationalism and other things. The basic idea is that people are people and beliefs are both tools for manipulating and excuses for basic instincts and behaviours. You're a biological machine driven by thousands of years of evolution and your post was as inevitable as my reply. Shit happens, simply because of the way people are. Evolution would seem to dictate that we're more likely to survive if we mitigate the negative aspects of human behavior so, yeah, I support the elimination of dogma. But dogma isn't the cause, people are the cause, and farther down the line *the fucking universe* is the cause.
So killing women, children (including newborns), and even their animals isn't killing innocents? You have an interesting view point. God says "Thou Shalt Not Kill" on one side, then commands the utter destruction of a racial and cultural group with no exceptions on the other. You don't dispute the fact that God ordered the genocide (which has no connotations other than killing the entirety of a group and is defined as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group" which is absolutely and very clearly what God demanded), just that it was part of a "war" as if that makes it "not killing" somehow.
When they fight in Exodus - sure - that's a counter-attack. The Israelites had what amounted to an army as they were trying to escape Egypt and invaded the Amlekite lands, the Amalekites attacked, the Israelites counter-attacked, self-defense. I can get behind that, even if the order "Thou Shalt Not Kill" had just come down. But in Samuel? That wasn't a counter-attack. That was pure revenge. "Hey, remember when 50 years ago the Amalekites attacked us while we were on the run? Yeah, we should go wipe them out." There had been some battles in between, but that wasn't the reason for this. It wasn't "The Amalekites will never leave you alone, so this one time I tell you to ignore my commandment." It was "I noted that they attacked when you escaped from Egypt. Go and utterly destroy them to the last man, woman, child, and suckling babe, and kill their farm animals to because fuck them that's why." That's no where near close to "Thou Shalt Not Kill," or even "Thou shalt only kill in self-defense," (which isn't the commandment) or "Thou shalt not mass-murder," (which isn't the commandment) or even "Thou shalt not kill unless in a declared war," (which isn't the commandment).
Long story short: The Commandments as written don't specify exceptions, but God gave other orders immediately after which contradicted them. That gives you some context there -- if someone says "Never do X," then turns around and says "Go do X to those guys... and those other guys... and really, X is ok against anyone that doesn't worship me, or is related to those people that have made war upon you," that very clearly shows that the original wasn't really "Never do X", it was "Never do X to Y". And the Y seems to be "Israelites" since everyone else around them is attacked and killed, though it could simply be "anyone who has never personally attacked you, or is part of a racial or cultural group that has attacked you."
Thus it's pretty obvious that the God that gave out those Ten Commandments isn't against mass-murder, so you can't say "It's one of the Commandments that Christians live by." It's very clearly and obviously not. Mass-murder is something God was all about when he gave those Commandments. I suggest switching to Jesus if you want to defend Christians as having some basic aversion to mass-murder, because God of the Ten Commandments is definitely not your guy.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
A few points on your post here.
Firstly, understand that the concept "genocide" came into existence in 1943, and for all the previous millennia of both Eastern and Western philosophy, both religious and secular, it didn't arise that this term was perceived as meaningful in a way that was necessary, or even useful, for ethical questions from any of these perspectives. Indeed, if you're going to kill a lot of people, them all being of the same ethnicity doesn't seem to be a morally central factor in evaluating it. However, as we both know, you don't think it is either--if nothing else, I assume you'd have to agree that if a culture had 1000 members, killing all of them would not be made worse for that reason alone than killing 10000 people from different cultures. I again submit that the -sole- reason you are using the term, is to -imply-, disingenuously, an "innocent victim" status to the people being discussed, not because it's validly part of "genocide", but because you know that's what people will assume when hearing the term.
Before I proceed, let me ask, do you agree with, or disagree with, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? These actions certainly also killed large numbers of "innocent" women and children. It was done on the basis of winning the war, and that, quite simply, these women and children would in the future continue to be either supporters of, or active participants in, the continued killing of the members of other countries, which they were the initial aggressors. Since on that basis, that is was -extremely probable- that this would be the future of those people, by virtue of the nature of their culture (e.g. the totalitarian political system of Japan at the time), are you prepared to say that this bombardment was not legitimately an act of self-defense? When we have your answer to that, then we can look at it in the religious context you're somewhat-accepting, somewhat-rejecting based on whatever best furthers rejecting the religion in totality. In that context, given the assumptions we must make to discuss decisions within it, it was not merely highly probable that the people killed would continue to kill or aid in the killing of the countries they initiated attacks on, but -certain- they would, as a consequence of God's omniscience. If you're going to argue some of it should be taken as factual for the purpose of evaluating the ethical situation, you need to evaluate that situation in the context of -all- of it, as it is presented to be. This is inclusive of the foreknowledge that says, we can move beyond valid the human opinion that it most probably will save more lives that it will cost, in the case of WW2 Japan, to this context where we -know- it will save those lives. That's the context under discussion--certainty of saving more than will be lost, though mere strong probability is sufficient to justify both actions within the Christian ethical system, and other ethical systems as well, such as Consequentialism and Utilitarianism.
You're a bit all all over the map here in terms of what you are arguing against. My statement was that "you shall not (mass) murder" is a defining norm of the belief system, and that statement remains correct, even if you are indecisive as to whether you want to claim the bible is contradictory on this point, or definitely says the opposite of what it says. It is a defining norm, and the actions against the Amakelites was neither mass-murder, nor murder, with any definitional justification beyond the directly-analogous situation of the Allies ending WW2 by dropping two atomic bombs. Granted, we are translating the original Hebrew to English here. One could argue that the English should say "You shall not murder" right from the start, as the provided Hebrew/English translation does, rather than leaving the meaning to require inference, but that is the meaning of the statement. I am not defending the notion that the bible suggests one should not kill, at all, under any circumstances, because it clearly does not say
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I'm not all over the map -- I'm attacking a single point consistently - the God of the old Testament had nothing against mass-murder. Here, I'll show you what you said again, just in case you forgot:
"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
It's one of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing more definitional as to what Christianity is, and is not.
It may be a defining characteristic of Christianity -- but if it is, it isn't because of the Ten Commandments. That God is totally cool with mass-murder. Now, on to your other points...
Before I proceed, let me ask, do you agree with, or disagree with, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
From my understanding of the situation at that time, I would provisionally agree with the action taken. My agreement with that action doesn't mean it wasn't murder. It absolutely was. Murder on a grand scale. Just that on the balance, it was very likely the best of bad options. I'm ok with the fact that I can ethically say "mass-murder is sometimes justified and can be the correct action." You don't seem to have reached that point.
In that context, given the assumptions we must make to discuss decisions within it, it was not merely highly probable that the people killed would continue to kill or aid in the killing of the countries they initiated attacks on, but -certain- they would, as a consequence of God's omniscience. If you're going to argue some of it should be taken as factual for the purpose of evaluating the ethical situation, you need to evaluate that situation in the context of -all- of it, as it is presented to be.
I never made any claims about the ethics of that action, or whether it was ethical or the right action to take. I claimed it was mass-murder. I stand by that assessment. Further, since you brought up the nukes... God is more than capable of committing his own mass-murders -- Sodom and Gomorrah show that. Too far back? Well, about the same time as the "noted Amalekite attack" on the fleeing Israelites, he killed every first-born in Egypt. He's more than capable of doing what is necessary according to his omniscience without forcing the hands of the Israelites to turn their plowshares into swords and go slaughtering everyone near by.
I will, however, take under serious consideration your insistence that God ultimately does say it can be necessary to kill our opponents, opponent, and will await to see if, in addition to you agreeing on that principle, you also want to present any ethical rationale against doing so from the perspective of evolution.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the best way for my genes to survive are to kill any being that is close-to-but-not-quite-like me. It's a wave function of sorts: Are you part of my direct genetic lineage - You live (e.g. Israelites). Different enough that I can perceive you as a threat to my own or my family's survival due to competition for limited resources - You die (e.g. Amalekites). Different species sharing my niche in the food chain - Kill when possible (e.g. predator animals, most agricultural pests). Using a separate niche in the food chain, but still sharing similarities and not a direct threat - awesome, you can stay (e.g. other passive herbivorous mammals - particularly those that eat grasses or leaves). Capable of using in a symbiotic or parasitic-benefiting-me relationship - You stay (e.g. domesticated animals). Too different - You also die (e.g. insects, reptiles).
That said, as our ability to obtain resources expands, so too can how far out I'll allow my considered genetic boundary to extend (e.g. no longer a direct pressure due to resource contention to go killing neighbors -- we can form diverse nations instead of cultural ones). Alternately, because of trade netwo
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
From my understanding of the situation at that time, I would provisionally agree with the action taken. My agreement with that action doesn't mean it wasn't murder. It absolutely was. Murder on a grand scale. Just that on the balance, it was very likely the best of bad options. I'm ok with the fact that I can ethically say "mass-murder is sometimes justified and can be the correct action." You don't seem to have reached that point.
Let's simplify at this point, for efficiency.
By your own words, you advocate mass-murder, with unspecified qualifications, presumably left up to your feelings at the time.
You are the only entity related to this discussion that is taking the position that mass-murder is acceptable. The situation in the bible was not mass-murder, for the reasons I've given, and even if it were, you do not categorically reject it, by your own words.
Based on the discussion to date, the only advocate of mass-murder involved here--between you, me, religious believers, and God--is you. On that basis, there is nothing further to be gained from the discussion.
If you wish further verification of this...
And do not cite the legal system or warfare. Those are, by definition, not murder. Killing your own citizens to expand your clique's political power, that -is- murder.
Ask ten people around you if these circumstances properly and definitionally alter the question of whether someone being put to death is "murder":
1. The death occurs under the authority of the country's legal system
2. The death occurs in wartime, under authorized orders
Even in the case of your cited Stalinist Russia, it was not pretended that the deaths occurred under a process of law. To be precise, the circumstance was implicitly "I am ordering this. I either need not, or do not, care if it is murder." That doesn't alter the fact that executions specified at the end of a process of law are not murder.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Calling all religious believers "delusional" by definition, meets your criteria fully.
No it doesn't in any way shape or form. By definition, religious believers believe that there is magical invisible fairy in spite of the fact that there has never once been one single shred of evidence for such a thing, nor a single rational reason to believe in such.
That is delusional.
It's too bad if you don't like that fact, but it is a fact. If you're unhappy about being called delusional, then stop being delusional. Getting all butthurt over something you chose to do just makes you look petulant *and* delusional.
LOL! No. How did you come to this conclusion. Few atheists would deny the existence radio waves, bacteria, electrons...sounds...
That's still 'visible' to the eye, and by that mean it's observable, through scientific means (hence the reason why visible was in quotes).
By your own words, you advocate mass-murder, with unspecified qualifications, presumably left up to your feelings at the time.
You are the only entity related to this discussion that is taking the position that mass-murder is acceptable.
You are as well, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Authorized Orders in a time of war can still be war crimes, and can still be mass-murder. There's a duty to refuse unlawful or ethically and morally reprehensible orders. If you comply -- that's still murder (and may even be considered so by the legal system after the war). So does the God of the Old Testament, but you refuse to acknowledge that as well. It's cool. I understand. Killing innocent first-borns while ignoring the soldier and political targets because of what you directly compelled the leader of a group to do doesn't seem like murder. It seems like a complete nonsensical joke of what should be done by an ethical being. It is still mass-murder. I was trying to avoid the mythical parts and deal with the possibly historical parts -- also the parts just after, not just before the Ten Commandments showed up -- but since you won't acknowledge the mass-slaughter of children, particularly when wielding discriminate single-target weapons, as possibly being murder because it was "an authorized order in a war", I'll move on.
Stalin was in complete control. He was the legal system. Anything he ordered was effectively legal. He might not have cared if it weren't. That isn't relevant. If you want to say what Stalin did was murder, then what God did was equally murder. Why did people follow God's orders? Same as why they followed Stalin's: Raw Fear. It says almost exactly that right in the same section: Do what God says, or he'll completely screw up you and your family and everyone in your entire town or nation.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Sorry, but on this issue, I'll take Nikita Khruschev's recounting of history over yours, as he was probably a little more familiar with the situation than you.
...
After the criminal murder of S. M. Kirov, mass repressions and brutal acts of violation of Socialist legality began. On the evening of December 1, 1934, on Stalin's initiative (without the approval of the Political Bureau - which was passed 2 days later, casually) the Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, Yenukidze, signed the following directive:
This directive became the basis for mass acts of abuse against Socialist legality.
An example of vile provocation of odious falsification and of criminal violation of revolutionary legality is the case of the former candidate for the central committee political bureau, one of the most eminent workers of the party and of the Soviet Government, Comrade Eikhe, who was a party member since 1905.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1956khrushchev-secret1.html
And on, and on.
You can't quite seem to win on any point, can you? You're just making assertions of its ethical status, in the face of you agreeing with a directly-equivalent action in WW2. And, do note, emptily using the term "ethical" neither means you've connected your assertion to any demonstrated system of ethical axioms, nor, well, that you have the slightest idea what you mean when using the term "ethical", other than philosophically parasiting off of -my- metaphysical justification by cultural assimilation of the norms of theism. Yes, I actually do know at least a dozen formalized systems of proposed secular-based ethics, and their respective weaknesses. You completely defaulting on justifying your characterizations -at all-, drawing from the resources of -your worldview-, isn't even getting started on what you need to do here.
Again, still waiting for any objection you care to forward on the basis of evolution, or anything to give your self-contradicting subjective utterances any weight at all. Until then, carry on as the sole party here advocating mass-murder.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
That's fine. You're welcome to believe Khruschev, or any official Soviet documentation. I wouldn't, but hey, I know that most of what they wrote was to re-work history in whatever way fit the current party's objectives. Stalin gave an order which had plenty of legal standing within the framework of the Soviet Union, even if it betrayed the principles of the founder, the people, the Communist Party. Abuse of the law is still a use of the law. It was the law system that perpetrated those deaths. How can you argue that it was somehow outside the legal system?
But sure, let's speed this up since you're convinced Stalin committed murder despite having the full legal authority and never facing charges, even post-humously, from the Soviet government. I'll concede the point on Stalin being a psycho that committed murder, since I believe that part anyway, I just think your reasoning is lacking on how it substantially differs from other similar sorts of actions that allowed for mass-killings of otherwise innocent people within a legal framework. What does this have to do with anything? He didn't perpetrate those acts to further "Atheism". He did it for himself. Inquisition? For God (and possibly within the legal framework)! Crusades? For God (and techncially a war)! Stoning those that convert away from Islam? For Allah! Northern Ireland Terrorism? For slightly different Gods (and a lot of politics)! Witch burnings? For God (and likely some psychotropic drugs, and a lot of class-warfare)! Waco Branch Davidians? For God? Jonestown? For God? Terrible at religion? Possibly. But they were advocating their actions as being specifically for their religion. I don't see how you can say that Christians are somehow definitively against mass-murder when so much of history is filled with Christians committing it, and specifically doing so in the name of God (i.e. I won't hold a psycho mass-murder who happens to have been raised Christian against it -- but when the entire society of Christians backs the action... yeah, harder to dismiss it).
That all said, you completely skipped the remainder of the post to get your "you can't win" statement in. You still need to justify God's killing of first-borns in Egypt as not-mass-murder. There's no war. No legal framework in place for it. Obvious targets that could potentially be justified ignored. Possible peaceful solutions purposefully and specifically prevented ("God hardened Pharaoh's heart.") All the first-borns, most of which were completely uninvolved in the conflict, killed instead.
I'm also still not clear what objection you're looking for "on the basis of evolution". I already gave a framework for allowing for symbiotic mutual gain. Perfectly logical, fits both evolutionary and economic theories, visible throughout the natural and human world. Societies that cooperate when possible instead of conflict do better over time. There's also reason within that for mass-killing (competition for highly limited resources). It'd be legitimate warfare, so it's fine and not mass-murder. I guess.
P.S. According to your definitions, which I'll use from now on, I don't advocate mass-murder. Everything thus far would be justified and a legal act or an authorized act of war, so just mass-killing. God, on the other hand, is all about the mass-murder, unless you want to say everything he does is part of his own super-national supernatural legal framework... and if you're going that route, yeah, we're done, since anything a Christian does for God would not be mass-murder and would be totally ok, because God said so. I'm not going to accept that.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
How can you argue that it was somehow outside the legal system?
I can argue it because the direct quotes provided by someone well-versed in the situation indicate that was the case. If you want to claim that any act taken by anyone in supposed authority is the result of a "legal system", I'll venture to say, again, most would disagree with you. A dictator is outside of a "process of law", as commonly understood. That's why people, without irony, refer to "rogue states". Simply being in power does not give ones actions the imprimatur of a valid legal process.
I just think your reasoning is lacking on how it substantially differs from other similar sorts of actions that allowed for mass-killings of otherwise innocent people within a legal framework.
We were "there" because picked up the digression-from-a-digression that you apparently liked arguing better, actually. My rationale was clear and straightforward from the outset. We could very reasonably assume that the women and children killed by the Atomic Bombs would inevitably kill, or aid in the killing, of more people in countries toward which Japan was the aggressor, given the political system they lived under. This is directly analogous to the case in the OT, with the added factor we aren't just quite sure they would, but absolutely sure they would, if we accept God ordered based on the foreknowledge that is implicit in the situation we are evaluating. Even without that, further justification is not required, and, again, you can do your own personal survey on whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified as a wartime act against an aggressor nation, in the alternative to ongoing fighting and death on both sides, and you can ask if these were acts of "murder". I am very confident of what the outcome of your survey will be.
He didn't perpetrate those acts to further "Atheism".
Such was indeed his claim, as leader of a nation formally atheistic and pursuing a formally-atheistic agenda. It just didn't work out being differentiable in practice from totalitarian power-seeking, either for his theistic or his atheistic victims. Can we, though, cut back a little on your psychic awareness of motivations, and get back to the rationale based on outcomes? Again, there is no problem justifying the deaths of some in an aggressor nation to save many more. That's what's before you, no psychic judgments as to the supposed motivations required.
But they were advocating their actions as being specifically for their religion. I don't see how you can say that Christians are somehow definitively against mass-murder when so much of history is filled with Christians committing it, and specifically doing so in the name of God...
By reference to the content of the belief. Again, your protestations notwithstanding, you have demonstrated no case of mass-murder being advocated by the bible, for the reasons thoroughly given and valid. If you want to assert it again, fine, but it will remain an invalid characterization for the same reasons as before. If any philosophy's document says "Don't do X", and you blatantly do X, you are -not- following the philosophy, whatever your claims may be. You seem to be conflating the worldview's definition with people's success at performing it. This is invalid. If Tibetan monks take a vow of silence, and then starts a talk-radio program, one does not say that the talk-radio programs are core to the belief system--one validly says the it isn't, is contrary to the vow, and the practitioner has failed to practice it correctly--exactly as you would for -every other viewpoint- than your special-case of when talking about religions you don't like.
You still need to justify God's killing of first-borns in Egypt as not-mass-murder.
Not really. I might have a need to do so if you had anything resembling any moral or practical authority stemming from anything you've presented. You don't. God gave us life, God can take that away. N
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?