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Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes
Hatta writes "According to researchers from Harvard Medical School, belief in god is correlated with improved outcomes of treatment for depression. Quoting: 'In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without. "Belief was associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm," says David H. Rosmarin, Ph.D., an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.' This raises interesting questions. Does this support the concept of depressive realism? If the association is found to be causal, would it be ethical for a psychiatrist to prescribe religion?"
Correlate to better outcomes during sex?
That's what people crave. They can't live with the possibility that life might have no meaning at all, that we're just here and should make the best of it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"If the association is found to be causal, would it be ethical for a psychiatrist to prescribe religion?"
No.
inb4 shitstorm
yes, your daily routine is better if you believe that everything will be all right. Has little to do with the belief that someone is 'watching over' you. I can't stand the term 'higher power'
It's much easier to just realize there's no god (and resolve your mental illness) then it would be to address real problems, like depression...
Makes sense, at least in my point of view. I'm a atheist, and I have got into depressions regarding the meaning of life, the un/fairness behind it, a lot of trascendental questions, also a fear of death, which people that believes in a god, with fervor, may not feel, since they may believe there is a life after death, there is a meaning behind everything, that there is a god that loves you, etc.
If it doesn't relate our beliefs to a deep-seated fixation on the anus due to repressed sexual desires for one's mother, it can hardly be called real science.
Why, it's a science story, of course.
Which means, yeah, it's a blatant example of the editors posting flame-fodder.
Of course, we all know the exact text of every single troll that will be posted here, so perhaps the real sport will be in seeing who's dumb enough to not roll their eyes and abstain.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Intellectual poison...
Who'd a thunk it?
That ignorance is bliss.
The key thing missing in the headline: "In treatment of depression".
Other things missing: "in one isolated study", "in an article summarizing the study, without any direct link to the research", and of course, "a highly biased interpretation meant to generate views based on obvious controversy."
Keep in mind, this may also be highly cultural, as many nations have much larger percentage non-believing populations, but not worse depression or suicide rates that correlate.
Ryan Fenton
It's God's will. God is testing me. It's beyond my control. There's also the "God gives me strength" angle.
I suppose it's easier to overcome mental health problems if one believes that they bear no responsibility for their troubles and that an infinitely powerful being will make everything okay if they just believe. A metaphysical placebo.
It's a bit rougher if you've only got yourself to blame for your shortcomings and believe the strength to overcome must come from within.
Then you can be tricked into believing you can be helped by the doctor. A weak mind is easily manipulated. Both for good and evil.
I've heard that heroine is also very good at masking problems.
If you believe that the inventor of the universe and all it contains has a personal interest in little old you and really wants you to do well and join him in forever Disneyland. . .
Seriously, a link to the source instead of to the actual study.
http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327%2812%2900599-X/abstract
There, now I don't feel like dropping $31 to read their methodology, but unless it was from a large cross section of people in very different geographical locale the test does nothing but prove that people from a specific area do well from their belief in god. Perhaps they have a pastor there that helps take care of depressed paritoners? Did they put those that did not believe in god into some form of community? Generally church goers have access to a support system via the church, which can help immensely with depression. Unless they compared that with a number depressed atheist who also had decent support systems, the test does nothing except prove you can get a study to say anything you like if you eliminate enough outside factors from the methodology.
Does it also correlate with more than usual incidences of requiring help for such maladies?
Who did what now?
He's Jewish! I call shenanigans on a religious psychiatrist's evaluation of subjects with relation to mental stability.
Having an invisible friend that you know not only believes in you but genuinely loves you is a powerful thing. I'd be very interested to know if people with human friends who love and believe in them enjoy the similar success.
""If you won't let me lie I can't make you feel better." ~Charlie Harper/Sheen
Anger Management: Season 2 Episode 11 – Charlie Dates Crazy, Sexy, Angry
Reality as it's given to us by society and interpreted through rationality IS depressing. The secret is - you don't stop there, you keep going. deeper.
Why is it that a Slashdot community filled with raging atheists is perfectly willing to entertain that idea that our entire universe is a simulation on someone's computer ( a defacto God), yet any of mention of God solicits instant condemnation? I find that interesting.
Remember when people were aware that emotions are useless. Oh, nostalgia.
"That a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than a drunk man being happier than a sober one."
Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes
so does marajuana use, so therefore belief in god must correlate with marajuana use :P
Without knowing how many religious people get mental health issues compared to the same amount of non-religious people, it would be difficult to have a baseline. In the modern world, the most horrendous cases of nuttiness seem to have religion as a drive.
After all, if God didn't want you to do something, you'd get a message.
Therefore, whatever you want to do is okay.
Because both ideas are absurd and no one actually believes that the entire universe is a simulation.
That is, no one sane.
Those that do believe in such a theory could argue that the Christian god/Allah/whoever is immoral and us being an experiment is just research into artificial intelligence, and thus moral.
Damn, I dunno. Go ask the people who claim to believe in a simulated universe. When you find them? Let me know.
It's a same we can't moderate the article as flamebait.
Religions were invented to help people coup with fear, to shift the reasons for actions unknown to a supreme being whom no one can see. Correctly applied, religions do help people overcome psychological barriers. The way I see it is like in marriage, if you don't talk to your spouse then eventually a wall develop around you, making the relationship colder and less meaningful. Just by trusting each other, you can feel much relieved. A belief in a supreme being accomplishes the same thing, as He (always a he in most religions) supposedly always loves you. A before you guys mod me down, I'm a non-believer who find much flaws in religions. But I never deny its benefits in some cases. After all, your body is only as strong as your mind is. Now you can mod me down.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016503271200599X
Their p-values are barely squeaking by at just under the .05 level. There could also be some confounding variables they didn't factor into their analysis.
It would give you the sense that no matter what someone does care and all the other wonderful feelings that come with a belief system. There is supposedly a religious area of the brain, so I can believe that it may help.
There is nothing at all wrong with that. Most people have some sort of belief system, be it religious or another spiritual sense.
The dangerous part is when the church or governing body of that belief system is corrupt and they tell you that you must believe their word and that is it. Examples include the proclamation of the Catholic church that condoms are evil or un-chrisitian, thus preventing religious people that wish to partake in sex unable to use some sort of contraception to prevent the spread of diseases like AIDS.
I use this example strictly because it is fresh in my mind from watching a debate on whether "The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World."
I don't believe it would be ethical to recommend a specific religion to a patient, but letting them know about the communities that follow religions and the support network they can form I see nothing wrong with.
People are so worried about how long they have to live and what will happen to them after death that they forget to enjoy the life they have. A close relative was diagnosed with low grade lymphoma a few months ago (manageable but unfortunately uncurable ) and she wander why I took such a devastating diagnosis to open her eye to the happiness of everyday life. "I don’t take life for granted anymore. I learned to live in the moment. I also realized that when I live in the present moment, life is wonderful" she said to me. It sounded like a frigging cliche but she seems happier than she has ever been. Perhaps we are just wired to constantly worry and its only when faced with the prospect of death that we realize how futile an effort it is.
I guess it would depend on whether or not you see belief in God as an act of lunacy.
If a depressed person feels that "god" has a purpose for them, they're more likely to power through until things get better. Faith in purpose is really what was just correlated...
You want long-term outcomes, try believing in yourself.
Definitely not ethical to recommend someone who is depressed to take up a religion. Isn't this just recruiting suicide bombers for the religious crazies?
If it makes you feel better the article points out that the raging atheists have a disadvantage against people who are upbeat due to a spiritual belief. So take solace in knowing that like a scorpion that stung the frog, raging atheists do it because it is their nature.
(BTW this is tongue-in-cheek)
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Spoken like a true AC. [golf claps]
Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes
so does marajuana use, so therefore belief in god must correlate with marajuana use :P
Actually, the opposite effect on mental health is probably more likely for marijuana.
While its still just one study, its worth trying to replicate and research some more (ever wondered what religion is the best anti-drepressant?)
Its not as if the research is suggesting we all become religious. Its just saying that in certain cases, the belief in a higher entity may be beneficial for a certain healing process. And that is good to know. Possibly there is an underlying reason why this is better and we can possibly help cure depressions more easily thanks to this discovery.
"Religion is a ruse that must be maintained for the masses."
-Said by someone I cant for the life of me remember, and probably even said differently, but the basis remains the same.
I understood it then, same as I understand it now, Humans are simple creatures (when it comes to emotions and feelings), without something to BELIEVE in (god, religion, the fact that humanity doesn't suck as a whole and doesn't deserve to populate the earth we constantly trash), or strive towards (that perfect family and life so many religious nutters push upon other's), they will become depressed and aimless and as stated, self destructive.
The fact that it took a study to figure this out... Well, I repeat my own comment about Humanity being undeserving of populating this planet.
-AC1856
atheists are religious too; they prescribe to the dogma that there is no god, but it's not like they have any more proof of their beliefs than those that believe god exists. they often argue that a lack of undeniable proof in god proves there isn't one (an argument from ignorance), neglecting that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.
i don't prescribe to any religious doctrine (such as a bible or physics textbook, both usually containing questionable prophecies and hypotheses) so i don't associate with atheism... i have my own beliefs that i'm not aware are shared by others in any sort of organizational sense. my beliefs include bits of various religions that make sense to me (Jesus may indeed have been a real man that existed around 2000 years ago), as well as practical science that can be demonstrated by experiment, and a belief that because there is so much about the universe that we are yet to discover let alone understand that it is foolish to disregard 'fringe' phenomenon like magic, ghosts and fortune telling (i'll admit i'm a little bit skeptical about ghosts for example but only because of a lack of personal exposure but i'm still open to possibilities).
i think choosing to believe in god or that there is no god is fine... problems arise when like minded folks get together and form gangs (organized religions) and try to convince or coerce others of their beliefs. sharing beliefs is a good thing, but when people get together certain negative aspects of human nature (such as greed and tyranny) can be amplified and other individuals can be taken of. while i don't see any benefit (or point) in banning organised religion, i thing we should be a bit careful about how it can be misused.
After reading the article, I just feel there is one thing wrong with it.
And that is that it says "a believe in God". And not, "a believe in a higher power". It gives a wrong image, sure, in the article itself they say that even people that didn't list a particular religion but still believed in a higher power of some sorts also were among the group where treatment was best.
Saying "a believe in God" kinda implies a believe in the biblical God, to most people in europe and the us. All in all, I think they should not mix "a believe in God" with "a believe in a god". Perhapse their intention is the same, but the first one has a bigger chance to lead to the wrong idea.
Also, I find it odd that one of the questions was if they believed the treatment would help or not and that the article has no conclussion based on that question. It seems to me to be at least as important if not more that the patient believes their treatment will help rather than if there is a god.
People who are delusional and believe that something else is responsible for their behavior and condition and thus can fix them have a "positive mental health outcome"? Really?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Because, while entertaining hypotheses can be interesting, using them to justify war, censorship, or other state policy are two very different things.
Shouldn't mental health be treating delusional behavior instead of encouraging it?
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
a Slashdot community filled with raging atheists
I tend to think of it as a Slashdot community filled with raging Gods
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Believers are more likely to be less intelligent, which may reduce the risk of depression.
There is a nice article in wikipedia
The point being, if the patient believes it works, sometimes it does.
Why is it that worshipers label all atheists as 'raging' while they play no-true-scotsman fallacy games when challenged about atrocities done in the names of their religions? It's perfectly normal to find such toxic irrationality enraging, especially when it's used to justify limiting liberty or committing murder.
Because Long term, it's all the same. That's why AA does not publish recidivism rates for the year.
"Belief was associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm," So, instead of referring to the likelihood the inmate/patient has to hide/stop the pills, it's journalism to refer only to self-harm. Try, Belief was associated with long-term success on antidepressants.
Another way to look at their results is that there needs to be an improvement in the psychological treatment of atheists because there may be some bias in the treatment that tends to push people to appeal to the spiritual. Maybe a bit like AA.
There is a distinct lack of research in the area of atheist vs theist rates of psychological problems. Of the available research, here is one such study that suggests that atheists are less likely to suffer from depression:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/buggle_20_4.html
I haven't done the digging yet but the submitted article smells like the Templeton Foundation may have had an influence.
I find it interesting you know the community is filled with raging atheists, who think the universe is a computer simulation. Did I miss the slashdot poll which tests your thesis? Is this not a gross simplification and generalization? I thought the slashdot community was filled with angry theists. Then again, perhaps you're the only one.
Of course none of which provides evidence as to the existence `God' or even the effectiveness of psychiatric treatment in general. What it does do is demonstrate the beliefs and prejudices of the people carrying out the `study'. eg, Someone who believes in a `higher power' asks a vulnerable adult if they believe in a `higher power', if so they allocate them higher marks. Now what would be the results if Richard Dawkins carried out the study.
AccountKiller
All behaviorist psychology is based on the idea that people is gullible and easy to manipulate. So, sure, if the treatment's success is directly correlated to how gullible the person is, then creationists will be cured in nanoseconds. Maybe Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis, or any other technique that respects the intelligence of the patient would have a better outcome with people that aren't absolute retards.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
People with legs in casts get around better on crutches than those who struggle without.
Because I can totally see belief in certain gods being correlated with catastrophically negative outcomes.
...Are you me? We're pretty alike, except based on experience and reading I do suspect there is a God of sorts, though nothing like the genocidal maniac Yahweh that more than half the world worships. More like Einstein and Spinoza's God than Aquinas's, to put it in perspective.
By passing the size of this study for the moment.
From article: "Of the patients sampled, more than 30 percent claimed no specific religious affiliation yet still saw the same benefits in treatment if their belief in a higher power was rated as moderately or very high."
No religious affiliation means effectively that the higher power is just a way of imagining something looking out for you, caring for you and loving you.
I am not surprised that if you imagine there is someone caring about you and loving you you are going to feel more positive about life in general. That it is imaginary means it can not disappoint you. That the very act of that imagination is providing a short term positive future.
I'm sure if a patient had an actual love affair with a real human being, the effects would be the similar if not superior.
If on the other hand some therapist suggested to me personally that a I might like to think there is a higher power looking out for me, it would send me into a deeper depression because if that is how they think my mind works I really must despair.
We are also embedded in a culture where believing in a god (of some description) is seen as more socially normal than those who do not.
Normal is sometimes the more attractive option to the depressed than their current state. Simply joining the "belief group" is a social inclusive particularly over the short term.
That this question is being asked inside a treatment context, it's hard to think that that isn't a bias in the way people are treated, and it doesn't take much for such a bias to undermine any other treatment.
I do hope they don't think that taking up the habit of thinking of a higher power is a treatment option. If that is the case, perhaps a drug addiction should be considered a treatment too.
Many "God" claims imply an element of personal responsibility to judgement --- a "God" who not only exists in the Deist's sense as a setter-in-motion of cosmic mechanics, but proscribes a normative framework for human interactions. And nobody likes being held accountable to standards they did not set. One could certainly imagine a "universe simulator" who is also deciding which simulation fragments are beautiful and worth saving, and which to pipe to /dev/null, but this is generally not a characteristic ascribed to the (often presumed to be "scientific" and "morally neutral") simulation operator.
And I guess I would be happier I could believe in some god that was in control and could help instead of being all alone. A bit of blind faith in that magic can happen probably makes you feel safer. :)
On the other hand, I have never felt so free and relieved as when I finally decided to leave the church. Of course it's a bit scary when you realize you can't rely on superstition.
atheists are religious too
And people who don't collect stamps have a hobby.
Prescribing religion isn't the same thing as prescribing pills. I can ingest all the pills you want me to, but there's no "on" switch for suddenly professing belief in some deity.
what do you recommend for the Muslim and Jewish assholes?
I'm pretty sure he meant the rhetoric was toxic, not the people. It is interesting that you went straight for that though, maybe it's what you want to believe.
Probably the same reason atheists label all people of faith as "worshippers", "fanatics", or whatever. The overwhelming majority of atheists and spiritual individuals are laid back and don't advertise their disposition. However the ones that do make their beliefs (or lack thereof) known usually earn the label 'raging', 'cynic', 'fanatic', 'extremist', etc. and stigmatize the remaining likeminded population.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
All knowledge can only be encoded as belief. The ancient greeks made the distinction between belief and knowledge such that to say "a flat-earther KNOWS the world is flat" is an incorrect use of the word "knows". Only inferior "believes" fits there. The implication is that a belief is a broken piece of knowledge - broken because it is not true. However, since all knowledge can only be encoded in the mind as a belief, the sample sentence above is indeed "more true" than the conventional meaning.
So, conventionally it is believed by many highly effective people that "belief" is bad and "knowledge" is good. Ie, that the errors due to belief confer a mental blindness - an inability to grasp further concepts that whilst it goes unchecked, will forever cripple the mind concerned. And this is true. It is thought that there should be no limit to intelligence, should one pursue the course of examining all that one holds to be true, so as to weed out the falsehoods.
Here's a "truth" that none we know have weeded out - We are each individuals. (Then how can people be, missing half a brain? How can MPD exist?)
We might at some logical level accept the fact that we can be internally divided, but we always believe in the very concept of our inner self, that it is one monolithic thing. I think therefore I am.
But this can not be true - everything we know about the operation of neural networks leads us to the inescapable conclusion that our "core" being is in fact a distributed one. Not one individual, but the effects of a massive choir of tiny pieces, the effort of the "thought" shifting smoothly through the collective. Indeed. think a thought too repetitively and one will tire of that thought - because the true individual that encodes it cannot stay active for very long, before its local resources are exhausted.
I believe that the reason AI research has failed to convince so far, is that all the things that modernists despise about our minds - our weaknesses, our mental vulnerabilities - are in fact reflections and faults in mechanisms utterly necessary for our "minds" to exist. Without them, we would be dysfunctional. One of these things is the capability to hold some thought patently incorrect as the gospel Truth. To believe despite evidence to the contrary. To in fact get stronger in one's belief purely by the exercise of this capability.
So the ideal of the "smart guy". The Spock character, the HAL9000, the Skynet - these are just extensions of the character of God. The childish hope that perfection is achievable, but cast so from the mind of the modern scientist. One who will no doubt claim that he does not "believe" in his science, because he "knows" it is the truth. (And by the conventional distinction above, he is "technically correct"). But it is a hollow victory. His believes surely must be "better" than those of the religious nut. After all, the survival of the majority of humanity alive today does rest on the wisdom that enables solid engineering.
But then why are so many "broken" minded people (here to be taken to mean: those unable to employ the engineering wisdom that is their birthright, because it is encoded in sometimes mathematical concepts that they cannot grasp, due to their beliefs) able to survive and flourish? Why is it that ignorance is bliss?
Because in fact the reverse is true - too much "accurate-mindedness" leads directly to depression. The first to understand the second law of thermodynamics - the truest known and most generally accurate predictive model in all Science - died of depression. So did the next guy to follow his work.
The hard truth is, that removing all the pink-stained glass between one's perception of reality, and reality itself - is inherently dangerous. One sees too much of the big picture. One loses faith that the future will ever be an improvement. One unavoidably loses the will to live. to try.
The only way to survive this, is to accept that one cannot be "perfectly minded" - that indeed such a mind could only ever immediately se
Ascribing any particular "meaning" to life would necessitate having a belief in some sort of purpose or specific design for life in the first place. People who do not believe in God do not typically subscribe to such philosophies.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But to have a sense of purpose in a meaningless world, it needs to be packaged properly. Religion is just a very effective and time-tested vessel for purpose.
Yeah. I live in the Bible belt. I see folks who are happy as clams because firmly believe that there's something up there looking out for them and loves them - no matter what shit happens to them.
They've have seen every single rational argument against their beliefs and they ignore them because "in their heart they know God exists".
And they take great comfort from it.
It's creepy - it's just as bad as hearing adults talk about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny like they were real. Imagine, an adult who asks Santa Claus for help with life.
Everyone, including people of "faith" would be quite concerned about that person.
Swap out "Santa Claus" for "God" and you're eligible for President - as a matter fact, you couldn't get elected unless you believed in Santa, er, God.
So what's my purpose?
To be kind. To be compassionate. To do what I can to help others and also have long term hedonism .....
Basically everything that Buddha and the character Jesus taught without all the hangups and non-sense about the supernatural.
Jesus didn't exist. There's very little historical proof he existed and more than likely was made up. His entire story is a copy of Dionysius and a couple of other Greek gods.
I hate to say this, but I have come to the conclusion that Christianity is one of the biggest scams that has ever been perpetrated on the human race - so far.
The other religions are on its heels.
Prescribing religion is is a nonsense: faith is not a rational thing people adopt at will. People just have it, or they do not .
As a side note, I am agnostic, with a bias toward atheism, since God looks to me like a very complicated explanation of how the world is. It does not even explain how the universe was born : created by God, but who created God itself? But as I am getting older, I now realize that life is easier to deal with for people that have faith. I recognize faith is a strength, even it makes no sense to me.
I don't think it's so much that Slashdot is filled with "raging atheists" who think the universe is a computer simulation as much as it is filled with "raging atheists" that are at least willing to entertain such a notion for discussion far more willingly than they typically do with the notion that there is a god.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Thank you for opening my eyes -- it never occurred to me to hold belief in faith and belief in hypothesis testing (proof), as equivalent. It also never occurred to me, given that faith and proof are given equal weight, fortune telling and magic, are as likely as testable physical reality. I like unicorns, who are magical creatures, so they may exist. In my old age, I can hold the same beliefs I did as a child. Santa Claus, and "The Giving Tree" are real once again. Perhaps I can regress back to my infancy, when I had my nice warm blanket, and all things are possible. Innocence and a sense of wonder is restored.
Lister: "Do you believe in God?"
Rimmer: "God? Certainly not! What a preposterous thought. I believe in aliens, Lister."
Lister: "Oh, right. Fine. Something sensible at last."
The guiding moral principle of evolution is "survival of the fittest"
Nope, the mechanism for evolution involves differential reproductive success ("survival of the fittest"), but there is absolutely no "moral principle." The Theory of Evolution doesn't say whether it's good or bad or whocares to survive and reproduce.
People have built all sorts of flaky philosophies off of evolution (e.g. "Social Darwinism") that ascribe moral values to certain outcomes, but these are no part of the scientific theory of evolution.
Prescribe "religion"? Not to a schizophrenic who is having command delusions from God, Jesus, et al. (Some would argue that AA etc do just that, transfering one addiction to another...)
I'm almost ready to call out devout "faith" a disorder. It is not possible to have rational discussions with people like this, even about inane topics such as the weather. It is impossible to even agree to disagree with them. If it's not god this it is satan that.
-JC. Sent from my Android phone
You stumbled into a very obvious false dichotomy trying to make a dig at believers here. It's perfectly possible, even necessary from an Abrahamic (as in all 3 religions) perspective to say that you bear responsibility and that God will deliver you. Far from being an avoidance of responsibility it becomes a rallying point to take responsibility and move forward.
And people who don't collect stamps have a hobby
maybe not, but people who don't collect stamps but instead direct their efforts into deriding those that do collect stamps clearly have a hobby :)
atheists are religious too
And people who don't collect stamps have a hobby.
When they spend time trolling stamp collectors online, join non-stamp-collector organizations, take out ads on buses and billboards about how people shouldn't collect stamps, and go on and on about how much smarter they are than stamp collectors, then yeah, they do.
This reflects Jung’s view that modern, rational man, having denied the validity of the gods and myths, has come to experience the psychic forces embodied by these spiritual archetypes as neurotic symptoms. It is this attitude of rational disbelief that Jung, in the 1929 “Commentary” says is “the shortest way to the insane asylum.” In the Red Book, however, Jung seems to be saying that his discovery that the gods are indeed aspects of the unconscious, is itself a “wound” that threatens one with insanity, an insanity from which one can heal oneself. It is in the process of this discovery and healing that one discovers one’s soul.
http://theredbookofcgjung.blogspot.com/2009/12/jung-on-self-and-god-i-and-thou-part-i.html
Says you. I've seen the source. It's not really even all that complicated. Most of the cycles are taken up by annoy method calls with my object as the target.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
I agree atheism can signify a quantity or quality of religion similar to the way black is considered a color despite the absence of light and zero is considered a number despite signifying a null value. However most atheist activists consider being lumped into a religion of their own an insult since they strive to be the anti-religion free from the qualities of religion which can be disruptive in society (e.g. terrorist attacks, wars, bigotry).
Of course the problem is not necessary religion but human nature. It is human nature to find a justification for one's actions and use those justifications to act in unison with others with similar beliefs. It is also human nature to solicit the company of others with similar beliefs. This association doesn't have to be religious in nature. It can be political. The dogma that unite Republicans, Democrats, PACs, Boy Scouts, Home Owners associations, and even a group of atheists can be the catalyst for good or bad actions.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Because since the god-believing patient was obviously more deranged before treatment, even a small gain in mental status would equate to a greater mental health outcome.
> atheists are religious too; they prescribe to the dogma that there is no god
It's not dogma unless someone is willing to burn you at the stake for it.
Now trying to distort the world to fit your worldview... THAT is dogma. You can't handle the fact that you are out of touch with some or most of the modern world so you find the need to attack or subvert it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It takes a special kind of mind to accept religion. Seriously. Across the whole spectrum of religious personalities, you may notice some commonalities and patterns along the way. But at the end of the day, it's about wanting something more powerful to dominate one in some capacity. After all, when was the last time you heard a believer say something like "I truly believe there is a god but I sure wish there wasn't." Religion is something which is not just wanted, it's just about needed for such people. They lack the ability to face reality without some way to tidy things up in some way... to know there are causes and reasons and purposes even if they may never know what they are.
Maybe I shouldn't say special kind of mind though... it takes a common one. I wish all who are in the 12 step program much luck.
Ia, Ia Slashdot fhtagn!! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Who says we're not all raging Conservative Evangelicals just pretending to be raging atheists on the one last bastion of the web where Christians can get pounced on and made fun of without religious equality laws being used to bash you over the head...
John_Chalisque
higher rates of insanity?
The persecution that people feel from not being able to live up to the confusing examples of religion, and the various interpretations of it, could be responsible for the illness to begin with.
no
Eventually you just have to come up with a simple, single, authoritative book of answers to all these silly paradoxes, and to save space, interleave it into a book of deep spiritual and worldly wisdom without changing even a single word. It's an almost impossible exercise, especially if you demand that it be done in less than 1500 pages. But it's been done once, and doesn't need to be done again. So if in doubt, look the answer up in the [BOOM TISH!]!!
John_Chalisque
But when atrocities are committed by Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot in their efforts to force atheism on their nations, those atrocities don't count, because they aren't "true atheists".
Because it's a scientific study? You don't need to believe in God to maintain a positive mental state or get out of a negative one, just that those who do seem to have a better predisposition for getting out of depressive states. Wouldn't you, if you legitimately thought you had God as your wingman instead of absolutely nothing?
This has nothing to do with the existence of God and everything to do with peoples minds.
I'll field this one. There's a few different Gods we refer to when we start using "God" in thought experiments:
1. A Blind Watchmaker.
2. A Spoiled, Brutal Child
3. A Perfect, Immortal Machine
4. Further interesting ideas
However, people who are talking about God who isn't part of a thought experiment, but who actually worship Him usually are referring to American Jesus, who cries when you:
1 .Look at pictures of naked women
2. Play Dungeons and Dragons
3. Read Harry Potter books
4. Are gay
5. Refuse to believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
A lot of people really don't like that guy.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
If atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color, and not stamp collecting is a hobby.
My belief is that the truth is a truth until you organize it, and then becomes a lie. I don't think that Jesus was teaching Christianity, Jesus was teaching kindness, love, concern, and peace. What I tell people is don't be Christian, be Christ-like. Don't be Buddhist, be Buddha-like -- Wayne Dyer
This is not about religion, but about the placebo effect in a new area. Fits right here,
-- Charles Fort
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
You are mostly correct. The mechanism for evolution also involves the subsequent survival of the species whereas the offspring needs to live long enough to reproduce. While there is no such thing as "moral principle of evolution" the mechanics involved probably produced what we perceive as morality in order for our species to succeed. The unmoral ones were probably killed, killed others, weren't appealing enough to successfully breed, or didn't have offspring that lived long enough to breed. This may anger some of the spiritual folks reading this, but I remember a paper that hypothesized that religious disposition is instinctual and a product of evolution since the population that believed in a higher being were more successful than the population with no such beliefs (Google "Evolutionary psychology of religion").
The irony being that a corollary of the theory is that atheists act against evolutionary forces and are actually a detriment to society. ;)
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
What are you talking about? I obviously can't speak for everyone but I don't think a lot of atheists (myself and every atheist I know) positively assert that there is no god or higher power. They merely lack belief in god/higher power. Not the same thing at all.
You don't have to prove something to believe in it, which is why Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity (etc); Atheists believe in the absence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof of their opponents (Christians etc) that there is a god. Atheism is no worse than Christianity though, because Christians believe in the existence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof from their opponents (Atheists) that there is no god. I don't necessarily think faith and proof are given equal weight, even by religions; lack of proof by the opponent is merely used as an argument to justify lack of faith in the opponent's beliefs. However, each party necessarily has faith in their own beliefs without requiring proof, otherwise nobody would believe in anything because currently neither belief can be proven.
You may have been sarcastic in your reply, but there is nothing wrong with a belief in unicorns or any other magical creature, because really they aren't any more incredible than any other supposedly more credible belief, because ultimately all beliefs are unproven; otherwise they would be facts.
replace one imaginary friend with another.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
If atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color, and not stamp collecting is a hobby
or maybe your analogies aren't analogous
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3690931&cid=43563755
Thats the culprit. A bad meme that goes deep into our culture. Somewhat (tales, histories, songs, movies that we learn since childhood) we expect that the people that behave well get successful, and the evil ones get punished. But when is becoming too evident that it don't happen at all (bankers, corporations, and politicians in general, get richer, or even get honored for what they did), you only hope against depression is to believe that they will go to hell as they will never be punished here.
Perhaps it's simply that atheists are open to discussing all delusions, such as God, and computer simulations, on an equal footing. I entertain notions about God almost daily -- I'm fascinated by the breadth and depth of man's imagination.
I don't think a lot of atheists positively assert that there is no god or higher power. They merely lack belief in god/higher power.
The same could be said of Christians and Catholics... they don't all positively assert that there is a god, but they lack belief that there is none.
Probably the same reason atheists label all people of faith as "worshippers", "fanatics", or whatever. The overwhelming majority of atheists and spiritual individuals are laid back and don't advertise their disposition. However the ones that do make their beliefs (or lack thereof) known usually earn the label 'raging', 'cynic', 'fanatic', 'extremist', etc. and stigmatize the remaining likeminded population.
You really must know a lot of atheists. Because if you don't, how can you make such a blanket statement? Other wise, you would be the same as a person who says All Christians are fundamentalist assholes who want to take us back tot the dark ages.
I do know some fundies like that, who really shouldn't call themselves Christians because the definitely follow a angry old testament God who is just waiting to torture those people who don't worship him. I've still never gotten any answer when I ask why they don't follow Jesus' sermon on the mount.
But they aren't most religious people I know. In fact, they are a loud obnoxious minority. Most Christians I know follow a Jesus based religion, are decent people who aren't assohles.
So enough of the typecasting. There is also something to be said to standing up to the assholes.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When people here think of $DEITY, the default reference is Yahweh, the deity of the most hated people on the planet. These endeavor to impose their ethics on the rest of humanity via the rubric of "tsedek, tsedek tirdof (justice, justice [alone] shall you pursue" via the institutions necessary for an all intrusive paternalistic state. If not them, then it is the 'subcontracted masses' in Christendom that specialize in the suppression of non-reproductive sexual activity, especially the sorts that cause advancement in careers in the media and entertainment sector.
Yahweh, the God of "NO!" We fallen human beings do not like being told "NO!"
When one embraces that space + time + matter + energy + chance = consciousness, then all is permitted. Nothing pisses off the educated and enlightened like the empirical truth of personal depravity. It's the most effective button-pusher. Is that correct, Mr "Call Me A fucking psychopath ?
Truth is Flamebait® Lies are Insightful®. Welcome to Slashdot®.
I agree atheism can signify a quantity or quality of religion similar to the way black is considered a color...
no, actually i'm pretty sure atheism signifies a belief in there being no god
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
it has as much to do with other religions (or aspects of them) as other religions have to do with atheism
The chief researcher's curriculum vitae: http://www.spiritualityandhealth.duke.edu/resources/pdfs/David%20Rosmarin.pdf (search the doc for "spiritual")
Not to say that he can't be right, but he has been pursuing this idea of "religious people are happier/mentally healthier" for several years. He has a lot invested and a lot of publications on the matter. It doesn't give the impression of a researcher free of bias.
I'd be interested in knowing what they controlled for when calculating the strength of the effect they found. Did they account for age, family history, income, race, sex and social involvement?
Any story where God is mentioned, whether science or not is involved, will be controversial and usually gathers more comments not only on Slashdot, but on many other websites comment pages. Many people refuse to discuss religion or politics because they shun controversy. Especially on /. anybody who professes to believe there is a God is usually modded down by those who not just disbelieve there is a God, but are adamant about it. There seem to be more adamant, activist atheists nowadays than there used to be. I happen to believe that there is a God and I will probably be modded into oblivion just for saying so. The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
It's not dogma unless someone is willing to burn you at the stake for it.
League of Militant Atheists --- Ordinary secret police will do as well, which is what was used in most Communist countries to suppress religion.
Now trying to distort the world to fit your worldview... THAT is dogma. You can't handle the fact that you are out of touch with some or most of the modern world so you find the need to attack or subvert it.
That would be officially and militantly atheistic Communism. The results weren't pretty.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You know, as a raging atheist, I have to say the people who believe the universe is a computer simulation are idiots who want to sound intellectual.
It's not dogma unless someone is willing to burn you at the stake for it
Now trying to distort the world to fit your worldview... THAT is dogma
no not really (on both counts)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma
You can't handle the fact that you are out of touch with some or most of the modern world so you find the need to attack or subvert it.
i frankly don't care what the rest of the world believes in, and that's precisely why (and how) i don't subscribe to dogma
Okay, I've heard this one so often that I have to respond, if only just once.
It is entirely possible that someone has rigged your car to explode the moment you turn the key. They may have done this because they don't like you, because they want to instill random fear, or because they have mistaken your car for one belonging to someone else.Still, it is possible. Do you call the bomb squad every morning to inspect your car before you get in?
Because you have brought fruit into your home, it is entirely possible that a very pregnant and very poisonous spider has come into your home. That spider may have made a nest under your bed, and when you put your foot down on the floor in the morning, it is possible that a horde of angry spiders will swarm it and inflict so many poisonous bites on you that you will be dead within a few minutes, before any medical help can arrive. Do you call an exterminator every morning before you get out of bed?
It is entirely possible that someone has laced all of the produce you bought at the local supermarket with cyanide. One bite will kill you. Do you demand that everything you eat be submitted to detailed chemical analysis before you eat it?
If you answered no to any of the questions, then my question is, why?
You have just discovered the null hypothesis, which, stated simply, is that unlikely possibilities may be dismissed unless there is strong evidence to support them. There are people who are unable to make the null hypothesis. They are called schizophrenics, and they are incapable of managing even the most mundane tasks.
We make use of the null hypothesis thousands of times a day, without even being aware of it. The inability to do so is a mark of insanity.
The claim that there is an entity, just like us, who thinks like us and has the same desires that we do, and who runs the entire universe, is highly unlikely. What is far more likely is that we have invented this fantasy for our own comfort. And as the story indicates, it is indeed far more comfortable, in much the same way that a wealthy heroin addict with an unadulterated supply lives in a blissful state that we cannot dream of.
So, would you prefer to be the heroin addict or the schizophrenic, or do you believe, as many people do, that it is our duty to pledge allegiance to the truth, no matter how uncomfortable, because to do otherwise would betray not only ourselves, but everyone whose lives we affect.
Will you serve the truth, or will you serve a lie. This is the deepest religious question you will ever be asked.
You are mostly correct.
I'll stand by my statement as being entirely correct.
Though evolutionary theory and observation might indicate what drove the development of human perceptions of morality, "the theory of evolution" still doesn't have its own moral system --- it doesn't specify that "evolved" morality is or is not correct/incorrect/"good"/"bad."
atheists act against evolutionary forces
Bonus pedantry: similar to "evolution" providing no normative framework, there is also no definition for which direction is "for" or "against" evolutionary forces. Just as you might say one critter acted "with" the forces of evolution to survive/reproduce, you can just as well say another critter acted "with" the forces of evolution to die/not-reproduce. Atheists might act against survival, but that's not acting "against evolutionary forces."
Starting to sound like not only do you need to think it will work, you need the placebo gene.
I was quite sincere in my reply -- I had to look back 60 years to have thoughts of the same resonance. For a moment, innocence and a sense of wonder were restored -- I felt the warmth of being wrapped in a blanket of security. I recalled Pinocchio singing "When you wish upon a star."
I tend to think of it as a Slashdot community filled with raging Gods
I guess you still qualify as new here. If you pay more attention you'll see that's nonsense.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Why is it that worshipers label all atheists as 'raging' while they play no-true-scotsman fallacy games when challenged about atrocities done in the names of their religions? It's perfectly normal to find such toxic irrationality enraging, especially when it's used to justify limiting liberty or committing murder.
See, I feel like some people play their own games by invoking "no true scotsman" as the excuse to make sweeping generalizations. If someone in my city (let's call it "Springfield") committed a heinous murder, would you then challenge me about the atrocity done by a citizen of Springfield? I'm going to guess you wouldn't do that... so whats the difference? That this is about religion, so it's easier to hate on people here on Slashdot?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
is a river in Egypt.
Like the inimitable Groucho Marx, I would never join a club that would have me as a member.
I was replying to epyT-R's comment which began with "Why is it that worshipers label all atheists as 'raging'..."
It was not my intent to blanket that assertion to all atheists. I would have said "Probably the same reason all atheists label all..." which I didn't.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
And pastafarians are actually raging atheists who get their jollies out out making fun of other religions by "following" one that has provable man-made origins.
Interesting how we've come full circle.
I'll say a prayer for you tonight.
Evolution has a lot of research and evidence to support it. Carbon dated fossils, and numerous scientists examining the world for clues as to the origin of man. So far, no other theory or hypothesis has had nearly as much positive evidence as evolution. That's why it's called science, not religion. It's not that anybody takes evolution on faith. It's that so far all the evidence supports evolution as the most likely theory. If you proposed a stronger theory with better supporting evidence than evolution has, you'd probably win prizes. And evolution does not have a guiding moral principle. It simply states that those most suited to sruvive, do so. And due to random mutations in the gene pool added up over a long period of time, along with changing environmental conditions, the definition of most suited to sruvive may change over time, and the creature would slowly adapt and develop.
I wonder what a belief in J.R. Bob Dobbs does for one's mental health.
Some would argue that religion (blind faith in an untestable hypothesis) is in itself a mental health issue...
But that too is my big question with this study. Without correcting for the likelihood of a religious vs non-religious person experiencing these issues in the first place, it's hard to say if being religious is actually a net benefit or detractor in this case.
There are however relevant studies that equate higher levels of religion with lower levels of education, and with lower income levels, not to mention the fact that criminals are more likely to be religious than the general population, and given that all of those groups also have higher levels of mental health issues, there is certainly an argument to be made.
I'd say at the least, further research would be needed.
You don't have to prove something to believe in it, which is why Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity (etc); Atheists believe in the absence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof of their opponents (Christians etc) that there is a god.
No, atheists don't believe that there is a god. That is not the same as believing there is no god. A person who say believes in the Christian God will spend time thinking about their God. They will pray to their God. They might go to church on Sunday to pray with others. They will at times have differences of opinion about their God, and split off into different churches that require a different belief about their God
It's really silly to say that a person is religious about nothing. I don't believe in a 6 foot duck that brings me tortillas and butternut squash. That doesn't mean I go to church every Sunday and pray to my belief that the duck doesn't exist. I made that up on the spot, and will never think about the duck again. Your logic would mean that everything we believe in or do not believe in is our religion, even if we don't think about it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
because there is so much about the universe that we are yet to discover let alone understand that it is foolish to disregard 'fringe' phenomenon like magic, ghosts and fortune telling (i'll admit i'm a little bit skeptical about ghosts for example but only because of a lack of personal exposure but i'm still open to possibilities).
I believe that the earth is flat and I'm constantly depressed thinking I might fall off the edge one day. It helps me, though to think that if I ever do fall off the edge, a ghost will arrive to save me.
Let me try this again with an example: Polytheism (number of gods > 1), Monotheism (number of gods = 1), and Atheism (number of gods = 0).
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
You're confused. Stamp Collectors have slandered, harassed, hunted, maimed, and murdered non-Stamp Collectors for centuries. non-Stamp Collectors are (occasionally) organizing purely to protect their existence and livelihoods against abuse by Stamp Collectors. That does not make it a religion. It makes it a mechanism for survival against insane and irrational Stamp Collectors who insist that their particular flavor of Stamp Collecting is the only possible way to live and anyone who believes otherwise must die (quickly or slowly, Stamp Collectors don't care as long as you do without making more non-Stamp Collectors).
So, politely, go fuck yourself to death. Thanks.
You misread the article. Knowing God leads to better mental health outcomes. Ignorance of God leads to prolonged misery. Ignorance is misery.
It is as Jesus said: you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
It is as Colonel Jessup said: You can't handle the truth.
I happen to believe that there is a God and I will probably be modded into oblivion just for saying so. The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.
"I believe in God, and I think Slashdot is a group of bigots that will mod me down for my personal beliefs" is flame bait, and should be treated as such. If you left off the taunt on the end, you might have not deserved the negative mods you are expecting, but haven't gotten at the time I post this.
Learn to love Alaska
After a re-read I noticed the word "differential" as in "differential reproductive success" so we were pretty much stating the same thing. I don't know why I glossed over that word earlier and just read "reproductive success". Long day... Just skip the sentence that described the differential part.
I hoped the smiley face at the end of the sentence was signal enough that it was supposed tongue-in-cheek in nature and once again you are correct that a more accurate description would be "acting against survival". Of course, to-may-to or to-mah-to (tomato) the results are the same.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
The difference is that religious use religion as the *reason*, the atheists may target the religious (usually because the religious outwardly declare rebellion based on their religion), but that's not the same as atheism being the *cause* of the motive.
Learn to love Alaska
One last clarification, We agreed that evolution has no morality. I only stated that morality was a product of evolution.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
atheists are religious too; they prescribe to the dogma that there is no god, but it's not like they have any more proof of their beliefs than those that believe god exists.
No, an atheist is a person that doesn't believe in God. There is no requirement to actively believe in a no-god to be atheist. Assertions that atheists are faith-based believers in no-god is a Church construct to divide and demonize the atheists. Apolitical means "uninterested in politics. Atheism means "uninterested in theism." Not an active belief in a no-god. But an inactive non-belief in anything is atheism, and "agostics" (as presently defined) are all atheists. The original agnostics were all Christians. But the Church changed that definition as well, to help splinter and fragment (same reason heathen and heretic are also used, all meaning non-believers, just minor differences, if any).
Learn to love Alaska
Religion never be prescribed as a treatment for a mental disorder. Religion is itself a form of delusion.
Nothing can ever be "proved", except perhaps in mathematics. Even in a court of law nothing is ever proved, but the jury gets to consider EVIDENCE and based on that they have to decide whether to believe that evidence or not, before they can decide on guilt or innocence.
There are only two avenues by which we can get information, knowledge and evidence. One is by experiment and discovery, which is the basis of objective experimental science. The other is by what some other person tells you. The latter is far more common in our everyday human experience. In the end it does not matter so much WHAT you believe, but WHOM you believe and trust. You believe and trust what many tell you even though you have not or cannot personally check out the truth of their claims. Do you believe someone because they call themselves a "professor"? Do you believe the promises of a politician running for reelection? Whom do you truly believe and trust?
There is no person that has ever been on earth that has made more outrageous claims than Jesus Christ. He claimed to be the embodiment of TRUTH. He claimed to be the only way to God. He claimed oneness with God. These claims and others are either correct or they are the most outrageous lies ever perpetrated on this planet by anyone. Nobody that really thinks about the claims of Jesus Christ can logically say that he was a good person or a good teacher unless what Jesus Christ said is true. Jesus painted a picture of himself that is starkly black or white, with no shades of gray. Everyone is now left to choose whether the evidence of Jesus' sayings have been correctly transferred to our understanding over the centuries and whether they are true. Jesus did not come to start another religion. The Earth has had and still has more than enough of those. He told his hearers, "I have come so that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." The question everyone faces is whether to believe Jesus or someone else. Whom do you believe?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
When the stamp collectors go out of their way pushing their stamps on others, standing your ground and stating your apathy is confrontational? If the stamp collectors stopped asking people about their hobbies, and pushing their favorite hobbies on everyone else, the non-collectors wouldn't ever be noticed. It's the aggressive stamp collectors that generate the backlash, then complain that people complain about them being pushy and annoying.
Learn to love Alaska
Evolution does not speak to the origin of life, not the meaning of life. It speaks to the diferentiation of species, assuming life already existed Evolution does not speak to the origin of life.
I guess it's easier to hate the "other side" if you never try to actually understand them. And all the religious nutjobs do is hate.
Learn to love Alaska
Some people are self motivated in life and address problems head on and take accountability for things. Others seek for external sources to bolster them or drive them. This is why you find an awful lot of people who "find jesus/islam/whatever" at the bottom of a bottle, the bottom of a crack vial, or inside the walls of a prison cell. That isn't to say these people do nothing to better themselves, but that these are people who cling to an external source -- real or not -- to motivate themselves.
I believe this is what we are usually referring to when we say things like "if believing in XYZ helps your life, then good for you".
I wouldn't say "shun controversy"—more typically people avoid the topics because there's no point in discussing them. It's not like a Slashdot argument is going to change anyone's beliefs. It's just an excuse to spew vitriol for an hour or two. Think of it as the final step in this.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Oh hell, now they are going to start a "gang".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Belief in God is/was actually a big part of the major mental breakdown that turned my wife into my ex. After more than twelve years the trainwreck keeps on coming. Maybe her beliefs keep the trainwreck from getting any worse, but from where I'm sitting her beliefs are the kind to be avoided at all cost.
You don't have to prove something to believe in it, which is why Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity (etc); Atheists believe in the absence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof of their opponents (Christians etc) that there is a god. Atheism is no worse than Christianity though, because Christians believe in the existence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof from their opponents (Atheists) that there is no god.
Atheism is the lack of belief, not the active belief in a no-god. I reject all your conclusions because your premise is wrong.
Learn to love Alaska
From your link:
Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.
The absence of belief in god is not the same as an active belief in the no-god.
I think your cite proves you wrong, not support your stated conclusion.
Learn to love Alaska
Survival of the fittest means that the animal with the biggest teeth or claws will survive over those with lesser equipment. Does that mean that a person with the biggest gun or the nation with the most atomic bombs is more fit to survive? Anyone who subscribes to the theory of evolution therefore cannot logically say that it is wrong to shoot as many "competitors for survival" as possible until someone with a bigger gun comes along.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Yep, I agree that we're on the same page. I was just being a stickler for precision, since my posts on this thread started in response to the "evolution is a religion with morals" troll --- I think such muddled philosophies thrive on collecting enough imprecise statements to construct outright falsehoods.
Atheists don't sit around thinking about their non-god. It only comes up when someone throws religion in their face, then they may respond with their opinion. If the stamp collectors weren't such invasive jackasses, the non-stamp-collectors wouldn't ever be noticed.
Learn to love Alaska
Too little, and you are a depressed atheist. Too much and you have sudden uncontrollable violent urges to blow up Olympic events and fly planes into buildings.
And what about the truly mentally ill people who fixate that god is telling them to drown their children? Who else would have the authority in their minds to demand that?
I am not saying the belief in God is pernicious. But it seems like there is a certain toxic baggage that has accumulated along with organized religion that keeps people dying a lot.
Surviving isnt enough.
Yes, it is allowed. It is Pope-approved. What is not allowed is sex outside of marriage or the use of birth control to prevent a marriage from producing children. If the man gets butt-raped and thus ends up with HIV, he may certainly use a condom to avoid infecting his wife.
If the law were aligned with the Catholic church, condoms might require a precription. They'd only be available to married couples in which one person has a disease that the other one doesn't. Likewise, birth control pills would be for married women with hormonal problems of the sort that cause severe bleeding during menstration.
Compared to most other church teachings, these positions are actually quite logical. They are the obvious rational conclusion you reach if you start with the belief that sex should be within a marriage and the belief that married people should welcome children into their lives as blessings from God.
HHGTTG?
In statistical analysis, the smaller the sample size, the higher the probability of artifacts which invalidate causal determinations.
Think of it this way: "6 Americans were polled. More than 80% of them believe the president is doing a good job." -Would you take that result as an accurate representation of the broad national opinion?
Of course not.
As a mathematical rule, small sample groups can show extremes plus or minus, which can easily lead to intuitive errors in judgment regarding causality. This problem plagues epidemiology.
The same could be said of Christians and Catholics... they don't all positively assert that there is a god, but they lack belief that there is none.
No, it couldn't. They seem to be asserting a positive belief in God. Go ask the pope if he thinks there is a God.
Learn to love Alaska
It's not dogma unless someone is willing to burn you at the stake for it.
Now trying to distort the world to fit your worldview... THAT is dogma.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Required reading for internet skeptics
atheist: [ey-thee-ist] noun - a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Origin: 1565–75;
Related forms
antiatheist, noun, adjective
proatheist, noun, adjective
Can be confused: 1. agnostic, atheist (see synonym study at the current entry) ; 2. atheist, theist, deist.
Synonyms
Atheist, agnostic, infidel, skeptic refer to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Just as believers are making a decision based on a belief (there is a God), atheists are also making a decision based on a belief of their own: that there is not a God. If believers decision one direction is considered a religion based on the criteria of making a decision based on faith, or lack of provable, testable, scientific evidence, then the same can be said of atheists.
It is the agnostics who are ambivalent towards the existence of any higher power/creator and don't bother themselves which such philosophies. This is what I believe you may have been referring to in your message above, and indeed is often confused with atheism, as mentioned in the dictionary.com article above.
All good. Everyone is on this rock to find their own way in life, or to help their fellow man find theirs... help, not force, or coerce mind you.
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Some of the people with the worst mental health problems think they actually are talking to god.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Survival of the fittest means that the animal with the biggest teeth or claws will survive over those with lesser equipment.
Nope --- otherwise every critter would be nothing but giant mounds of fangs and claws. In lots of environments, a bacterium, earthworm, or gerbil is quite well suited for survival, while saber-toothed kitties have all gone extinct. Your understanding of "reproductive fitness" is seriously flawed. However, that's not the worst mistake in your post.
Anyone who subscribes to the theory of evolution therefore cannot logically say that it is wrong to shoot as many "competitors for survival" as possible until someone with a bigger gun comes along.
No, they're logically allowed to say such a thing; they just won't base their claims (either way) on "evolution." "Evolution" neither says it is "right" nor "wrong" for the most fangly murderator to survive --- or even that it is right or wrong to survive at all. There's nothing "wrong" for a person who considers "evolution" an accurate theory to opt to be on the non-surviving side. Note that, despite your serious misunderstanding of reproductive fitness, a person who wants to be on the "reproductively successful" side would probably not strive to be the murderiest monster, since there are often huge survival advantages to friendly cooperation.
I tend to think of it as a Slashdot community filled with raging Gods
It's an easy mistake to make. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a God.
Required reading for internet skeptics
This is not about religion, but about the placebo effect in a new area.
You poor depressed soul.
The big green man in the sky will make your life worth living!
this is something depressed smart people say to make themselves justifed that they have such an accurate view of reality it MUST be why they feel bad
Can you really call yourself a True Christian if you just pick and choose what to follow from the Bible? Maybe a True Christian is just someone who makes up their own rules.
Why is it that worshipers...
So, if I'm to understand this, you just made a universal assertion that those ascribing to a certain set of beliefs engage in a No True Scotsman fallacy? Please tell me that you were intentionally trying to be ironic.
Putting that aside for a moment, as someone who does believe in God, I don't think all atheists are raging by any means, nor would I label them all as such. I've talked with quite a few, many on here, who are coherent, logical, rational, and present their case well. Oftentimes better than I am able to present my own. In fact, I'd say that atheists that I would classify as raging fall into the minority. I'd actually say that there's a higher ratio of raging sorts among people who would claim to have the same religion as me.
As for atrocities and No True Scotsman fallacies, I don't think that's always correct, since there isn't a contradiction (a necessary component of the fallacy) here, though I can see why you could reasonably think there is. To review quickly, in the fallacy, a newspaper reader makes an assertion that no Scotsman would do such an evil act as what he read someone of some other nationality did. The next day, he reads in the newspaper that a Scot has engaged in an even more heinous act, to which he responds by saying that "no true Scotsman" would do such a thing. The fallacy lies in his refusal to acknowledge the contradiction to his original assertion and his failure to provide an objective measure on which to base his response.
In contrast to Scots, however, members of most groups are defined as members based on their actions. A Scot who is a murderer is still just as much a Scot as any other, but a "Belieber" who has never heard or expressed interest in Justin Bieber's music is either deluded or a liar (though their taste in music may be salvageable). Similarly, someone can claim to be an atheist all day, but if they indicate that they believe in God, then we can safely say that they either don't know what the word "atheist" means, they're deluded, or they're a liar. Again, they failed to demonstrate the traits of that group, so we can safely say that they are not a "true" member of that group, without engaging in any form of logical fallacy or contradicting ourselves in any way.
Similarly, at least in Christianity (which obviously has the Crusades in its history), we're told that you can judge people by their fruit (i.e. what they do), so if someone is engaging in actions that clearly run contrary to the traits of Christianity, we can safely assume that they are not a "true Christian" any more than those previous examples were members of their respective groups. Their professions to believe something are empty in the face of their demonstration of traits that run contrary to their claims (in fact, the Bible discuss this topic at length in the book of James).
As such, there is no contradiction taking place, and we actually can exclude those people from those groups on the basis of the atrocities that they've engaged in, so it's safe to say that the fallacy does not apply here.
Arguments like these attempt to claim correctness through desceptive definitions.
Asserting something as being true without supportive evidence is true belief.
Some atheists assert they cannot know definitively if a god exists or not, but that they have seen no evidence to support the assertion that one does. (Hypothetical orbital teapots, invisible unicorns, etc. One cannot prove they do not exist, but likewise, no evidence exists to say that they do exist either.) This is sensible atheism, founded on reason and rationality. They typically don't have an agenda or opinion about people who do believe in a deity. They simply don't share that belief.
Then there are "atheists" who jump the shark. They assert that belief in a deity is a form of insanity, and claim that the nonexistence of divine beings is objective fact. Such an assertion falls victim to the same illogical mental processes as fundementalist deism does. Because there *ISNT* proof of the nonexistence of such beings, their assertion is one of true beleif, and is very much religious. The 'god' they believe in is the 'anti-god', for lack of a better term. Literally, the beleif that no god exists, and that believing in one is insanity. (No holds barred, and are very rude about it.)
Usually when a deist referrs to "athiesm" as a religion, they are referring to this latter demographic.
I seem to remember going rounds with you on this before, but refusal to acknowledge the clearly religious zeal of this latter demographic is simply disingenuous.
No, an atheist is a person that doesn't believe in God.
... a person that doesn't believe in any gods.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Provable man made origins like a book of stories?
Careful there. There's a pit.
Should said atheist wish to stamp out religion because they hold a personal BELIEF that all beliefs in a diety are madness, and need to be expunged for the greater good, they are comitting the exact same mental gymnastics that a crazy diest does to justify jihad, etc.
The fact that the beleif is NOT about supporting an unjustifiable favoritism for a specific god, but isntead about supporting the unjustifiable favoritism toward having NO gods, does NOT make it non-religious. The "religion" is the unwaivering belief that they are correct in their assertions, same as the deist, and the same as "diehard" communists, nazi socialists, whatevers.
Atheism as a religious dogma shares a closer kinship with devout practitioners of those later, clearly secular ideologies than it does with any higher power, but is still clearly a form of religous zeal, and that zeal certainly does have motivational potential.
Yes: In organised religions the aim is to maintain a membership base and fear is a good way to prevent people from leaving.
No: In non-organised religions there is no such aim. Instead the aim is to find purpose in life. One is expected and encouraged to challenge the religion by questioning everything about it.
Examples of non-organised religions (actually more like spiritual beliefs) are Buddhism, Shamanism, Gnosticism...
That moment when the church you go to has it's own Dungeons and Dragons group, has regular gay members, has members which have spent more time reading Harry Potter books than the bible and isn't full of fundamentalists who believe in young-earth creationism. Come to Australia. We're not America.
Your rebuttle is improper.
Atheism as a position does not preclude the notion of religiously thinking adherents of that position.
Dodging behind the no true scottsman is disingenuous.
Rather, you should assert that this evaluation does not apply to YOU, personally.
[To clarify: Atheism is a position: adherents of that position do not have a beleif in the existence of a deity, as stated. However, this position does NOT preclude the latter part of your statement: the belief in the nonexistence of deities. An adherent of the position can simultaneously hold both, because they are not exclusive. Asserting that individuals that have this second position are not atheists is insupportable, and draws from a false premise. The assertion that because atheism does not require this second term that the accusation is incorrect does not hold. I remand you to formal logic: "A is false AND B is true" returns true.
!A and !B == false
A and !B== true
!A and B == true
A and B == true
Poster asserts table entry 2 above. You assert table entry 1. As stated, this is not a correct evaluation.
Because atheism as a set contains individuals who hold the lack of existence of all gods as true, and the assertion of knowledge about gods is what defines religion, those atheists are religious atheists. (Even if the claimed knowledge about such gods, is that they do not exist.)
belief in there being no god ~ Atheism (number of gods = 0)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
... especially when you know that you can't even begin to be compared to Christ
No, not in the sense of the religious mumbo-jumbo (that he's the Son of God, and all that)
Even in his most simple form, Christ was very very brave, so brave that he dare to challenge the authority and dare to sacrifice his life for what he believed in
How many of us has the courage to do what Christ did?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The lack of belief in a (plus) god does not preclude the belief in the (minus) god.
In fact, beleiving in the (minus) god has the lack of belief in a (plus) god as a prerequisite.
To believe no gods exist, one MUST hold no beliefs in the existence of gods.
You assertion that atheism means "I don't believe in a god", and is defacto exclusive of the "I believe in no gods" is not logical, no matter how much you try to misrepresent it as being so.
I've never heard anyone claim that Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot weren't "true atheists." Maybe you can point to an example?
The acolyte Dave spent his years in an erratic quest for purpose.
One day, depressed from his lack of success, he chanced to ask a Zen master, “What is the meaning of life?”
The master said nothing, but cut a slice of cheese and set it before the acolyte.
The next day, the acolyte admitted his lack of understanding, and the master relented, framing the question for him: “As well to ask the meaning of cheese.”
Enlightened, Dave took up the cheese and hungered no more.
I find your hyperbole both insulting, and hypocritical.
"Unfounded" is not equivalent to "false."
This has several formal proofs to qualify it. You assertion that testable reality is true, while simultaneous commiting this logical error in such a bombastic fashion, is hypocrisy of a high order.
Undefined is undefined. False and undefined are not equivalent.
Why is he labeled troll? I haven't seen bigger flame fodder since MovieBob tried to claim The Phantom menace wasn't THAT bad!
And do i really have to spell it out? Say it with me boys and girls correlation does not equal causation and with a subject THIS nebulous it could be frankly anything, maybe people that are willing to believe a sky bully has made them a special little creature is willing to believe that the magic placebo will work just fine, maybe they are more suggestible to just about anything, maybe they are just more optimistic all around and thus think things will work out...who the fuck knows.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Religion is a ruse that must be maintained for the masses."
-Said by someone I cant for the life of me remember, and probably even said differently, but the basis remains the same.
that would be Voltaire:
Religion is Fraud, But must be maintained for the Masses
Now you've made me sad. ;-(
They don't word it that way, because it clearly smacks of being incorrect.
Instead, they make assertions like this:
"Atheism is the lack of belief, not the belief of lack."
There is an implied exclusion: "the belief of lack is not the lack of belief", via the principle of inversion.
This does not hold, as the belief in the lack of something REQUIRES the lack of belief in that thing.
Observe:
"I don't believe in your god's divine power." (Lack of belief)
"I believe your god does not exist." (Belief of lack.)
In order to hold the second, one must also hold the first. One must believe that a person's god has no power, in order to believe that their god does not exist. It is irrational to hold the latter without the former. How can something unreal, have divine power?
The no true scottsman appears, when an agent who holds both, acts on the latter, and the athiestic apologist spouts this rhetoric.
Mental health issues correlates with IQ
Religousity negatively correlates with IQ
Therefore fewer religous people suffer from mental health issues.
AC due to modding you up. :) Clearly, though, you have forgotten that 97% of all climate scientists know everything possible concerning the world's climate and can accurately predict exact what will occur for the next 50,000 years on a day-by-day basis.
Lack of belief is not a religion, no matter how much you want it to be.
Everyone lacks belief in some religions, even most. You wouldn't claim that they were religious in their lack of belief in Thor or Quetzacoatl, would you?
Perhaps you would.
Do you have a deep religion in your lack of belief in the invisible pink unicorn?
You also don't have to prove/disprove something to disbelieve in it. It seems to be a popular view that you can choose your beliefs; I don't think that's really so. You believe when you are convinced, but not before.
I guess all those millions of folks out there who disbelieve in unicorns, leprechauns, and Bigfoot are just practicing the religions of aunicornism, aleprechaunism, and a-Bigfootism. Why don't you tell them they have the burden of disproof that these things don't exist?
Well, what do you call it when someone insists that something is real with no evidence for its existence? Maybe this...
An Australian government medical publication includes this definition of psychosis
Every last prophet fits this description perfectly.
The fundamental thesis of Judaism/Christianity/Islam is that you have an invisible friend who loves you and can do magic.
Quite obviously anyone who claims to believe this is either a loon or a liar.
The placebo effect is essentially about faith, if you BELIEVE the sugar pill works, it sometimes does.
Religion is ultimately for people who are a bit silly, anyone with a working brain, who questions, who wants to know what the pills contains and how it works... well.. they are going to know sugrose is at most going to help a diabetic patient during an attack but not going to stop say the pain of kidney stones.
Not that people can't still have "faith" even if they know that morphine is the only cure for that, my doctor gave me some high dosis pills to take if the pain became to much with a list of warnings about how I really shouldn't take them if I could stand the pain. It was a nice trick, just by having them I was able to stand the pain for longer and having them in my hand for the moments in between low dosage regular non-addictive pain medicine having worn out and the new pill not yet working fully... well it gave me the strength to continue. BUT it was a faith bases on science, the faith that I could STOP the pain at any moment with the morphine pill made me able to endure it 5 more minutes, 10 more minutes.
I can see the same working for people who have faith in a beard in the sky as long you don't question why an omnipotent god can't just take the kidney stones away. Don't forget, ignorance is bliss. If you can just accept that there is an answer to it all and that it doesn't have to make any sense at all to you because you are not meant to understand gods plan... well... that isn't it logical you would be a more content person then someone who wants to know how a person who talks to a good god can rape kids and not be considered an ally of satan instead?
Don't question, be happy. It is simple. The slave who doesn't rebel isn't whipped and has everything taken care off. No worries and probably selected to breed to create new docile slaves.
Alternatively, question things, want the world to be just and make sense and you are in for a lot of anguish and mental torture. Just imagine what I, a person who does not believe that in a democracy there is room for royalty is going through right now in The Netherlands. Why, like Terry Pratchett wrote, does humanity come with foldable knees. Why is everyone kowtowing to a rather fat useless lardass who couldn't find a german war-criminal to marry so he went to brazil to get the daughter of one? There is nothing remarkable about the guy but most of Holland is falling all over themselves to worship him. WHY?
I can quite see how a person who doesn't question such things would be happier.
Just less of a human being.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Some religious fanatics will kill you because you do not share their belief system. In their eyes you are not deemed worthy to live and their belief system encourages such acts.
An atheist dictator will kill you because they are, well, dictators who don't give a rat's behind about your life, or because your religious institute threatens his powerbase. I have never heard of of a loose group of atheist fanatics beheading or burning people just because they believe in a deity. There is always some religious motive which makes them more worthy than another person, allowing them to personally decide on that person's life.
I'm going to guess you wouldn't do that... so whats the difference?
Did the person commiting the heinous murder say "I'm burning you alive in the name of Springfield!" ?
Or maybe "Springfield told me to to it." Or how about "You are an abomination in the eyes of Springfield and must be eliminated violently."
Do you see the difference yet?
Disclosure: I am a Christian who has daily questioned my belief but hold to the commitment I made 30+ years ago. Sometimes I feel good about it, other times I have doubts, but that makes no difference with respect to the commitment I know I made. When I think about atheism though I wonder about the following things. If anyone has good answers it would be helpful at least to me.
1. Where do we come from? As I understand it we evolved. And where did those things come from, as I understand it they spontaneously appeared from a "primordial soup", which existed as a result of "the big bang" which so far as I know there is no explanation for ... just that it must have happened.
2. What are we made of? That would apparently be molecules, which are made of atoms which are made of subatomic particles, of which we can only see evidence of a few given great effort and what we can see seems completely inexplicable. Matter is almost completely empty space, protons should repel each other in a nucleus but are somehow held to together by a "strong force" ... what is that? What is light? What causes gravity, or magnetism? How can we scientifically "know" something when it is built upon complete mystery?
3. What are we for? In most cases those who look for the greatest hope available and strive for it against all odds instead of just giving up are admired. Except in the case of faith they are ridiculed. It seems the atheists are those that when faced with a difficult challenge with small odds of success merely lie down and claim it is hopeless. There is no purpose, there is no future, everything is meaningless. Not only that, but they think that by discounting all except that for which they have direct proof and giving up to the perceived inevitable, that they somehow attain intellectual superiority.
It seems obvious to me that with the 3lbs or so of neurons and fat in our head, and our brief stint on this small earth and limited capacity to perceive, comprehend or remember it that we must either admit to a degree of faith or be logically delusional. Not finding sufficient proof, or having the capacity to comprehend the proof I have for a belief for or against God I instead choose to pursue the goal that offers the greatest hope. Evidence will not be found in carefully constructed arguments, but by looking for those things that make people into better people. Kinder, more generous, more loving, more forgiving, more hopeful. I am aware that many Christians have failed in this regard and I regret that, but I pay more attention to the many that have succeeded.
So depressed people with god feel better when they talk to someone who isn't a priest for a change.
And that's just when they have a nice chat with someone with a degree in pseudo-scientiffic mumbo-jumbo - imagine how much better they'd feel if they talked to a real scientist!
I'll worship the Goddess of BJ's, and if she delivers, I'll be happy.
Table-ized A.I.
According to researchers from Harvard Medical School, belief in god is correlated with improved outcomes of treatment for depression.
So... convince depressed people that they're god, to improve their mental health. That sure is the ultimate way to make people believe in themselves.
Side effects may include: Delusions of grandeur, persecution, and holy wars.
No, it's hyperbole. There are a lot of them here, and vocal, too. And they do vote with their mod points.
Granted, there are only slightly fewer religious nutjob on Slashdot, so it tends to balance.
(Most atheists aren't bigots. I get that. Many religious people are, but far fewer than the evangelical atheists would have us believe.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I didn't say lack of belief, I said making a decision based on a lack of measurable/verifiable evidence . That is, again, not the same thing.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Take heart, for surely we will be eaten first!
It's argue, not believe, but anyway.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix2.html
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Why, it's a science story, of course.
Which means, yeah, it's a blatant example of the editors posting flame-fodder.
That has been the standard modus operandi for Slashdot ever since Cdr Taco left.
Of course, we all know the exact text of every single troll that will be posted here, so perhaps the real sport will be in seeing who's dumb enough to not roll their eyes and abstain.
Me! Me! Me!
See ya below...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Especially on /. anybody who professes to believe there is a God is usually modded down by those who not just disbelieve there is a God, but are adamant about it.
Any evidence for that?
The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.
So tell us, do you suppose that belief in a god that you don't believe in would have different results?
This is about human psychology, not your god.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And, the agnostics, the ones without the beliefs, do not have a religion, no.
The atheists do.
They have decided (i.e. made a decision that they cannot prove) that there is no God/higher power.
Some of these people are more vocal about it than others, some are more quiet and reserved. That is each of their's right, so long as they don't infringe on anyone else', and I don't begrudge them that.
My point was and is, if taking one side of a decision qualifies as a religion, then the reverse does so as well. Very basic logic. They fact that you don't want to accept it, don't change it.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
An atheist dictator will kill you because they are, well, dictators who don't give a rat's behind about your life
As will some highly religious dictators.
Life is cheap, to most dictators.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You don't have to prove something to believe in it, which is why Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity (etc); Atheists believe in the absence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof of their opponents (Christians etc) that there is a god.
As we would for anyone foolish enough to insist that Russel's Teapot exists.
Believe what you want, but don't be surprised if someone wants to argue when you proclaim your beliefs on the internet. That happens on *any* topic.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
atheist [reference.com]: [ey-thee-ist] noun - a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Origin: 1565–75;
Related forms
antiatheist, noun, adjective
proatheist, noun, adjective
Can be confused: 1. agnostic, atheist (see synonym study at the current entry) ; 2. atheist, theist, deist.
Synonyms
Atheist, agnostic, infidel, skeptic refer to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Just as believers are making a decision based on a belief (there is a God), atheists are also making a decision based on a belief of their own: that there is not a God. If believers decision one direction is considered a religion based on the criteria of making a decision based on faith, or lack of provable, testable, scientific evidence, then the same can be said of atheists.
It is the agnostics who are ambivalent towards the existence of any higher power/creator and don't bother themselves which such philosophies. This is what I believe you may have been referring to in your message above, and indeed is often confused with atheism, as mentioned in the dictionary.com article above.
Get your terminology right before you start rejecting conclusions and labeling premises as wrong.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Just as believers are making a decision based on a belief (there is a God), atheists are also making a decision based on a belief of their own: that there is not a God.
There's a difference between believing something and a religion.
I believe that the moon is still out there, even though I can't see it right now. And I also believe it isn't home to pixies and unicorns.
Does that make me religious?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I didn't say lack of belief, I said making a decision based on a lack of measurable/verifiable evidence .
Everyone does that every day of their life. It's completely orthogonal to the concept of religion.
Why are religious people so adamant that non-religious people are also religious people?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is the deepest religious question you will ever be asked.
maybe it was the deepest question you could ever be asked, but for me not really... you have spouted a lot of typical atheist dogma and i've heard much of it in some form or another before
unlikely possibilities may be dismissed unless there is strong evidence to support them
once upon a time when it was generally accepted that the world was flat and there was no evidence to the contrary, anyone who claimed otherwise was deemed a heretic
how about...
unlikely possibilities may be dismissed by the masses until there is strong evidence to support them
ftfy
I still haven't seen anyone claiming this. If you have some examples, please post them.
In the meantime, most philosophical works on atheism cover the various aspects, though they may label them differently. The "belief of lack" has been called "strong atheism" and "explicit atheism," while the lack of belief has been called "weak atheism" or "implicit atheism."
Whichever version you chose, there are basically 4 ways (plus a few other subtle ways) to respond to the question "do you believe in god(s)?"
1. yes
2. no
3. not sure
4. what's a god?
Of these, only 1 is "theism," and if you define atheism inclusively to include anything that isn't theism, then 2, 3, and 4. are atheist positions. If you consider only "belief of lack" to be atheism, then only 2. is atheism, but what are 3. and 4.? Still not theism, whatever label you choose to put on them.
It's also important to note that the question "do you believe in god(s)?" is different from "does a god or gods exist?" Atheism is defined by belief, and not by the tenability of any of its philosophical assertions. Obviously you can be an atheist whether god exists or not.
Given that distinction, how exactly do Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot get a free pass if they are not "true atheists"? It's not as if atheism in any form gives you some kind of moral cachet. Nobody would expect atheism to prevent violence, persecution, and corruption, but plenty of theists say it leads to those things - despite the lack of evidence that theism prevents them either.
Hmm. Interesting. I'm up for a no-true-scotsman game. I claim to be a religious worshiper. I don't label all atheists as "raging". Am I therefore, no true worshiper?
An undue number of religious worshipers claim no-true-scotsman for two reasons. (1) It's often not a no-true-scotsman fallacy at all. There really are massive differences between different sects, and different groups of people within those churches. I know, people don't like to hear that, and therefore it must not be true. Alright then: (2) A certain philosophically-rabid subset of atheists insist on playing guilt-by-association games. No-true-scotsman is the natural (if incorrect) response to that.
I don't care if an atrocity was done in the name of my religion. I'll denounce it too, if you'll let me. Just don't lump me in with the murderer, rapist, pedophile, raving lunatic, ad infinitum. And don't claim that my beliefs must be wrong because they're also held by some well known idiots.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
atheist = "there is no god"
agnostic = "there may or may not be a god, and I don't care"
believer = "there is a God"
atheist = -
agnostic = null
believer = +
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
I thought religious people tended to label themselves as "worshipers". When did that become a negative label in religious circles?
RMS sits around thinking about his non-copyright(copy-left), but that's ok, and we like him for that =)
As long as he does it over there... heh
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
the problem is that our limited understanding of the universe also limits our capacity to collect, interpret and present evidence
even in court cases, sometimes a defendant is found guilty "beyond reasonable doubt", and then many years later with new technology (such as DNA fingerprinting) they are exonerated. just because there is no evidence for something now doesn't mean there will never be any or that such evidence doesn't exist.
i'm not arguing for a moment that god definitely exists, because i simply don't know (i'm a bit skeptical but open to reason and possibility). atheists don't know either because if they did they would be the first to preach the evidence.
as i said in my op, "absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence"... if you can't provide evidence of their being no god, then your argument is as flawed as those who can't provide any evidence that there is.
religion also doesn't really seem to be about truth... it is about faith, and i find it interesting to see just how fanatical some atheists are about pushing their supposed agenda for truth, yet they are as fanatical about a belief that can't be proven as the religions they despise.
These are atheists, but not the garden variety. Some of them prefer the term "evangelical atheists". That's how I try to refer to them, to try to specify which ones are trying to claim that I must be wrong, and therefore ought to change so that they can feel better about the world.
The ones who politely disagree with me are fine. We'll never agree on the subject, but we can come to an understanding.
When you use the blanket term "atheists" this way, it tends to marginalize those with more reasoned and reasonable stances. They begin to wonder if they really ought to be more like their rabid brethren, or at least if they should come to their own defense.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
From the abstract ...
Methods:
"Belief in God, treatment credibility/expectancy, emotion regulation and congregational support were assessed prior to treatment."
Results:
"Perceived treatment credibility/expectancy, but not emotional regulation or community support, mediated relationships between belief in God and reductions in depression. No variables mediated relationships to other outcomes. Religious affiliation was also associated with treatment credibility/expectancy but not treatment outcomes."
So I read that as believing in god helps, but the more they believed in both god and the treatment the better they got (sounds like a particularly faithful subgroup).
I would have attributed the religious advantage to partially being a byproduct of religious people having better community support, but this seems to partially contradict that.
I stole this Sig
I find this study to be a load of wishful thinking propaganda. I was a fully committed christian for 20 years, before being diagnosed with bipolar in 2004. I decided I'd be better off sanity wise in 2006 if I was atheist. Since then I've been more stable and better able to cope with my depression and actually treat it rather then pray about it. Praying was a failure it never worked for me, why? There is no god to answer, religion is man-made BS used to control the morons of society.
No, atheists are seen as being as bad as evangelical activists, because a great many of them feel the need to go out of their way to interject their own ideology into the discussion as often as they can... Just like evangelicals. At leasts that's been the bulk of my personal experience, with both types of people.
I've had plenty of perfectly civil conversations about religion and related practices with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists, and others. But when it comes to atheists, every one of them seems to define their atheism as their own superiority to all others. All such discussions I've ever had have very quickly devolved into one-sided antagonism, where it's insisted that everyone else must try and "prove" their God exists, and be judged. As I said, that's just my experience, but it's been invariable thus far.
I've certainly never seen this persecution of Atheists you claim exists. And I certainly don't see it being more lonely or challenging to be Atheist than, say, being a lone Hindu or Buddhist in the west.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well, is trolling non-believers online, join believer organizations, take out ads on buses and billboards about how people should not be gay, non-believers, etc, and go on and on about how smarter they are than the non-believers defines a religion then certainly Christianity is one.
I guess all those millions of folks out there who disbelieve in unicorns, leprechauns, and Bigfoot are just practicing the religions of aunicornism, aleprechaunism, and a-Bigfootism
i've never heard of anyone actively preaching that there are no unicorns, but yeah i guess if they were and they couldn't prove that unicorns don't exist it could be considered faith in a belief, but a religious belief is more related to a dogma that many people share. i don't consider myself to be religious but that doesn't mean i don't believe in anything. if there were a number of people who believed that there is no such thing as unicorns and they actively preached those beliefs, then you could probably consider that to be religious.
atheism is religious because there is a defined dogma that many people subscribe to and identify themselves with.
Are you implying that religion necessarily leads to "war, censorship, or ... state policy".
I hope not, because that would be both factually incorrect, and pitifully bitter.
Religion has been used for that excuse, yes. Repeatedly even. So has atheism, communism, capitalism, imperialism and any number of other -isms. A group of people with strong beliefs made a really big boo-boo? Really? Strange. Never saw that coming.
Maybe we can avoid it in the future by having no strong beliefs. We must stand firm in avoiding all strong beliefs! Oh, wait...
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
or lazy ones.
nobody forced you to become involved in this conversation. there was nothing thrown in your face. you became involved because you felt inclined to share your view.
stamp collectors have sure been huge pains in the ass and continue to be, but non-stamp collectors aren't exactly sitting idly by either.
bill maher is a classic example of a preaching atheist, and being non-religious myself it's funny watching him vehemently deny that atheism is a religion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE53zTUMXo0
there are probably non-religious folks who mistakenly associate themselves with atheism (probably from listening to idiots like bill maher), but that doesn't make atheism itself any less religious
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't try to disclaim the atrocities committed by my ancestors. Certainly some are religiously motivated, or at least justified. But that said, I don't believe for a second that even one fewer atrocity would have been committed in this world, if we magically went back and turned everyone atheist.
Certainly, religion has had positive effects, too. And furthermore, there's no denying that the absolute worst atrocities is history were committed for non-religious reasons. Religion often follows cultural lines, and people sadly conflate the cultural aspects with the religious aspects. The Nazi Holocaust, for example, would have happened if they were all converted Christians, like the Germans who were doing the torture and murder.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
They seem to be asserting a positive belief in God
asserting a positive belief in god is not the same as asserting that there is a god. nice try though.
i don't know anyone arrogant enough to claim that the existence of god is fact, but their belief in god offers them comfort... i say good on them
those that claim that the existence of god is fact are probably the more extreme fundamentalist types, but that doesn't describe all Christians and Catholics by any means
The Old Testament certainly says, quite literally, that you should kill homosexuals.
As for the New Testament, one could easily dismiss Jesus' compassion and forgiveness as being a one-time exception, and not an instruction to completely dismiss what the old book very explicitly said you should do.
</devils-advocate>
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's a strawman argument. (Not originating with you. You're just repeating it.)
3 out of those 5 are a vocal minority, and they aren't even that vocal. They just get mocked. A lot. By everyone. You actually lose credibility when you say something like that.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Then by definition you are not an atheist, you are an agnostic.
Atheism on wikipedia
Etiologically, atheism's root word, theism, means belief in a higher power. When we prepend the privative "a" prefix to theism to form atheism we negate the original meaning of belief in a higher power, to belief in no higher power (roughly).
Agnostics and agnosticism are terms much less frequently encountered in public conversation. This surprises me, because I get the feeling that most people who aren't believers are not anti-believers, and are actually agnostic. This is probably perpetuated by our mainstream media trying to use smallest, simplest lexicon/vocabulary possible instead of ever introducing a word that someone might not know and giving them a reason or opportunity to use a dictionary or ask another human being what it means.
meh... it sells more commercials I guess...
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Claiming everything but 1 is atheism is absolutely false. 3 is called agnostic, 4 would be a rather ignorant person in this day and age. Possible? Not really, though you may not be able to map their beliefs to a common Religion. Most isolated tribes we have found have beliefs in reincarnation and spirits.
It's also important to note that the question "do you believe in god(s)?" is different from "does a god or gods exist?" Atheism is defined by belief, and not by the tenability of any of its philosophical assertions.
Nonsense, because the questions are purely philosophical. If they were scientifically provable either way, we'd have much less "I'm right", "no I'm right", "no I'm right".
Your last paragraph was answered in the thread better than I could answer it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
thanks...
I'm not in favor of marijuana, but this isn't far from the truth.
Mental health professionals are mental for their antidepressants.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
You want to assert that religion causes atrocities (against other religions). Perhaps...
However, I'd firmly assert that religion has also PREVENTED untold numbers of atrocities (that atheists might have perpetrated, whether for cultural, racial, financial, or other reasons), because the intended victim was the same religion as the potential perpetrator.
Certainly this is observable with Muslims right now. Terrorists claim they are performing Jihad, while most clerics denounce their behavior, and undermine their claim of justification by pointing out that Jihad is forbidden if it kills other Muslims in the process...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Hmm, how persecuted are you? You seem to be alive enough to type, so I guess you are going back to some point in history claiming foul today right? I guess you are fine with all the demands for reparations, so if a Black kid born today want's your house they can have it?
My real guess is that you are slandered and harassed today because you're an idiot, not because of atheism.
Cogito, ergo sum ?
Existential! heh =)
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
All people who profess to be Christians should follow Christ and his teachings. Now suppose that Christians disagree on how to interpret certain biblical texts and you'll find all sorts of people who follow different things and yet, still be Christians. One group would say, "this is the true way and you cannot be a true Christian if you don't agree". Now imagine what happens to all Christians believed this about their brand of doctrine, every Christian will accuse one another of being false Christians.
Politicians who murder any organized civil group are more than atheists, they are very efficient at maintaining themselves in power. They will expunge religious groups from society along with any power structure that poses a threat to their power. Politicians can also run churches and do fairly gross things to keep power, see Catholicism and the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. I don't think that thee is any casual link between bad behavior and your God orientation.
The article could be read as saying that atheists correlate with mental illness. Thats rather different to saying that belief in a god correlates with good mental health outcomes but it is just as valid a statement to explain the data. Take care when using a correlation.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I'm sure there have been innumerable such cases, though they tend to fall on racial or cultural lines, since what you believe isn't terribly visible.
Certainly, there have been several atheistic states throughout history that have executed any and all of those who were caught practicing religion.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Because of all the talk-circut atheists racing around claiming to speak for the rest of us atheists and acting like intolerant assholes.
I might personally find christianity, islam, judaism, etc to be silly and mystical ways of viewing the world, but as long as they aint fucking with my shit, who am I to to get angry at them for believing in space ghosts?
Just like its been observed that conservatives are more obsessed with homosexuals than even homosexuals themselves, maybe us atheists need to be a little less obsessed with christianity/etc and start thinking about what *positive* things our atheism can bring to the world.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
> Claiming everything but 1 is atheism is absolutely false.
Says you. Many people disagree, and unfortunately there is no "atheist union" to provide a "correct" answer. Agnostics can be theistic or atheistic. Every child is in position 4 until they are taught about god(s). Personally, I don't care what you call 3 and 4; non-theists, unbelievers, infidels, skeptics... these are just labels. Religious philosophy is not simple and doesn't offer simple answers.
> Nonsense, because the questions are purely philosophical.
The question of "do you believe" is philosophical, but lacks any real-world referent. Theism is a belief system, not a system for determining fact.
What's wrong with being prejudiced against morons? That it hurts the tiny feelings of religious idiots is not an effective argument.
In any debate, it is always advised to give the opposing side as little leverage against you as possible. You mention understanding the other side, this is excellent debate strategy. But then you inject unnecessary emotion into the first sentence of your last line, and the last sentence was complete vitriol.
I am on the other side of this argument, but I haven't, and won't mention anything about it in this post. I'm only suggesting that reasonable debate or discussion goes much further if you aren't contributing to the flames.
Stand up, be blameless, don't give them(us,me) anything to attack.
Religious nutjob
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
So you feel inferior when talking to people who are less delusional than you? How is that their fault?
Does that make me religious?
No, it makes you a person that fails to recognize their own beliefs as beliefs. You invent non-existent creatures to prove that you don't believe that a God exists. Worse, you see absolutely no problem with that logic. To top that off, you imply that if you can't see something you must rely on your belief system for it to continue to exist.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The placebo effect has been studied and discussed ad-museum, so I don't see what this is going to add. In addition, /. is generally a technology site, with a bit of lower-level science thrown-in... We certainly don't see psychology stories on a daily basis.
I maintain my assertion that this story was posted just to start a religion flamewar. And the comments that have since piled-up certainly don't disprove my statement.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Addiction support groups don't need religion/god necessarily. For some people, it most certainly helps*. The 12 step programs out there, most notably AA, explicitly include a belief in a higher power (usually referred to as God). It's the foundational pivot upon which the program works.
(No, I'm not an AA member. My grandfather was an avid member and supporter, despite not believing in organized religion.)
*(I think it would help anyone, but I admit to being religious. ;-) )
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The agnostic motto is "Oh God if there is one, save my soul if there is one.". Agnostic is not a lack of care, it's a lack of information. Many people search regularly and actively for that information. In other words, your statement is biased. Remove the "i don't care" and the definition would be fair.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If you believe in God, you believe in an invisible omnipresent, omniscient spirit that can talk to you and make things happen for you in the world around you. How is that not a mental illness?
So instead of healing these people, it sounds like they're just substituting one mental illness for another, albeit one that may be a bit less unpleasant to live with.
Parent is AC.
Only responding to ask people not to feed the troll.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Consider:
No. That's not how it works in science. In science, it goes like this:
The burden of proof always lies with the person who makes the claim that something exists.
Yes. To both.
Does IT in its wide sense have more atheists than other fields? Dunno, but seems that way. Even given generally better income than many areas, does IT hold more depressives? No idea, but with the gross stress reported by many, I wouldn't be surprised. Do IT people suicide, or go postal, more, on average? Also don't know. It's 0230, by me, and inquiring minds want to know. [grin]
So yeah, could easily be flame-fodder; it's late, the editors are bored, "Hey, let's provoke some shit. Make some popcorn and get in some brewskis." OTOH, one might make an argument for relevance.
My question is, which is it, God, religion, or higher power? Only quotes I saw from study authors used higher power or religious belief. Summary here and article in first link, from McLean Hospital, sponsor of the study, used God and religion.
In AA, for instance, although higher power is used, my impression is that most folks translated that as God, even if only because they learned that concept first; the idea that there could be 'higher power' as its own thing was new to them. So, if study is correct, does it have to be God? Can it be gods? Can faith in, say, science, or unicorns or numerology count as a religion? Does a belief in higher power require the concept of God? Hand waving or no, I see a distinction in the terms. But did the participants of the study?
If a wider study was done, would any of this hold? And if more care was taken with concepts and their terms, would results vary in particulars? Would any of it matter in the practical treatment of various psychostuff?
Have you considered the Jews?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
atheism is religious because there is a defined dogma that many people subscribe to and identify themselves with.
In the same line of logic, you would reason that vegetarians are meat-eaters who don't eat meat.
Being an atheist is being non-religious.
Why am I not surprised that crazy people need religion? Excuse me please, I need to go and pray to my invisible red dragon for salvation.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"If you believe in something that is greater than you - whether it be God or Buddha or Yaweh or Allah or Satan what-ever-name-it-is"
Or your boss.
I tend to think of it as a Slashdot community filled with raging Gods
I guess you still qualify as new here. If you pay more attention you'll see that's nonsense.
We can communicate instantly to any point in the world. We can see what happens in New York, Beijing, and Sydney in real time. We can fly, traveling faster than sound itself. We create and manipulate life on a chromosomal level. We discern the rotation, size and composition of planets in distant galaxies. We can obliterate this planet on a whim.
We are the gods of our ancestors; petty, jealous gods with power rivaled only by each other. All that we lack is the faith of our ancestors, faith in their gods, faith in ourselves and one another. Faith is a tool all atheists should embrace, because without it, we are nothing.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
I can assure you, I have a perfectly heathy ego, but thanks for the concern.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
the problem with russel's teapot is that is was clearly devised by philosophy to justify an opposing position to things like religion, but in reality which is a more unfalsifiable claim? that there is a god or that there isn't? who should make that judgement? obviously if atheists make the decision then theists will bear the burden of proof, but if theists make the decision then the burden of proof is on the atheists to prove there is no god.
i think it would seem fair that the burden of proof lies with whoever is trying to do the convincing, which means that atheists should be out there trying to discover proof that there is no god and that theists should be out there trying to find evidence that god exists.
that there doesn't seem to be much of that going on by either camp indicates that ultimately both realize that their beliefs are simply based on faith and that's all that is required, which is perfectly fine. if you can convince someone to share your beliefs based solely on faith, then that person is probably like minded to begin with.
Believe what you want, but don't be surprised if someone wants to argue when you proclaim your beliefs on the internet.
for sure, and it has been an interesting discussion
Nope. Most Muslim bombings are against other Muslims.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The fact that the beleif is NOT about supporting an unjustifiable favoritism for a specific god, but isntead about supporting the unjustifiable favoritism toward having NO gods, does NOT make it non-religious.
So, if believing in a specific god is unjustifiable, and not believing in any gods is unjustifiable, what is justifiable? Let me guess, whatever you believe is the *only* justifiable position, and it's one that I'd call "atheism" but you'd argue isn't.
Atheism as a religious dogma shares a closer kinship with devout practitioners of those later, clearly secular ideologies than it does with any higher power, but is still clearly a form of religous zeal, and that zeal certainly does have motivational potential.
It's not unlike people tired of stamps. They don't want to hear people talk about it, they don't want to have them sent to them. They feel surrounded by something they don't care about and don't want to hear about. Athiests have a "dogma" that consists of "shut up", and want nothing other than to be left alone. Though yes, there are the ones on the fringe that think of religion as a fraud. All the people pushing it are liars trying to guilt people out of tithe, and all that.
Learn to love Alaska
Well said, my dear Sir.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Way to prove the parent right. Good job.
This is about human psychology, not your god.
Did you even read his post?
Required reading for internet skeptics
Is it really better be happy and delusional, in the land of pixes, gods, trolls, jesuses, witches, and fairies?
We can look at the etymology to arrive at the "correct" answer, no "atheist union" needed.
Theism is defined, briefly, as "belief in the existence of a god or gods." When we prepend the privative "a" prefix to our root word "theism" to create "atheism" we create a new word meaning the opposite of the original word. Correspondingly, similar transformations are made with appropriate prefixes to create monotheism (belief that there is only one God), polytheism (belief that there are more than one god/s), and pantheism (belief in a non-personal, all-encompassing, universal entity, among others.
All of these are distinct from what many people seem to think of themselves as: agnostic. Agnosticism is the genuine uncertainty of the existence of a higher power, and/or belief that it can never be known. When a person has already decided that there is no God, they are atheist, by definition. Since they cannot prove there is no God, any more than a believer can prove there is a God, this is what causes so much friction between the two groups. Neither side can prove either position, and engages in endless mudslinging or worse - or better, or nothing. I hope I haven't soiled anything...
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Troll.
... which is what your "implied exclusion" which .. "does not hold" ..was.
Atheism = lack_of_belief;
lack_of_belief != belief_of_lack;
which is the SAME as saying:
belief_of_lack != lack_of_belief
( is not means not equal to )
At last but not least, WHO said that atheists believe that god doesn't exist? Atheists THINK that gods don't exist. Keep your precious verb believe to yourself please.
Then there are "atheists" who jump the shark. They assert that belief in a deity is a form of insanity,
Religion is explicitly exempted from DSM diagnostics. If not for the explicit exemptions for religion, it would fit the definition of a number of mental illnesses.
Usually when a deist referrs to "athiesm" as a religion, they are referring to this latter demographic.
Yes, every atheist is Richard Dawkins, it's easier to marginalize them when you demonize them first.
I seem to remember going rounds with you on this before, but refusal to acknowledge the clearly religious zeal of this latter demographic is simply disingenuous.
I don't remember you at all. Apparently I left a greater impression on you than you on me.
I have had this conversation before, and it comes down to a few simple things. Christianity is based on sharing beliefs and there's a massive missionary subtext in everything, so much so that the US was banned from Indonesia for relief efforts because they didn't want the religious nuts pushing Christianity in an Islamic country, especially using relief to push it. When they relented and let US relief in, crates of banned Bibles were delivered. It was some kind of challenge to violate law, custom, and agreement to abuse a position of power. That's the non-nuts.
Both sides have their nuts. I've never said they don't. What atheism doesn't have is an innate proselytizing "requirement" or leaning. That makes it safer to live near one.
Learn to love Alaska
You're aware that philosophers and academics write entire books for the purpose of examining definitions of words that are already defined in the dictionary?
In any debate, it is always advised to give the opposing side as little leverage against you as possible. You mention understanding the other side, this is excellent debate strategy. But then you inject unnecessary emotion into the first sentence of your last line, and the last sentence was complete vitriol.
This isn't a debate. Those reading have already made up their mind. Those who respond do so only to assert the previous poster was wrong. When someone lies, they've already proven themselves beyond help, the post was to let others know that they don't have to believe the lies in: "Evolution, as any other religion, seeks an explanation for the origin and meaning of life" As evolution says nothing about the origin, or meaning of life, and calling it a religion is offensive, as is religion itself.
I am on the other side of this argument, but I haven't, and won't mention anything about it in this post.
That's what many people end up doing on Slashdot. Popping into a thread, declaring the other person "wrong" then running away. Never giving their opinion, because they know it's indefensible, but playing devil's advocate and laying some troll before moving on.
How can you even call it a "debate" if you refuse to state your side, let alone debate it.
Stand up, be blameless, don't give them(us,me) anything to attack.
You must be new here. Even if you don't give them anything to attack, if "they" sense an opposing opinion, they lash out. I get attacked for anything I say on any subject, so I start out offensive, it cuts out a few steps.
Learn to love Alaska
Perhaps, just perhaps, deep inside our psyche, there is a force that we have not yet touch upon, a force so great that it can fight whatever illness the body has been infected with --- and perhaps, it's the "belief system" that there is something "more powerful than us", through "prayer", that made up a "conduit" or sort, that tap on that force deep within our own psyche, to fight the disease that has inflicted much pain and suffering on the victim / patient
Perhaps, just perhaps, that we can understand statistics, and that even very extremely unlikely events are inevitable.
If the roll of the dice worked out in your favor, pay it forward to your fellow humans and don't ascribe it to asinine divinity.
Captcha: crotch[ity]
Yes, perhaps I was defining my set overly broadly. I am sure there are agnostics in that position though.
Of course it's also long been said that there are no atheists in foxholes... as a soldier and combat vet, I can't disprove that statement heh
I thought this was interesting: Agnosticism: The Basis for Atheism
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Being an atheist is being non-religious.
There are atheistic religions, you know. (Or maybe you don't!)
Buddhism comes immediately to mind, as does Scientology. The Raelian's are particularly interesting, as they're openly atheist; they even call Raelianism "Intelligent Design for Atheists".
Moving on... When people call Atheism a religion, they're not talking about the simple "lack of a belief in God" Atheism. They're talking about the modern Atheist movement, which is loaded with religious trappings -- dogma included. I've little doubt that you'll deny this. In fact, I expect that you will. That rather irrational denial is part and parcel of this modern Atheism-turned-religion.
Granted, a lot of the "Atheism is a religion too" chatter is just ridiculous nonsense that you're right to deny. However, that Atheism can be a religion, is treated as such by a surprising number of people, and is endemic to many atheist and rationalist groups cannot be denied. (Well, at least not from an objective standpoint.)
Required reading for internet skeptics
people only drive at great speed on one side of the road based on faith that people going in the opposite direction will be on the other side of the road or that they will have enough time to avoid someone driving on the wrong side... otherwise everyone would avoid driving due to unacceptable risk of injury or death.
this type of faith is similar to faith in a religious spiritual belief, and just as faith in the competence of other road users can be shattered, certain life changing events (such as car accidents even) can affect spiritual faith too.
there are lots of beliefs that could be considered religious (being shared by many), but we tend to limit the scope of the definition of the word religion to issues of spirituality. issues of faith are much broader though.
atheism is a dogma related to spirituality (choosing to believe there is no god is as much a spiritual choice as choosing to believe in one) and the beliefs of atheism are often preached, particularly in discussions like this. what makes atheism more than just faith is its social aspect.
Why are religious people so adamant that non-religious people are also religious people?
i'm not religious, and not because i'm "atheist" or agnostic or whatever, but because i don't subscribe to any dogma shared by others. this doesn't mean others don't share all or some of my beliefs, but i don't associate myself with them or refer to the same documented beliefs (i'm not aware of anywhere that my particular beliefs are documented). if you are really non-religious, you wouldn't have a problem with anyone (religious or otherwise) labeling you religious. why does it matter to you? people can believe what they want about you; their beliefs don't make it so.
there are probably non-religious folks who mistakenly associate themselves with atheism (probably from listening to idiots like bill maher), but that doesn't make atheism itself any less religious
apolitical: "Having no interest in or association with politics." atheist: Having no interest in or association with theism, right? Oh, no, the "a" prefix means something completely different for atheism and only atheism. Anyone who isn't a theist is an atheist. Whether they are atheist because they believe you can't know whether there is a god, they have no interest in the topic and no opinion on whether there is a god, or they are rabidly anti-religious doesn't matter. All are atheist.
Though The Church did work hard to adjust the definitions to cause division in the non-believers to help marginalize and demonize opposition (And like Islam, any non believer is an enemy).
Learn to love Alaska
by definition we tend to only associate religion with spiritual beliefs
i also think you're confusing religious belief with faith... you have faith that the moon is still there. faith has a much broader scope than religion.
Well, you wouldn't have had to expect the Spanish Inquisition.
Something similar may well have occurred, because at it's most basic it was a power play, as pretty much every atrocity is. However, I would contend that the religious pretext allowed it to gain much more traction than would have been likely if they had been limited to a purely secular pretext.
Of course, it's impossible to verify whether there would have indeed been a lower level of atrocity without religion being involved. We do have the example of the Holocaust where Gypsies and homosexuals were also targeted in the same manner as Jews, but again it's impossible to say if the Nazis would have been able to achieve such levels of public participation without a religious pretext. By my reading of the history (and I could well be wrong) the public was primarily focused by the propaganda on the Jews, and the targeting of the other groups was kept a lot more low-key.
Try being gay today and see how you're not harassed. Dumbass.
You assertion that atheism means "I don't believe in a god", and is defacto exclusive of the "I believe in no gods" is not logical, no matter how much you try to misrepresent it as being so.
I don't think "I don't believe in fairy tales" to be exclusive of "I firmly believe fairy tales are false."
Learn to love Alaska
I don't anybody says that Religion is bad in general. The problems people righfully have with religion are with those institutions who claim ownership and superiour gouvernance over all things spiritual. These institutions are more or less companies selling a branded variant of some spiritual concept, muddying its true purpose for their own benefit and for nothing more than mere material earthly power. This is particularly true with todays abrahamic religions.
The katholic church for instance, has actually very little to do with the original teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and simular worldviews, but actually is one of the last institutions still holding on to old roman pre-christian concepts (one guy at the top telling everyone what to do, power over kindness, etc.) - curiously exactly the concepts Jesus was up against (and crucified for). It's only that these religions then highjack their leading figure, like for instance Christ to introduce concepts that are actually anti-christian (superiority of white people over afrikans back in the colonists times for instance). You see simular effects in non-abrahamic religions aswell, like buddism, if not as intense.
It's very much like Microsoft claiming to do the best for software in general, and actually doing the opposite while at the same time trying to discredit those who truely care about software (the FOSS community).
I consider myself quite rational, but I personally also do like to entertain the thought that there is a non-physical world that follows other rules than the physical but is interconected with it. I like Seneca, the stoics and the Zen Buddist concept of relitivating the importantness of certain physical/material aspects of my life and I read spiritual and philosophical literature regularly. Am I deluding myself or indulging in whishfull thinking? Couldn't tell, allthough I'm quite sure I'm not entirely doing so. Does it make my life more bearable and raise it's quality? Does it raise my performance in dealing with the things I have to deal with? Does it actually help me see things more realistically *without* me starting to panic? Definitely!
On the premise of prescribing 'religion':
Prescribing 'religion' - i.e. spiritual teachings, liturgy and lifestyle is of course the first thing you should do with someone who is overly depressive without much reason to. I wouldn't use any "religion" or confession that is bloated with false claims and constraints, but I don't see how ready Stoic lectures and writings or regularly excercising some shinto or new age ritual or meditating could to any harm. In fact, I'd say precisely helping you to handle everyday life would be the actually true function of religion.
Every human being needs one of four things, that can also be intermixed: Family/Clan, Art, Religion/Spirituality, or regular encounters with untouched nature. If those aren't there he/she becomes mentally ill, depressive or takes drugs as an unhealthy fifth substitute.
If you life is in a rut and you have no friends, no time or resources for praticing art and your surroundings are unnatural and mainly functional, religion is indeed the thing you should turn to. Albeit not neccesarly any big brand of religion, that could be counter-productive.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
for the same reason that the fox which cut its tail, would like other foxes to cut it too.
No Mr atheist. He doesn't feel inferior. He sees that the other person feels superior. There's an unsubtle difference between the two perceptions.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
The burden of proof always lies with the person who makes the claim that something exists.
actually the burden of proof lies with whoever is trying to make a convincing argument
You proved his point. The terr's claim it is Jihad, but it is not because they are targeting other Muslims not unbelievers.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Positive atheism is not exclusive with being 'sensible' and can be perfectly reasonable and rational. Many, if not most conceptions of a divinity are inherently self-contradictory and one can provide good arguments for why they do not exist. As an example consider that the God implied by the Kalam Cosmological argument is impossible if any exist definition of 'cause' is used when describing the cause of the universe (a efficient without material cause is contrary to all experience, a required event before another required event makes no sense in a atemporal setting). It is perfectly reasonable to take some or a few of the more common but contradictory conceptions of a deity or deity and assert they do not exist by looking at how they are self contradictory. Non-existence of contradictory being is as close to an objective fact as scientific truth or anything else we label as 'fact'. And those are the deist gods, showing that the gods of specific religions do not exist is child's play.
Positive atheism is not the same thing as believing that all believers are insane. I can think you are wrong without thinking you are a nut job. Besides insanity is a moral judgement (it amounts to asserting how a mind 'should' work, whatever that means) and I've no interest in passing moral judgement, just describing what is.
Give me a sufficiently fleshed out commonly used definition of god and I will probably have an argument why such a being is impossible. Given that many theists are unwilling to define god I define it for them as "an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient being who is the cause of the universe". On this, or any similar definition I can show this deity does not exist. It might be the problem of evil, or the problem of unbelief, or something like the one I gave above. If not then you and I are simply defining god differently and I'm happy to say I'm a weak atheist on your definition. I'm likely to also point out your definition is so vague as to have no implications what-so-ever of course, but that doesn't change the fact that with respect to it I am not a strong atheist.
Are there atheists like you describe? Sure, there are a couple of assholes. And yes they pretty much have a religion. But you are conflating this religion with strong atheism, and that simply isn't the case. My own existence acts as a refutation.
In this particular debate (a)theists are arguing there is no God, and (b)elievers are arguing there is a God. The burden of proof is on each interested party, not solely on (a) or (b). When we consider the agnostics, they are the neutral, undecided third party.
I hesitate to call them disinterested in the (a) (b) decision, in the way that some of them may pay varying amounts of attention to various discussions in the debate, but they are most likely un-invested.
This isn't the scientific community, and it isn't even real philosophy that gets slung around daytime/primetime television or bestseller book lists on either side of the argument. This is an emotional position on both sides. That is why the (b)elievers are calling the (a)theists out for "not having a religion." While it is true that many atheist are happy to have decided that there is no God and live their lives in quiet scientific sublimity, the atheists stirring the pot are ruining your good name!
The scientific hypothesis is always if it can't be proven or disproven, it's a theory - a theory being an unproven hypothesis. That seems to be as fitting a definition as any for a religion.
As a believer, I have never categorically demanded that anyone accept that there is a Creator, only that I believe there is one, and that I believe that I have witnessed his work in my life. The atheists are coming from the side of trying to prove the unprovable. This is different that what the believers should be doing in sharing their faith/beliefs, and not forcing it down everyone's throats.
In that context, I don't see how I have anything at all to prove, because I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm making a statement of belief.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
"No True Scotsman" is a funny thing.
Atheists don't (or shouldn't) believe there is any real difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. It's a sliding scale between atheism, agnosticism, casual belief, and fanatical belief. Nor is there any reason to believe that one camp is really better in every possible way.
Lots of fanatical Christians *do* believe there are two camps - the "real" Christians, and everyone else. That's why they play the "No True Scotsman" game - most of them actually believe there is a real difference between "real" Christians, and the rest; and that "real" Christians are morally better in every way. So if a "real" Christian does something (or worse - believes something) they don't agree with, they obviously weren't a "real" Christian.
(OK, that's a bit of a simplification - they still think that "real" Christians do bad things, but then God forgives them and they try not to do it again ... but they should certainly all *try* to live by the same moral code, since God is guiding them).
Then as I age, I get to see a repeat --- cases of, how shall I put it, "miracles" --- where patients that the medical doctors have given up on, made drastic recoveries
I'm going to go out on a limb that you can't put a number on that, and that you also can't put a number on the times a patient was told they'd be fine and then unexpectedly dropped dead.
Perhaps, just perhaps, deep inside our psyche, there is a force that we have not yet touch upon, a force so great that it can fight whatever illness the body has been infected with
A force which is a combination of an immune system honed over millions of years, modern scientific understanding, and pure dumb luck.
Till now, our human scientific knowledge is still very limited, there are still a lot of things that we do not know
That's no reason to start making shit up while grasping at straws for an explanation.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I've certainly never seen this persecution of Atheists you claim exists.
What are your religious beliefs? I've been pulled over for Driving While Black more than once. I am white. If I hadn't had it happen to me so often, I wouldn't have thought it as common as the Black man asserts. I've been asked my church in a work setting more than once. I usually lie. I attended Methodist church religiously (pun intended) for 10 years or so as a child. Took communion in a Catholic church. And was married in a Lutheran church (as a congregation member, though I never attended a regular service). So I can pick from any of a number of plausible answers that wouldn't get me into trouble.
How do you think people respond to Scientologists? That's a religion, but I'm sure plenty of people think of it as a branch of athism, as it doesn't believe in a single god, and may address humanity on Earth, but not the creation of Earth, or any of the other creatures (or maybe it does, I thought the DC-10 was Thetans only, not an arc). And people make fun of them all the time.
Learn to love Alaska
> We can look at the etymology to arrive at the "correct" answer, no "atheist union" needed.
Unfortunately, that doesn't help, because it comes from the Greek a- (without, not) + theos (god) which means "godless." So, you can interpret it as "atheos + ism" or "a + theism." The question is, is the godlessness by choice? You could count people in categories 2, 3, and 4 as "godless" if they have no belief or knowledge of god(s).
Alternatively, if you interpret "atheism" as "atheos" + ism, it would be a belief system about the nonexistence of god(s), which only covers sense 2.
What is "believe in a no-god" supposed to mean anyway?
Whatever, what I get from the article is that placebo is a very real psychological effect. Thinking positive can improve your healing. OK, I get it. "Feelings" are nothing more than certain chemicals being produced in your brain.
Believing in non-rational superpowers can release those chemicals and give you a warm fuzzy feeling. You can do the same eating chocolate or hugging your mate. After all, it's a very scientific and logical effect.
Why these scientists singled out the belief in a god as the predominant effect, I don't know. I don't have to believe in a god to think positive. On the contrary, thinking about how, even in the 21st century, we still have the notion of a god and people are being irrational cave-dwellers makes me depressed. That these primates have the audacity to drag the reasoning of rational people into their realm of religion is even more depressing.
Over the centuries, religion has been rightfully pushed away farther and farther the more scientific progress has been made. Like the submissive dog that always takes the unoccupied space until his owner claims that, too, religion always takes the space that's not been occupied by science. We may never get there, but I sincerely hope the religion dog gets put down some day. It was nothing more than a biting and angry bitch.
And no, you nutjobs, being a rational human who is exercising curiosity and logic thinking is not a religion. It's being an educated and evolved human. You are just the bane that holds us back. Noone needs religion to be a caring and loving human being. You can be that out of your own free will.
Evolutionary forces aren't constants. They depend on the environment. My guess is that being an atheist used to be a serious impediment to survival ("BURN THE UNBELIEVER"). Trusting into science could also be detrimental in the times when bleeding was the 'scientific' way of curing illnesses, rather then just praying and trusting your deity to cure you.
Now we have laws to protect people with different beliefs and medicine has advanced enough that it's more likely to cure you then kill you. So being an atheist might be becoming a good survival trait for the individual as well as society.
To clarify: Atheism is a position: adherents of that position do not have a beleif in the existence of a deity, as stated. However, this position does NOT preclude the latter part of your statement: the belief in the nonexistence of deities.
I don't disagree with your premise, but your logic was wrong.
aCar-ists doesn't mean you don't believe in Ford, it means you don't believe in using cars as personal transport. Someone who rejects cars would also not drive a Ford, but it's not required, nor part of the definition. You are arguing that because one possible sub-definition is more "convenient" to attack, that it's the only one.
Dodging behind the no true scottsman is disingenuous.
Your inability to grasp the subtlety of my point doesn't disprove it. An atheist is a person who doesn't actively believe in a god, gods, or theism of any kind. Whether they actively believe in a no-God is irrelevant to whether they are an atheist, and someone who actively believes in a no-god would probably have to be an atheist, but that isn't the definition of atheist, and if you are going to assert that one small minority within the broad definition is the *only* definition you recognize, then state you reject the dictionary and original usages and assert your own. I can agree to diasgree with your made up personal definition of the word, and ignore you, as I do most anti-atheists.
Learn to love Alaska
If believing that God exists in the absence of evidence, and inability to prove his/her/its existence, and to further set up institutions to spread that message is religion, then logically the inverse is as well.
By that I am referring only to those atheists who are out vocally proselytizing their insistence that there is absolutely no God. If we define religion as belief system, then the simple belief that God does not exist would not qualify. But trying to actively spread that message, and get others to further spread it for your, does, very much, qualify in every respect as a religion despite any of their complaints or arguments to the contrary.
As in everything, it all comes down to context and definition. You can't have a proper argument or discussion without first agreeing or understanding the underlying parameters.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Just as believers are making a decision based on a belief (there is a God), atheists are also making a decision based on a belief of their own: that there is not a God.
Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism )
Athiests are mostly those who don't choose to make a decision. But atheism includes those who choose as you say, but that's the more narrow anti-heathen/anti-pagan definition that was crafted to make atheists out to be bad guys.
Get your terminology right before you start rejecting conclusions and labeling premises as wrong.
I do. I don't believe you do.
It is the agnostics who are ambivalent towards the existence of any higher power/creator and don't bother themselves which such philosophies. This is what I believe you may have been referring to in your message above, and indeed is often confused with atheism, as mentioned in the dictionary.com article above.
Originally, all agnostics were Christians who actively believed in God. The church worked hard to adjust language to their desires to help marginalize, divide and demonize opponents. By my definition, agnostics (using your definition) are a subset of atheists (my definition), but the "original" definition has "agnostic" include half theists, and half atheists. a- as a prefix implies that everyone is either theist or atheist. Anyone who wouldn't call themselves a theist (or one of the groups that is theist, such as Christian), is an atheist.
Learn to love Alaska
If you believe in something that is greater than you - whether it be God or Buddha or Yaweh or Allah or Satan what-ever-name-it-is - you have some sort of "psychological protective vest"
When I was younger I did not believe in the so-called "power of prayer" (no matter which religion it is, or which God the prayer supposed to go to). I thought the thing is rubbish
Step 1: Establish credentials by stating that you used to hold an opposing view. Provides a sense of credibility, and a starting point. What matters more is how the speaker transitioned from disbeliever to believer, which is what follows.
Then as I age, I get to see a repeat --- cases of, how shall I put it, "miracles" --- where patients that the medical doctors have given up on, made drastic recoveries
Step 2: Wheel out vague anecdotes and faulty reasoning as post hoc support of a conversion. Rather than indicating existence of supernatural super mind power, what you say here suggests more a need for a decent grounding in statistics.
I can't explain how the thing works, I am only an independent observer on that process
Step 3. Argument from ignorance and claim impartiality. This is a common tactic of conspiracy theorists who try to get out of a need for rigorous evidence by saying that they're not asserting, just asking questions. Of course the questions asked strongly imply an assertion, like asking "so why do you think so few Jews died in 9/11?", to imply a Jewish inside job without coming out and saying it.
Perhaps, just perhaps, deep inside our psyche, there is a force that we have not yet touch upon, a force so great that it can fight whatever illness the body has been infected with --- and perhaps, it's the "belief system" that there is something "more powerful than us", through "prayer", that made up a "conduit" or sort, that tap on that force deep within our own psyche, to fight the disease that has inflicted much pain and suffering on the victim / patient
Step 4: The baloney shotgun is armed. Perhaps in my liver I have an army of undetectable ponies that maintain a balance of power that prevents either kidney from seizing control of my renal system.
The word "perhaps" is bolted on to the front of a whole bunch of crazy speculations that are no more to the point than to postulate the universe being at the centre of a giant donkey's arse.
Till now, our human scientific knowledge is still very limited, there are still a lot of things that we do not know
Maybe one day our human can get our technoogy advance to the point that we can get "in touch" with that force deep inside our own psyche
Step 5: Speculation is at an end - shit just got real. At this point, make it clear that this imaginary bullshit for which there's no evidence is only obscured by our lack of technology/open mindedness/faith. Where earlier it was "perhaps", now it's taken as a given that this force exists. The only perhaps left is the question of whether we will ever advance sufficiently in our technology/open mindedness/faith to be able to understand this magical force.
Scientific knowledge is incomplete. Your knowledge of science is on a par with my knowledge of the Iranian dating scene. Like science, you know it does something because you fly in airplanes, and similarly I know Iranians have some form of dating because they marry and they produce children. I've no idea though how man meets women, and you appear to be viewing science as this big mysterious box, that may as well be a fucking great monkey skull shaped cave on a island that brings the rains when you do your little dance.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
From so many prayers, one or two random (miraculous) healing is statistically insignificant. These events get more publicity than cases where all prayers fail, that's why you feel there is a higher power in works.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
What is "believe in a no-god" supposed to mean anyway?
"a"something (apolitical, atheist) means someone unconcerned with the root. Anyone not theist is atheist. atheist under that definition is a massive demographic, so the Church worked to define as many types of atheist as possible to foster division and confusion amongst the "enemy" and given the people who worry more about the differences in non believers than the similarity, it looks like they've won.
The "belief in a no-god" is to separate out the "hard" atheism from the "soft" atheism. So many people think of the aggressive deniers that I'm trying to spread the more inclusive definition so people aren't afraid to call themselves what they are.
Learn to love Alaska
We can separate religion from God however, since religion is merely the practice of one's own belief system. Once we have an agreed definition, we can proceed with the discussion. Atheists believe their is no God. Believers believe there is (monotheists n=1, polytheists n=>1) at least one God.
Not all believers are religious, and not all atheists are claimed to be religious, or at least I am not claiming them all to be. Just as some believers believe in the existence of a higher power, but do not actively participate in any organized religion or formal belief system, so too can an atheist. In fact, I would be willing to bet, nearly all people who have made the personal choice that there is no God, made no great effort to spread that message.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Duh, it is well known that belief in one's doctor (aka the placebo effect) affects the outcome positively. Whether it's because the patient thinks his doctor is a god, or that god is himself a doctor would be an interesting research question.
The only real power that prayer has is to make people feel better about being able to do nothing, and so alleviate despair in hopeless situations. Nothing more and frequently less when prayer is applied in lieu of action by those truly deluded sorts that actually believe in the efficacy of interstitial prayer. All the anecdotal 'miracles' and unexplained recoveries are only evidence of our own lack understanding and meagre observational acuity, not evidence of the unseen hand of a caring an benevolent deity. As for 'spiritual' experience, yes it exists and prayer as a simple form of meditation can be conducive to it, but again nothing to do with anything supernatural.
Your comments show that you don't understand evolution so get reading and understanding before making such crass comments
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Religion is explicitly exempted from DSM diagnostics. If not for the explicit exemptions for religion, it would fit the definition of a number of mental illnesses.
Homosexuality was in the DSM II as well until it was removed in the DSM III published as late as 1973. The DSM is trying to define "abnormal."
Since nearly the entire planet believes in something (black, white or yellow), it wouldn't make much sense to go diagnosing the entire planet with a mental illness, despite how the other part might feel about it.
FWIW, I consider myself fairly "fundamental" ideologically, but not behaviorally. I prefer to share my faith through much less aggressive/abrasive/offensive methods. I haven't ever spoken to either of my neighbors directly next to me, and only in passing to the people across the street, and never about religion. The people at work all known I am a Christian, but I haven't dropped any pamphlets or bibles off, and I'm not leaving any posters on bulletin boards.
As you said, both sides have their nuts.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Christians don't believe in many Gods - Odin, Zeus, Mars, Allah, His Noodliness, Cthulu, to name a few. I just believe in one less. By the way, the clue is in the name - atheist. As in not a theist, i.e. not a believer. I don't think about, or worry about, Gods or their absence, except when theists turn up, usually to tell them politely I'm an atheist, so thank you, but not interested, and now would you kindly stop ringing my doorbell every weekend and posting wasted flyers through my door.
To borrow phrasing from a subsequent reply - "atheists are also making a decision based on a belief of their own: that there is not a God."
This is not correct. I simply don't factor belief in Gods into my decisions at all. As a Christian, do you classify yourself as a non-Odinist? Do you factor your non belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster into your every day life and decisions? Are you an active, dues paid member of the 'Thor is not a real God' club, meetings on Thor'sday, except every second week, on Woden'sday? (Seriously, look up how many old Gods have days of the week named after them - romance languages like French use the Roman gods instead)
So unless you can tell me with a straight face that on Saturdays you actively excercise your non-belief in Saturn, aka Chronos, father of Zeus, and use it affect your decisions and thought process, then please give atheists the same courtesy and accept that we simply don't believe the same things as you, and that does make our non belief in Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, or Mary Mother Of God (forgive me, not sure which sect you are) any more a religous belief than your non belief in Saturn, Woden etc makes you an active non Wodenist or non Saturnist.
The whole thing about proof is our response to getting bugged by evangelical theists of all stripes. 'MY God is the one true God, and my faith is the one true faith, and you should believe it too!' - to which we say, 'Fine. Prove it.'. We certainly don't spend our days thinking about it, or incorporating it in our decisions. Well, maybe Dawkins does. But he's a sexist blowhard, and is not a representative of all atheists, any more than Abu Hamza represents all Muslims, or Koran burning Terry Jones represents all Christians. Most of us are normal, quiet people who simply don't have a particular belief that some others do, and there's plenty to go around. Not being religious does not make us weird, strange, scary or sinful. We just don't want the State to dictate what beliefs we should be forced to live by.
TLDR; if atheism is a religion, then NOT collecting stamps is the most popular hobby in the world. I have some 'What Would Cthulu do? Devour all!' bumper stickers so you can factor your not-Cthuluist religion into your daily life.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
"that's fine because no one will come and do a jihadist on you because you don't believe."
They will, though, if you're an "abomination unto the lord" in the Deep South USA.
They will if you're not a believer in the African continent.
Yes, that's right: the same sort of barbaric crap that YOU complain about in the Middle East with Islam happens in the Afrcan sub-continent with Christianity.
It's easier to be tolerant when you have enough to go round. When there isn't, then the herd needs thinning and you need a "reason" to think those people don't deserve anything.
New? Sub 15k UID man. Yea, lots of lower, but it's low enough. My name was chopped because I created my account back when they used to allow longer user names. Was supposed to read "by the order of His Majesty" heh Yea... I was 17 or something... highschool... craziness
Anyway, I wasn't trolling, or attacking, declaring anyone wrong, or running away. I can defend my side all day long if I feel like it, but I don't at this particular moment in time. I said I wasn't going to, and I won't.
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
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ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
If believing 2+2=4 scares you, you're neurotic.
If believing 2+2=5 comforts you, you're psychotic
When dealing with people around us, our emotional expressions guide the outcomes as we try to fit each other's needs. Where that doesn't work we need a "hunker down and deal with the situation" strategy. In those situations, it is sometimes only by feeling that our emotional expressions do not help anymore but simply make us suffer that changes our strategy to one that feels successful so that the depression ends.
I'm sorry, my inner snarky atheist is about to chime in. Please ignore the rest of my comment if you're not in the mood.
Ahem:
That's because the distance between mentally ill and religious is shorter than the distance between mentally ill and sane; they don't have to go the extra distance.
Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity
"Off" is a much a TV channel as Fox News.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"I don't believe in a 6 foot duck that brings me tortillas and butternut squash."
You should, the tortillas are amazing.
Perhaps in a small number of cases. Open the PDF of that story you linked to and you'll actually get links to the articles it is talking about, perhaps you should read them (if you had I assume you would have linked them directly). For certain people who have a predisposition to schizophrenia it may be a contributory cause. That doesn't mean it isn't safe for the general population.
You don't think it's interesting, from an evolutionary viewpoint, that a meme has useful survival qualities?
Apart from the obvious social cohesion factors, of course.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because they are stupid. You can't get too depressed when you're stupid.
*fewer
(thanks, I'll be here all... nah, screw it - I'll be getting a beer)
If I knew I was superior I wouldn't give a tinker's cuss what the other fucktard thinks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You are confused. Atheism is the belief that there is no got. Agnosticism is the lack of belief that there is or is not a god.
Look it up.
Damn, mine are taken up by telemarketers.
You either believe it or you don't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Anybody find this ... depressing?
The real issue is that those who believe in a God that watches over them also tend to feel that their lives are being guided, and they PREFER to feel that someone is guiding/controlling/watching over them. Now, a big part of depression comes from feeling powerless about your situation in life, so from that point of view, feeling like SOMETHING is looking out for you is a positive thing, no matter what or who it may be. The solution to treating depression then, is to provide a system(can be peer based, not government) where people who are depressed have others who may be able to help them, or watch out for them to give support. What has happened with modern society is that there is a notable lack of community in most places, and that lack of community leads to depression, and a feeling of isolation. Picture if you had no friends living near you, and the only thing you do is go to a bar and drink by yourself, where you see others who have connections or are making connections. Do that for years, and depression is sure to set in. Neighbors would help, but if society makes it so people are not interested in being connected to your neighbors, that leads to depression.
"Jesus based religion"
Is that like a 'fruit-flavored' drink?
"4 would be a rather ignorant person in this day and age."
4 is actually the best answer to the question.
Though I'm certain you have 'read the terms and agree to the conditions'.
No, that is not correct, you're reading it wrong. Theism is belief in god, Atheism is not believing in god. It is exactly what I said. Just because you don't believe, doesn't mean you positively assert that there is no god. It just means that you don't believe. Why is it so hard to accept that maybe there are some questions we can't answer? There is no point in wild speculation... why wouldn't it make sense for some people to simply not care?
as do those who seek to persecute those who don't collect stamps, put stamp collecting into the pledge of allegiance, and integrate stamp collecting into their biology textbooks.
on nation, under god, indivisible (because you're on board with that god thing, right citizen?), etc
That makes no sense. You cannot "lack belief that there is no god" without believing in god unless you are atheist, or agnostic.
I would encourage everyone to evaluate further that there is no "one time exception" to Christ's actions/words.
At the philosophical core, Christ's actions/words support the idea that he took Complete Exception with the need for ridiculous sacrifices and rituals.
I would much rather have Christ's philosophy.
This is my major issue with some people's growing disdain for Christ's actions/words. What's the big deal?
My mod points expired recently, or I'd mod this up. A nice point-by-point analysis of the slow escalation of bullshit in that post.
Given that
A) Jewish intel was sniffing around the Wahabist terrists
B) That intel was hushed out of the US without any official inquiry
C) As a result of 9/11 Saddam Hussein was taken out instead of the Wahabists of Saudistan
D) Israel lost an opponent with Saddam Hussein, who actually cared about other Arabs instead of just inciting stone-age religionism
I find it entirely plausible that the jews facilitated 9/11. Of course, they are too smart to do it themselves but will use some stupid people for that. They certainly have incredible power to manipulate information on a world-wide basis and that can be used to that end.
Remember Iraq and "WMD" when you FALL AGAIN for jewish warmongering, this time against their other nuisance, Iran.
Good night America !
" a person who denies or disbelieves the existence..."
I find the use of 'denies' and 'disbelieves' quite telling. As if the atheist is somehow in unfounded opposition to the accepted ground state.
I know what you wrote: it's right in fron of me. But you missed my point. Perhaps this clarifies:
Atheism is a lack of belief.
If I you ask whether God or FSM actually exists for certain, an honest person must answer "I don't know", because it's impossible to know. This is really agnostic, so it's truly a pointless word.
If you ask "do you believe in a supreme being who created everyone anf everything, and answers people's prayers?" Saying no doesn't make you religious.
Just as saying no to the question "do you believe the FSM created everything?" doesn't make you religious.
...but the squash, meh.
"lack" as if something is 'missing'. no prejudice there.
there are no Christians on the operating table, either. heh
a vocal minority trumps a silent majority
i think what most of us object to is
export $DEITY
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. If you believe in god, then to you it is a fact. No, it doesn't mean you believe that everyone else must believe it too or else they should be stoned to death, or burned at the stake, but it certainly places you in the theist "camp".
That's not logic at all. It merely comes down to the definition of religion.
Your saying that if I answer "no" to the question "do you believe in god?" then I'm religious.
If that's true then answering "no" to the following questions must also make you religious:
Do you believe in Thor?
Do you believe in invisible pink unicorns?
Do you believe a 3 tonne fruit cake will, at some point in the future, appear above your head, fall from the sky and crush you to death?
Do you believe the Higg's boson exists?
Do you believe in Santa Claus?
Deciding that something is pretty unlikely due to lack of evidence doesn't make you religious, but is does, if that something is god, make you an atheist.
I recall posting several times that Atheists are WORSE than evangelical fundamental Christians and listed the reasons. It is simply because of their ineptitude at reciting the usual script of proofs of no God, lack of independent thought on the matter, and traumatic stress symptoms that make reason improbable. Even the studied, well spoken Atheists seem to have limits to the depth they will participate. I hypothesize it to be some PTSD, possibly from early bad experience with some fundamentalist contact.
There has been research into the psychological effects of Christianity for various reasons over time.
Some of my favorite was Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. near death studies that showed Christians dying more peacefully than others on the average.
She did lots of other work too and is probably best known for the "5 stages of grief" hypothesis.
Archaeology shows us man has believed in a higher being since prehistory. Voltaire noted " if God did not exist, we would have to create him.
It's built in to us, like an instinct. If it is not, perhaps it is some Darwinian end to our line, like homosexuality. Don't get me wrong some of my best friends are queers and atheists or a combination. I have no problems resolving religion, science, history and psychology, as well.
Of course people care when others label them.
What utter nonsense.
And atheists don't gather in groups and share atheist dogma.
Give us some examples of atheist dogma that get preached.
I am interested in exactly what you mean. Deeper how?
This is a simple logic problem, I don't know why so many people struggle with it.
Atheism literally means "without theism". An atheist is someone who does not accept, as true, claims that assert the existence of gods.
Considering the claims regarding the existence of a god, there are two possible claims:
For either claim, there are two positions one can take with regard to belief:
For claim number 1 (God exists), the theist's position is one of belief, while the atheist's position is one of disbelief. For claim number 2 (God does not exist), the theist's position is one of disbelief, while atheists can hold either position.
Capisci?
there's also the logic that if you don't believe in someone watching over what you do then you're going to do bad things because damnation is the only thing keeping people from doing bad things in some peoples views, probably because that's the only thing that's keeping them from doing bad things...
you'd be amazed how many "god fearing" murderers there are though!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You mean like what the catholics call the protestants or like the baptists call the mormons?
Some people believe in the existence of a higher being yet don't participate in an organized religion. It would be inaccurate to call them worshippers.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
If the good doctor gives the patient a drug that helps forget about bleak reality, that certainly helps. An alternative would be to better prepare the person to deal with reality, organize, self improve, meditate.
Unfortunately, the current reality for majority od the people, middle clas included, is such that all of self improvement efforts may be futile, and the only solution to sanity is to escape, one way or another. Religion is (and always has been) the least harmless, and the cheapest, so this is why governments like it.
Religion doesn't factor into preventing depression in the first place, but only helps one get better? God is a constant in all of this. Since these people believed in God before, after and during their depression then one is already getting a regular "dosage" of God? Belief in God did not change before or after treatment.
I smell a rat. A rat that says, "oh well, it is not just the presence of God alone but God plus"
drugs
psychiatry
To whit, religion only works because you are also taking anti-depressants, taking group therapy or paying lots of money to a quack.
Religion and drugs. Surprise, surprise surprise.
This sounds like the perfect premise for a Phillip K. Dick sci-fi book: take the conclusion of this article and have a book plot where preacher starts disseminating drugs as part of church service. "Scientific studies show that religion works best when coupled with anti-depressant drugs! Here, have a Xanax!"
Sad part is that this may actually come to pass.
The atrocities that took place in the last few hundred years were almost all non-sectarian. Blaming religion for human evil is raw scapegoating, no different in kind than blaming videogames or blacks or gays or rock and roll or women. ~Oh, the bad things in the world come from people NOT LIKE ME~. Here's a tip for you: the bad things in the world almost all come from people who think exactly like that.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
For the same reasons you lump worshipers together with no regard for their varying views and presume that you know what you are talking about from a historical and anthropological standpoint.
It's perfectly normal for toxified irrational ragers to take a pill, relax and find out what you're talking about without limiting anyones liberty or killing them.
Let's look at the word murder. Malicious, unlawful killing or injust killing. If it were justifiable, like commanded by YHVH or one you hold to be in authority over you, it is just killing, as it is justified. Jericho=Justified. So now we must explore the possibility that war is murder, or is it? The President and Congress declare war , draft you and put you up front. Are you going to kill or be killed? Is it on your head or the politicians, back home? Then we must ask, what about the inquisition? Was it lawful? By mans law, perhaps. By YHVH law, NO, it was just rationalization on the part of the Catholic church and twisting of meaning. Biblicaly we can see " what kind of fruit, this tree bears" and see it is not YHVH like. So we can exclude Catholic fundamentalists as bringing a argument to the table. What are you looking for here? Are you trolling for some fundamentalist to support the death penalty? Are you trying to say most Christians want to impose their version of Gods laws on our legislation?
I can tell you most Christians don't understand Gods law any more than the tax code. Bad fruit. What does that leave you with.? Most of those laws were meant to prepare the early Hebrews for entry to the holy land. Most Christian arguments for those laws can be explained to them by a Rabbi as inapplicable to their cause by their limited knowledge. Besides Y'shua (Jesus) clearly stated that if you Love YHVH with all your heart AND Love your neighbor as yourself, that explained the whole of the law and it's interpretation. MEANING they weren't under the same instruction at the Christs time to kill faggots, not masturbate, exclude menstruating women etc. , that's ridiculous.
...correlated with a self-perceived sense of psychological well-being
People who are stupidly credulous respond better to authoritative counselling.
No, atheists don't believe that there is a god. That is not the same as believing there is no god.
That's an argument of semantics, and many hold the opposite view (an atheist is somebody who believes there is no god while an agnostic is someone who does not believe there is a god). I personally find the definitions used on a variety of internet discussion boards (I believe they originated in the talk.origins newsgroup) to be helpful (they further refine the definitions so there are three categories: agnostic believes there might be a god but does not believe in any specific god, weak atheist does not believe there is a god but is not certain, strong atheist believes there is no god), but they are a long way from universally understood and a lot of people will interpret atheist as "believes there is no god" whether you want them too or not.
(I'm a weak atheist, BTW).
Clearly, they need to test against a placebo. Or is religious belief already the placebo?
I'm pretty fond of the YHVH that made the annointing oil recipe Olive Oil, Myrrh, Cinnamon and Cannabis, then turned his son loose with this Chrism to annoint his followers. Subsequently us too, so marijuana laws actually deprive one of their freedom of religion and are unconstitutional. Stick that in your medical, recreational pipe and smoke it!
The holy instruction is that the seed bearing plants are to be for our food. So let's fire up a brownie recipe! Praise be to YHVH El. Great is your wisdom and love for us.
Decades and decades later, the debate continues....
Are people with mental health issues more likely to smoke marijuana? Are smokers of marijuana more likely to have mental health issues?
Your citation only continues the decades long stale-mate of "We don't know, more research is needed, the public needs to be fully aware of the risks. We don't know what they are, if there are any issues for the majority of people, but we're damn sure there are some concerns even if the science isn't there YET to back us up. We should probably restrict the research further, just in case people come to the wrong conclusions with some unbiased research."
If you're down to stamp collecting to get enjoyment out of life and you dismiss that, brother, your palms are gonna get awful hairy!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Your post is pretty off topic, but since you seem to be confused on a few points, I'll help you out.
C) As a result of 9/11 Saddam Hussein was taken out instead of the Wahabists of Saudistan
As a result of 9/11 the US attacked Al Qaida in Afghanistan, which is where they were located and headquartered. It was Al Qaida that performed the 9/11 attacks.
D) Israel lost an opponent with Saddam Hussein, who actually cared about other Arabs instead of just inciting stone-age religionism
Saddam's primary interest was the glory and power of Saddam. His interest in other Arabs was to rule them. He cared for the Iraqi people by stealing the Oil for Food money that was intended to buy food and medicine and used that money to build more than 20 enormous palaces, buy weapons, and buy political influence around the world to influence the UN. Saddam repeatedly killed, starved, neglected, stole from, and abused his people. Look into the fate of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, or the fate of the Kurds in the north of Iraq - Saddam repeatedly gassed them. Iraq is filled with mass graves that he filled. Saddam repeatedly attacked his neighbors: invaded Iran, invaded and conquered Kuwait, threatened to invade and did attack Saudi Arabia, attacked Israel, and reportedly had clashes with Syria and Turkey as well. You are badly confused about Saddam.
I find it entirely plausible that the jews facilitated 9/11.
It is well known and documented that Al Qaida, which is entirely extremist Muslims, performed this attack. It is known who came up with the idea, who approved it, how and where they trained. It is all Al Qaida, entirely extremist Muslims. If you believe something else, you are uninformed.
Remember Iraq and "WMD" when you FALL AGAIN for jewish warmongering, this time against their other nuisance, Iran.
You are confused on several points here. First, Iraq is known to have had WMD - they used them in the war against Iran in the 80s. After the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had to give them up and many more WMDs and WMD programs were revealed, including a nuclear weapons program that was very close (maybe 2 years) from producing a nuclear bomb. Over the next 10 years Iraq was found cheating many times and more WMDs and programs were found. The only reason there weren't WMDs found after 2003 was that they secretly dumped large amounts of VX nerve gas somewhere at some time in 1998 or later. Even then there were still banned items and plans found in Iraq after the Invasion in 2003 such as unfilled chemical warheads for missiles and illegal extended range missiles. The Iraqis had pretended they still had some WMDs and obstructed the investigators to fool Iran. Saddam tried to trick the Iranians but fooled the US and UK into invading Iraq.
Second, as to Iran - Israel and Iran were on very friendly terms until the Islamic revolution in 1979. After that Iran declared itself an enemy of Israel. The war mongering that troubles you is in fact coming from Iran that now wants to destroy Israel. Iran betrayed Israel. Israel is only defending itself.
Sleep well, but then learn the facts.
You, sir, are awesome.
I guess this study really does prove that religion is the opiate of the masses.
We are all going to die. We will be put into the ground where worms will eat us. End of story. Can't handle that? We'll tell you a story about a wonderful place where everyone goes.
BTW, remember that farm your parents sent the family dog to when it go old?
Have gnu, will travel.
Atheism would be "no signal," not "off."
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"If you believe in something that is greater than you - whether it be God or Buddha or Yaweh or Allah or Satan what-ever-name-it-is - you have some sort of "psychological protective vest""
You mean because they suffered from cognitive dissonance their whole life because of the religion thingie prepares them better for additional mental illnesses later in life?
"f you believe in something that is greater than you ..."
Nobody's greater than me, I'm the greatest.
all atheists label all..." which I didn't.
You wrote in the first post:
Probably the same reason atheists label all people of faith as "worshippers", "fanatics", or whatever.
Seriously? We're supposed to think that when you say "atheists" you might mean something different than "all atheists" ?
Any other athiests you want to leave out of the group atheists while we are at it? Perhaps you should have put raging atheists or some other subset before the term, because if you just put atheists people might think you were talking about atheists or something.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Evolution would select for people who are less susceptible to the negative effects of an illness. If people who believe in God get better results, they would be more likely to pass on their genes (including the ones that make belief in the unknowable possible, I have heard it called the God Gene) and their offspring would carry that trait.
Full disclosure, I'm a believer. I am also a scientist. I know that there is no rational basis for my belief. I know that the existence of God can not be scientifically or objectively proven but I believe anyway. The subjective experiences of my life have led me to my worldview.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Just as believers are making a decision based on a belief (there is a God), atheists are also making a decision based on a belief of their own: that there is not a God. If believers decision one direction is considered a religion based on the criteria of making a decision based on faith, or lack of provable, testable, scientific evidence, then the same can be said of atheists.
Your lack of ability to comprehend that lack of something is not something is a fundamental mistake of logic
You start from the position that there is a God, and demand that people say there is or there isn't. You demand that the atheist say that there is a god that they do not believe in. It doesn't work that way.
Atheists start from the position that there isn't anything. You cannot make a religion out of everything that people do not or might not think of. Otherwise a believer in any particular God is an atheist towards all other gods, including them being an atheist of gods they have never ever heard of. If your thought process was correct, there would be an infinity of religions out there.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There are too many potential confounders here to count. For example, thiests are probably more prone to suggestion bias, which is a MAJOR issue in psychiatry. The impressive-looking guy with a fancy degree gave me an antidepressant and a pep talk about how effective antidepressants are, so I guess I must be feeling better.
The linked abstract indicates that there was NO PLACEBO GROUP. They missed an opportunity there, because the real question of interest is whether religious belief affects placebo response.
I've noticed a general tendency in psychiatry for people to publish warm-and-fuzzy papers about how religion or spirituality leads to "better outcomes". No one ever talks about the potential harms of religion. I've got some recovering-Catholic patients they need to meet.
Let me bring you up to speed on the Iranian dating scene... Actually, never mind. It wouldn't interest you unless you were Iranian.
Obviously I was not literally referring to claws and teeth as such, but to the idea of being able to eliminate as many competitors as possible in order to increase the probability of survival and the ability to pass their survivors particular set of genes to the next generation. Nature is very competitive and being able to eliminate the competition for resources allows for better reproductive survival. Perhaps calling this "wrong" or "right" is a poor choice of words. Being able to eliminate the competition by whatever means increases the chances for survival. There is cooperation in nature, but it is overshadowed by competition. I think the use of the phrase "murderiest monster" is a moral judgment on your part. When a lion kills a gazelle, does he/she "murder" it and thus become a monster?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Yes it is the placebo effect. Mentally ill people adopt the symptoms they have learned in their culture. Whether it's depression or schizophrenia various mental illnesses manifest in very different ways. In traditional cultures that believed in spirit possession schizophrenics were 70% less likely to have remissions. Depression as we understand it didn't exist in Japan until the drug companies marketed it. Women in the late 1800s would suffer leg paralysis as part of hysteria, which no longer exists. Anorexia Nervosa didn't exist in China before media reports caused an epidemic. There's a good book about all this, "Crazy Like Us, The Americanisation of Mental Illness", by Ethan Watters. This may shed light on how mass shooters in the US find their way to their endpoint.
Most researchers are heavily invested in their research topic. Academics are BIASED; this is well-known. However they're supposed to have high standards of integrity and peer review.
No, atheists don't believe that there is a god. That is not the same as believing there is no god.
That's an argument of semantics, and many hold the opposite view (an atheist is somebody who believes there is no god while an agnostic is someone who does not believe there is a god).
But what of the person who just goes along and doesn't think about whether there is a god or not? It never enters my mind unless someone starts up with the logical fallacy that I somehow have a religion based on something I never think about - except when they feel they can define what I am thinking about. Which is actually nothing.
I never looked out on a glorious morning and thought "Wow, what a beautiful day that someone I don't believe in didn't create!" I just look out and say, Georgeous morning".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There is no such thing as "proof" for most things, except perhaps in mathematics. When you are accused of a crime, there is either evidence for you or against you. The jury has to decide which evidence to BELIEVE. Some people choose to believe the evidence and some not that there is a Creator God.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Cheers. That stuff bugs me no end. Speculation is good, so long as it ends with some concrete idea of how it'd be verified. Theories need to be in some way predictive to be anything more than though exercises or pillow talk.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The difference is maybe that we generally don't take either serious. The idea that there is someone playing a huge sim game and we're just the players is something you'll hear discussed either in message boards (when bored) or over a couple of beer (when drunk). You'll rarely hear it in a serious discussion. And we most certainly don't think it must be taught in schools.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You know, real science has enough to deal with trying to keep all of its own conflict shit together that it really doesn't have to go looking for areas, that by definition, are outside its realm of expertise. For religion and meta-physics, you will never have concrete verifiable data because those areas, by their very nature, are outside the current view of the scientific process.
I for one, can guarantee that my knowledge of science, and that of my collegues, must be far greater than that of your knowldege of the Iranian dating scene and you know what? In the scientific community, we don't care. We have our own projects to work on. Some of us have a religious background some of us don't, but it doesn't matter, because we are doing science, not theology.
People seem to think that science is this concrete thing that never changes and has all the answers. It is just as vague and ever changing as anything else is. 400 years ago, it was scienticially accepted that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. In the past 100 years ago, the scientific facts on the atom and matter have all change. Our laws of physics were shown to be inadequate. What we knew about biology and cellular structure has been shown to be if not outright wrong, dreadfully incomplete. In the 1970s there was this "new" theory call quantum mechanics (actually prior to the 70s, but that is when it hit mainstream). Now it is no longer hotly debated but more or less accepted. Chaos theory, another wonderful field of study that has vast implications but virtually impossible to test in real life. Even the proof of the Higgs boson now throws out decades of accepted theory on what occurred moments after the big bang.
So, people with narrow minds might want to mock those who say they believe in a deity or some other power or force, nobody can stop them from doing so. But real scientists are much too hard at work, regardless of their personal belief in such things, doing real science. Those discussions are in the real of philosophers and theologians.
Well, who said that atheists can't have missionary zeal? And feel the urge to win the "delusional" faithful believer over to the side of reason?
Personally, I think god does not exist. I cannot prove it, no. I can't show you evidence that he's not there, no. If you wish, you could say I believe in him not existing, it would be just as right.
Maybe you could see atheism as a very special kind of religion. We believe that we should not believe.
In return, what can I say to people who believe in a deity, a higher power, spiritual entities or other things we can't prove or disprove scientifically? If it makes you happy, who am I to judge you? And it seems that study tells us that you're the happier people, so one could almost construct the argument that believing in a god is right, not because god exists but because it increases your quality of life.
But ... well, how should I put it... being able to sleep in on Sundays increases my quality of life a lot more. If they could put mass on some other time and make it a little more interesting, maybe have a few people from the parish perform a short play of the various scenes of the Bible for the congregation, I could really dig it. I like theater, and the material you have there is gold for sure. I think it would also be much easier to stay focused and not just slumber away as the pastor reads a section of a book you already know. How exciting is that, I have to ask you? In a performance, you could always find new aspects, depending on where the actors and the coordinator want to put the focus, the same scene could easily be exciting over and over, simply because you could compare the "versions" and you'd maybe see a new angle you didn't before.
But I guess that leads a bit too far, and goes beyond the scope of this reply.
TL;DR version: There's fanatics on both sides of the fence. They are the "loud minority" though. Also, on both sides of the fence.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From so many prayers, one or two random (miraculous) healing is statistically insignificant. These events get more publicity than cases where all prayers fail, that's why you feel there is a higher power in works.
While I am not a theist, your argument fails as their is more evidence that prayer works than there is life on other worlds and yet people who believe that life exists on other planets, without any evidence to support that assertion whatsover are not subjected to the ridicule that people who believe in a higher power or deity. Because of that, the reactionary response must be based on something other than the foundation of their argument as neither one provable in the traditional scientific sense of the word.
That said, while I do not subscribe to the concept of a deity, I have seen the impact it has on the lives of those who do and whether such a deity exists or not does not change the positive aspects of it on their lives. Runners were releasing endorphans long before we knew what endorphans were or that excercise gave a cardio benefit. That doesn't mean that even without that knowledge, those people still didn't receive some benefit.
You would think that as fickle as the human person is, if all of those prayers and practices you mention continuously failed, people would simply cease to appeal to their deity and move on to something else. Yet that hasn't occurred. Maybe that belief helps them to cope with the dissapointment and move on or maybe there is some other reason, but evidently, it must be somewhat effective. Most likely, there is not a supernatural reason, but why beat up the proponents of it?
In the end, most of what the general population believes about science is not true. So, unless people are going to start their own scientific inquisition to eliminate error, it seems grossly injust for people to always bash the billions of people on the planet who think differently than you do.
MY PURPOSE IN LIFE: Whatever I decide it is. :-)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Your point? The reply left off a significant portion of my sentence off. If you revisit the original post you'd see some word association that was left off of his truncated reply. It also makes more sense when taken in context with its parent post.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
there's also the logic that if you don't believe in someone watching over what you do then you're going to do bad things because damnation is the only thing keeping people from doing bad things in some peoples views, probably because that's the only thing that's keeping them from doing bad things...
you'd be amazed how many "god fearing" murderers there are though!
You don't need a god to prove/disprove that. Just ask any parent about their teenagers. What you describe seems to be pretty much human nature. Society has its laws to force behaviours because left to our own devices we will choose vices over virtues. Whether a deity exists or not, doesn't change that.
Oh, no, I do—religion is a marvellous tool in its ability to transform individuals and societies. The invention and refinement of religions is perhaps the single most dramatic evolutionary adaptation that we have devised culturally, other than fundamental tool use and survival knowledge. It allows for the dissemination of pretty much any set of rules and any mentality; all you have to do is convince people of a few miracles and (more recently) that they'll spend eternity in an abandoned amusement park in New Jersey if they misbehave.
...but everyone knows that already. The believers know instinctively that their religion makes them happy—and are so dependent on it they wonder how anyone could live without it—and the non-believers simply fall back on the adage "ignorance is bliss." While the societal consequences (both cohesive and divisive) of religion may be discussed more often in formal, anthropological terms, the individual benefits are without a doubt the most obvious feature of any gnosticism.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
but I remember a paper that hypothesized that religious disposition is instinctual and a product of evolution since the population that believed in a higher being were more successful than the population with no such beliefs (Google "Evolutionary psychology of religion").
You don't need to read a paper, Springer published a whole monograph on the topic
Ezekiel 23:20
Okay I'll throw a comment in the logic gymnastics, since the double negatives are giving me a headache.
What about:
"I don't believe in fairy tales" therefore "I firmly believe fairy tales are false".
"I firmly believe all fairy tales are false" therefore "I don't believe in fairy tales".
Now what was the point of this exercise?
Of course you could have phrased it a little less derogatory than "fairy tale" when it comes to religious belief or lack thereof. To speak in derogatory terms cements the stereotype that atheists tend to be dicks.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Carbon dated fossils
Actually, that's a contradiction. Once biological material fossilizes, there's very little dateable carbon in it.
Ezekiel 23:20
join non-stamp-collector organizations
Pray tell, what would that non-stamp-collector organization be? The League of Anti-Catholics? Atheist groups are against religions in general, wouldn't a proper hobbyist equivalent be, for example, The Destroy-All-Common-Hobbies Society? (If Richard Dawkins joined the initiative, would that make him Darwin's DACHShund?)
Ezekiel 23:20
I always read it as "one nation's undergod, invisible".
Ezekiel 23:20
The full article is behind a paywall, but there's nothing in the abstract that makes me think the study was double-blind. It might not even be single-blind. So it's anecdotes with charts and statistics, and not rigorous.
Who needs to go back into history to see the abuse and mistreatment heaped upon others by the religious in the name of their piss-ant gods? Just look at the Middle East where the jews and muslims shit on each other over a piece of garbage land. Look at the US where people are abused and harassed at school, in the work place, in public just for saying "No, I don't believe in your god(s)". Religious fools such as yourself are constantly searching for some sign of non-conformity to stamp out and destroy. Religion is constantly being inserted into every level of government, education, and the public view (billboards, signs, posters, etc). Keep it at home and in your pants. That's all we ask.
As for your non sequitur, what do reparations have to do with this discussion? We're not asking you to resurrect the people you and the organizations you support have murdered in the past. We're asking you to behave rationally and with respect for other people regardless of the status of their belief and in particular stop trying to force it upon everyone else. I'm not sure what sort of brain damage you have that equates the two. The treatment of black people in general and the US in particular is a different subject (though it carries many of the same themes of white religious bigots harassing, murdering, raping and enslaving people that are different than them...) for a different time.
One might presume similar artificial origins for the stories in the bible, for instance, but if such a presumption is true, then the real motivations behind contriving those stories are completely lost to antiquity, and so we have entirely no verifiable way to say with irrefutable certainty (beyond what we today might be able to convince our own sensibilities of, without actual hard historical evidence) that they are... or are not... divinely inspired.
Thanks Emperor Palpatine!
"Is" does not imply "ought". The way that something is it nature does not imply that it is the way things ought to be in society. Also, guns and atomic bombs are not genetic traits or influenced by any reproductive selection pressure so have nothing to do with evolutionary fitness. Get your logic right before you try to tell someone what they can or can't say logically.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
A three year old probably does not have a belief in god. They would qualify as atheist, lacking a belief in god. They do not, however, have an active belief in there being no god.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
.... Ah have SEEEN THE LIGHT!!!!!!
(does flip-flops all the way down the aisle)
Only in terms of decibels.
The very label of Christian or Catholic implies by definition a positive assertion of a belief in the existence of a God. You're just being an idiot.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
...It's really silly to say that a person is religious about nothing. I don't believe in a 6 foot duck that brings me tortillas and butternut squash. That doesn't mean I go to church every Sunday and pray to my belief that the duck doesn't exist. I made that up on the spot, and will never think about the duck again. ...
My $5 says that you're thinking about it right now.
It doesnt surprise me that people who think someone will fix this mess of life we all power through is more likely to be fixed by someone else who is fixing this mess of life. :) but on a serious note, belief in god often comes with the baggage of ignorance. sure there are religious scientists, etc. but the pure raw skepticism isnt there. ignorance really is bliss. oh who cares about global warming, god will fix it. aids? just a cure god made for homosexuality. earthquakes? boobs are too visible. its a solution for that problem. etc, etc, etc. the sad reality is that kids die all the time from tsunamis, malaria, etc. only science can fix any of these things, and some things cannot be fixed in our wildest dreams. its pretty depressing. even if we make it through the next few billion years we will die when our sun swells up. and if we move to a different star, eventually (by the looks of it) we are hooped anyway. the cold death is impending
Your blathering and frothing all over this discussion confirms you as a high priest of Atheism.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Thanks for this. I thought everyone on /. hated religion. As an actual Philosopher I basically bang my head on my keyboard everytime scientists and mathematicians, while being outright experts in their field, start talking nonsense in terms of theology and philosophy. Science, by the nature of its field, cannot do metaphysics. It may speak to it and show contradictions to various philosophies, but it is still subservient to metaphysics and philosophical rules that it has set for itself.
Even as a Christian I am still skeptical of articles like this because I am not beyond believing that people can trick themselves into thinking that they are talking to God when they are really just saying nonsense. I've heard some really crazy prayer in my short life and I've seen people work themselves into a religious experience. I honestly believe that, in many of those cases (myself included) it was merely the person hyping themselves up and not some sort of manifestation of Grace.
I mean, the conclusion of this article seems to correlate well to my worldview, but I will still just consider it anecdotal evidence be ause I am (1) not sure i agree with the methodology of the study; (2) am generally skeptical of psychology and psychiatry because they seem very prone to use the z"some S are P, therefore all S are P" fallacy; and (3) I am not sure that studies like these can be done in "good faith" (no pun intended) either from the scientists doing the study or from the patients.
Don't conflate what Jesus said and what the Catholic church tells everybody he meant.
Don't forget Jesus also said, "i'm just human", "we are all brother's and sister's", "the kingdom of heaven is in you". Only Catholic dogma sets Jesus apart as God. He just proclaimed that he found truth and that each of us is capable of exactly the same thing. Remember, the corruption of his words was also predicted.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Tell that to the US government.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
That's not american Jesus, that's the USian one. Mexicans would seriously disagree with you there.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Really? So why doesn't the atheists belief in having science and pills as their wingman work equally as well?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
What if the 'placebo' effect is really just a mislabelling of god?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Incorrect. Agnostics do not believe there is a god. Atheists believe there is no god. They're religious if you believe "being religious" means having an answer to the question "is there a god?". They are not religious if you believe "being religious" means possessing a philosophical framework describing how to live one's life."
Theistic believe correlates with lower IQ and Conservatism.
Depression also correlates with high IQ
What could this mean.....
Believers are certainly well represented on death row.
Does the study say anything about believers in Zeus? How is their mental health?
Your comments are baseless.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
New? Sub 15k UID man.
Your inability to catch memes and sarcasm is what marks you as "new", your UID not matching your behavior is the joke you didn't get.
Learn to love Alaska
Responding to proselytizing religious people in kind makes me the bad guy. And others here told me there is no prejudice against atheists...
Learn to love Alaska
Of course you could have phrased it a little less derogatory than "fairy tale" when it comes to religious belief or lack thereof.
The problem was that any other analogy I could come up with didn't have sufficient variety "I don't believe in THE Santa Claus, but I believe in A Santa Clause" doesn't have nearly the same meaning. I meant it in the Brothers Grimm context, not as an insult against religion.
the double negatives are giving me a headache.
And reading back, I thought I managed to avoid all the double negatives."I don't believe in Yes" or "I do believe in No" don't contain no double negatives.
Now what was the point of this exercise?
Someone said:
"I don't believe in a god", and is defacto [inclusive of] "I believe in no gods"
And I was indicating that the second is a subset of the first, and I said nothing that excludes the second, and that defining the term based solely on the second is false and divisive, when the first is sufficient.
Learn to love Alaska
Perhaps that is your ultimate failing. If the world rotated on your level we'd all be some warlord's chattel. You're much worse than your fucktard nemesis. You're everything that is wrong with the promotion of subject morality.
We all have two hemispheres. Most people keep their consciousness focused on one of them, just like you.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
This is where you are wrong. You need to lose the thinking part. Jesus was teaching salvation unto God. Anything else is a by-product of the effect.
Apparently you don't know how science works do you? Every scientist has an area of study. You wouldn't get very far if you chose random subjects everytime now would you? Don't you understand how science and pyramids are built?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Any Christian should know the only two camps that matter are salvation and none. God forgives those that petition Christ for salvation and truly repent. Somehow, counter to your simplification, I would expect God to call bullshit fairly astutely.
Who do you know that are serious pastafarians were they don't think it's all a big joke?
how about LSD then?
join non-stamp-collector organizations
Pray tell, what would that non-stamp-collector organization be?
Since Google apparently wasn't working for you when you asked:
https://www.google.ca/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=atheist+organizations&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&redir_esc=&ei=Szx8UaboGMnN0AGxnoGAAw
Since Google apparently wasn't working for you when you asked:
Your reading comprehension sucks. You should improve it and try again.
Ezekiel 23:20
More black and brown people die in a week from secular abortion clinics than the entire Spanish Inquisition. So please, go fuck thyself to death and stop murdering babies to push your fucking agenda.
Watching a bunch of idiots jump off a cliff and you decide to follow suit makes you an idiot as well.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Both aren't mutually exclusive or opposite to each other in all respects. I'm sure someone's love of science could get them out of a depressive state, but I don't think it would be particularly uplifting to someone who doesn't genuinely love science.
Having some sort of "true" meaning in life, something transcendent of our daily toil is a very powerful concept. Religion is a very good motivator.
The word "Religion" comes from a Latin root which means to "bind" such as a prisoner is bound. Jesus did not come to start another religion. There were enough of those back then and there are even more now. He came to give people a relationship with the eternal God, whom he claimed as his Father. That is a stupendous, outrageous claim to make unless true. If you don't want to believe this, that is OK. The ONLY difference between Christians and atheists is that Christians have had their sins forgiven because they have FAITH in what Jesus said and did.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
And now you've jumped too, what does that make you?
Learn to love Alaska
as do those who seek to persecute those who don't collect stamps, put stamp collecting into the pledge of allegiance, and integrate stamp collecting into their biology textbooks
very true, and i'm not arguing a case for stamp collecting... i personally avoid stamps almost altogether (except in lively discussions like this)
apolitical: "Having no interest in or association with politics." atheist: Having no interest in or association with theism, right?
i don't think so
atheists are usually very interested in preaching their very biased beliefs (against the existence of god) and associating with other atheists.
a similar comparison with politics might be those who are interested in and associate with proving that current political systems are flawed, but "atheist" isn't comparable to "apolitical"
From wikipedia, apolitical is defined as:
"Politically neutral; without political attitudes, content, or bias"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolitical
The definition of atheism on Wikipedia is a little broader, but from the lead:
"Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
In the middle somewhere it mentions "absence of belief that any deities exist", but that necessarily also requires belief that no deity exists, because atheism is by definition biased towards no deity (unlike apolitical which is defined by a lack of bias). If atheism was about absence of belief in deities but also absence of rejection of deities, then it would be less biased and closer to what I personally believe.
A central tenet of evolutionary dogma is the drive to survive to reproduce so the genes of that individual organism are passed on to the next generation. Evolutionists say that humans are subject to that competitive pressure in the same way as any other organism. Humans just happen to have developed better weapons than teeth or claws over the natural weapons of other creatures. There is nothing in evolution that I know of that prohibits humans or any other creature from using any and all weapons available to them in the competition for survival. From the purely evolutionary point of view then, there would be nothing wrong to nuke "them" before they nuke "us". That is not how we want to live is it?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
non-religious is a non-biased belief that neither believes in a deity nor rejects the belief of a deity... that is why i consider myself to be non-religious
atheists like to argue why god doesn't exist, which is just as biased as any other belief
if you were non-religious you wouldn't believe either way (god or no god)
its fun to discuss though :)
non-believer isn't the same as non-religious, which is a non-biased belief that neither accepts nor rejects the belief of a deity... that is why i consider myself to be non-religious
atheists like to argue why god doesn't exist, which is just as biased as any other belief
if an atheist were non-religious they wouldn't believe or argue either way (god or no god)
if atheism is a religion, then NOT collecting stamps is the most popular hobby in the world
a very popular argument from atheists, but they aren't analogous. atheism is not characterized by a lack of belief in god but an active belief in there being no god. perhaps this isn't what you personally believe, but i'm not calling you an atheist.
or the snow storm channel :)
a fact can be proven
belief is faith based; theists have faith in god the same way as motorists have faith that other motorists travelling in the opposite direction will be on the other side of the road
belief is not fact to anyone
you're simply confused about the definition of such words
it was a play on words in response to a similar comment
You cannot "lack belief that there is no god" without believing in god
that's probably why i was talking about Christians and Catholics at the time :)
i agree with you, but all that doesn't imply that atheism isn't religious
as someone who is non-religious, i neither accept the belief of a deity nor do i reject it... i simply don't have enough knowledge and experience to believe either way
if you believe that god doesn't exist, that is still a belief based on faith because you obviously can't prove that none exist
For claim number 2 (God does not exist)... atheists can hold either position
that's not how atheism is defined or characterized... can you point out an atheist who (second point 2) disbelieves/rejects the claim that (first point 2) god does not exist?
for a supposedly simple logic problem, you still managed to cock it up... keep trying though :)
A three year old probably does not have a belief in god. They would qualify as atheist
no they wouldn't
they would qualify as being non-religious
My $5 says that you're thinking about it right now.
Well played, able adversary. You have found the flaw in my plan. Now everyone is going to mention that damn duck, and I'll be thinking about him forever. I guess I just need to lay back and enjoy the tortillas.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Of course people care when others label them.
i wasn't referring to labels in general, i was talking about a very specific one.
i consider myself to be non-religious (even agnosticism doesn't seem to fit my beliefs entirely) but i don't care if you call me religious or atheist or whatever you want with regard to my beliefs, because ultimately they are my beliefs and you can't take them away with a simple label.
Give us some examples of atheist dogma that get preached.
how about that god supposedly doesn't exist?
Just like to point out cosmic jokes when they happen.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
You are a fucking retard.
They have decided (i.e. made a decision that they cannot prove) that there is no God/higher power.
Come on now. You are certainly correct that I cannot prove there is no "God". But which one?
Nor can you prove that there is a God.
Since you brought that up, you help to make my argument.
I don't belive that the Phlogiston concept oof the Universe is correct. That does not make it my religion.
Some of these people are more vocal about it than others, some are more quiet and reserved. That is each of their's right, so long as they don't infringe on anyone else', and I don't begrudge them that.
Okay.
>quote>My point was and is, if taking one side of a decision qualifies as a religion, then the reverse does so as well. Very basic logic. They fact that you don't want to accept it, don't change it.
Hold on a minute. First you say that you don't begrudge people, their beliefs, then you trn around and declare that my lack of belief is wrong? Some how or another you think this isn't exactly what you preach against? Your hypocrisy is of the highest order. Just because you are not capable of understanding the logic of others does not meant that your logic is correct. It is a failing on your part.
No sir, you do Not have any right to impose your faulty logic upon me.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So you're suggesting that atheists get together in groups, keep discussing dogma, whch consists of repeating the phrase "god doesn't exist.", and on the basis of these activities and the existence of said dogma we have ourselves a religion.
You have truly opened my eyes.
Personally, having read much real dogma, I've found all of it absurd, preposterous, illogical, unfounded, self contradictory, immoral and backward. I think such magical thinking does a significant disservice to humanity.
Having seen no evidence or reasonable argument for the existence of any god I assume there isn't one. Hence I call myself an atheist.
On the other hand, I can't rule it out. I suppose some might call me an agnostic, but that misses the point. I find the existence of god to be highly unlikely - such a being should leave plenty of evidence and I've seen no credible evidence at all.
If I were to be given some credible evidence I'd change my mind to align with the available facts. I don't think that's true of religious people.
As for whether I have religion, I think if someone were to ask me if I were religious and I answered "yes" I'd be rather significantly misleading them.
Why are religious people so adamant that non-religious people are also religious people?
I believe it is a combination of two things. The first is that many or most of the faithful believe deeply. They will have a difficult time accepting that some others to not hold the same thoughts. Their thoughts turn to a form of "How can these people not believe? - a person has to believe in something!" That's so called common sense. But it really isn't common sense, because it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny when applied to deities. You run into paradoxes like being an atheist to all the religions except yours, and having an atheist "religion" to deities you never heard of. It's a logical black hole, to go down that road
The second thing is that people of faith in a particular deity aren't using logic. They are using faith. So any scrutiny of any other God or atheist has their faith imposed upon the logic, which twists their outlook. You end up in circular arguments, and some become quite upset because you are "imposing your belief" upon them by rejecting their imposition of their definition upon you. Completely backwards, but it is a mark of many religious people that believe that depriving you of your rights is one of their rights. We see it all the time.
Perhaps a third reason is that faith in a deity is based upon faith, not logic. That's why it cannot be proven that bogus religions like the Flying Spaghetti Monster are not real. They have all the requirements of a typical religion, a deity, a creation story, a afterlife with reward and punishment. Logic has no part in this process, and it can be perfectly emulated.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The thing that gets to Christians is not so much being put down because of religion, but IMO it's because they always point to the Crusades, or some other travesty that occurred years ago. Yes, the Crusades were a terrible blight on the world, but they had less to do with religion and more to do with power. Nowhere in the New Testament will you see anywhere that it says to go and attack people who don't beleive the same as you do. Unlike some other war-like religions that do that now.
I've not read enough to have a comment on the Scot's. I would have to read up on that to continue this debate. But again, anytime a "Christian" blows something up and blames it on his "faith", he's lying. While I don't believe the same as most of other Christians with the turn the other cheek comments in the Bible, I also don't agree with killing those who have a different faith.
21st Century Renaissance Man
That's not logic at all. It merely comes down to the definition of religion. Your saying that if I answer "no" to the question "do you believe in god?" then I'm religious.
I'm personally of the No Santa Claus religion, we meet every Sunday to pray to no Santa Claus. We're not sure if nobody's not listening or not.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No signal or off, either way the non-presence of mythology obviously can't be labeled a different brand of mythology.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The problem is that a vocal minority of atheists are like people without televisions.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Your knowledge of science is on a par with my knowledge of the Iranian dating scene. Like science, you know it does something because you fly in airplanes, and similarly I know Iranians have some form of dating because they marry and they produce children.
It might be worth finding out. There are some gorgeous Iranian chicks out there. (Seriously.)
Does this mean that religion is a placebo?
While I am not a theist, your argument fails as their is more evidence that prayer works than there is life on other worlds
Actually there isn't. There is evidence that prayer has no effect and no evidence to support it having any effect (anecdotes are not evidence) and while there is no evidence that life exists on other worlds, there is also no evidence that it does not exist on other worlds.
and yet people who believe that life exists on other planets, without any evidence to support that assertion whatsover are not subjected to the ridicule that people who believe in a higher power or deity.
Not all beliefs are of the same quality. For example, I would argue that it is reasonable to believe there is car parked in my garage, while it is not reasonable to believe there is a dragon sleeping in it. By the logic you are employing both statements should be equally believable. After all, you have no evidence that I have either a garage or a car. However most sane people would think one those statements is less believable than the other.
You would think that as fickle as the human person is, if all of those prayers and practices you mention continuously failed, people would simply cease to appeal to their deity and move on to something else.
Only someone who knows nothing about human nature should believe that. intermittent reinforcement is a powerful motivator. Even if prayer is totally ineffective, the people who pray for something generally have a chance of getting it. They usually pray for lots of things, and sometimes they what they pray for. Selective thinking leads them to believe that prayer works and when someone points out that they don't usually get everything they pray for, they will resort to an excuse as to why that isn't important.
it must be somewhat effective.
It's as effective as my anti-dragon rock. It protects the earth for dragons. You've never been attack by a dragon, so therefore it must be effective. Now we're both engaging is specious reasoning.
So, unless people are going to start their own scientific inquisition to eliminate error, it seems grossly injust for people to always bash the billions of people on the planet who think differently than you do.
It's not a matter of thinking differently, it's a matter of believing falsehoods. Prayer doesn't work, the people who think it does are both superstitious and suffering from confirmation bias.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
there's also the logic that if you don't believe in someone watching over what you do then you're going to do bad things because damnation is the only thing keeping people from doing bad things in some peoples views, probably because that's the only thing that's keeping them from doing bad things...
Wait, is that an argument for universal surveillance?
Learn to love Alaska
I think Slashdot is a group of bigots that will mod me down for my personal beliefs" is flame bait, and should be treated as such. If you left off the taunt on the end, you might have not deserved the negative mods you are expecting, but haven't gotten at the time I post this.
No, not necessarily so. Because he invoked the "I'll probably be modded down" effect on slashdot. It's called the anti-mod effect. Once the anti-mod effect has been invoked, moderators, including myself, are forced to actually mod him up.
Ok, now the second effect of the anti-mod effect is that any perceived trolling that was or wasn't done now means that any responder that calls it out looks like a complete asshole, even though I modded you up too, which means it's a counter-counter-anti-mod effect to any responders - which is me - which mean I'll probably get modded down for modding you up and for pointing out the effect of the counter-counter-counter-anti-mod effect. Unless I get modded up at which point I think my head may explode - please do not mod this post up under any circumstances.
Incorrect.
To assert bombastically that there are no gods, one MUST not have a belief in the existence of gods.
Thus, the subset cannot be excluded from the larger set. The subset does not have a well defined moniker. Calling them "atheists" is a crude fit, but functionally still correct. Some have suggested "strong atheists" for a better term.
Unlike the car analogy you used, (were an antiFord true believer(tm) can hold that position independently of being "anti car") the strong atheist has no rational capacity to hold their belief, without first holding the first belief.
Eg, to believe in the nonexistence of all gods, one must first have a lack of belief in the existence of gods.
While a convenient fallacy, that isn't exactly true.
The term "agnostic" literally means "against knowledge." Or "without knowledge."
The agnostic truely is neither theistic (asserting a diety exists) nor atheistic (asserting a diety does not exist.)
Instead, the position of the agnostic is that claiming a god exists requires knowledge. (How else can you insist it exists, without knowing something others don't?) The same is true for asserting that the nonesxistence of a deity is what is true.
The agnostic's position is literally "I don't know, but it is theoretically possible."
It is theoretically possible that a god of some form exists, has perfect knowledge of the world, and operates outside of normal time and space, resulting in all interventions by that being have the same characteristics of random chance, as measured by the universe's inhabitants.
(Here's a little game to help here. We have 2 people playing russian roulette. Presumably, there are 4 chambers that are empty, and one with a live round. They spin the chambers, and pull the trigger. They have agreed to only one turn each. The influence of this hypothetical god would simply remove the possibility of the loaded chamber being the one stopped on. The participants would simply view the outcome as improbable. The outcome is still indestiguishable from random chance, and thus can't be used as proof of this being's existence, even though it interveined.)
Such a being would fundementally leave no evidence of its existence, even while prodding the universe. Loaded questions about why "evil" exists, and why "bad things" happen are specious: I never said the deity needs to be benevolent. Benevolence is not a required criterium.
Since this deity can exist without leaving evidence, it can't be disproven. Asserting that it DOESN'T exist requires knowledge. From whence does one gain this knowledge?
Again, I do not assert that it DOES definitively exist either. That wasn't the message here. (Because that too would require knowldge, and I have none.) The point was that it COULD exist, and that no test conceivable in this universe could disprove this hypothetical being, since it leaves no evidence of its existence that we can detect, being extradimensional in nature.
As such, lacking knowledge either in support or in denunciation of such a being existing, I cannot be either a theist, who asserts it *is* real without question, or can I be an atheist who asserts that it *is not* real without question.
The question cannot be satisfactorally be answered.
I am agnostic. I am not atheist. I am not theist. Don't lump me in with either to suit your own agendas.
Science can be brought to bear on measurable religious claims. I agree though that many claims are too nebulous to study, and religious people are well practiced in producing excuses for their god.
And scientific knowledge does indeed change - i didnt say it was static. Just how though do you think it changes? In the case of using the force to heal or blow up Death Stars, some kind of evidence that an effect exists and correlates with something other than already know factors? It's certainly more than speculation around a phenomena that isn't necessarily even established.
Your approach is naive. There is no immutable barrier separating religion from science. A claim is a claim, regardless if its source. If Bob tell Alice that his co-religionists are divinely protected from cancer, then why can't Alice investigate the existence if this phenomenon? If verified, then why not investigate the causes?
Who exactly 400 years ago thought the Earth to be flat? The ancient Greeks knew it is spherical! It's been a minority view for upwards of a thousand years. Actually it's a good example for you. If x religion says the world is flat, could you disprove their claim or would you instead cede this field of knowledge to theology? I couldn't possibly observe the planet from orbit, that would be an ecumenical matter!
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Indeed... And the religion explicitly forbids doing so. Not to mention that it's also obviously NOT a case of one religion feeling justified in killing another.
So, everyone wants to point to every religious extremist who killed people... But where's the list of people who decided NOT to go out murdering people, because their religious beliefs forbid it?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The term "agnostic" literally means "against knowledge." Or "without knowledge."
The agnostic truely is neither theistic (asserting a diety exists) nor atheistic (asserting a diety does not exist.)
Etymology is a good thing, but history is also important. agnostic is a-gnostic, and was a "movement" against the gnostic movement. Gnosticism ("knowledge" in your terms) was a movement that sought to prove God. One could prove God through knowledge. But the agnostic movement was one of "you don't need to prove it to believe it". Agnostic was originally a faith-based movement within Christianity. It doesn't match the etymology directly because gnosticism pre-dated the term, and the term was a response to that church-word, not based directly on any Latin base.
I am agnostic. I am not atheist. I am not theist. Don't lump me in with either to suit your own agendas.
If you aren't theist, you are atheist. I have no agenda, other than to correct what I see to be an abuse of language with the twisting of language used to have people like you with an animosity toward the "correct" label. The church created the definitions and tweaked them over the years to create division and in-fighting among non-believers. All non believers are atheists, but if they were a single unit, then they would be a formidible enemy, so lets create multiple terms for them and demonize the most inclusive definition. Given that you apparently find the "correct" term offensive, they've done their job.
a-theist means non-theist. Anyone who doesn't believe in God (or any god) is an atheist. Even if they dislike the term and call themselves "Agnostic" to mean "atheist, but not militant".
Learn to love Alaska
Incorrect.
You say that, then say nothing that disagrees with me. I think you agree with all my definitions, but not the labels or implications.
Learn to love Alaska
Again, I am not a theist nor am I a proponent of prayer, but doesn't the Harvard Study negate confirmation bias? The study does not show that prayer works, but it does show that there are some tangible benefits to it for those who believe in it.
This has nothing to do with your dragon rock unless you have evidence of dragons existing. Having a correlation between those who pray/practice a faith and a positive outcome does not proof the existence of a deity. It could be some other mechanism at work, no different, than say, having a positive mental attitude. But the correlation is there.
Likewise while its possible for people who experience a positive experience through their belief system to have confirmation bias, that doesn't mean all people do. Statistically, 12 step programs are more successful for more people than other programs. One of the things they have in common is the belief in a higher power. Again, that does not prove the existence of a higher power, only that there is a correlation. It could be something as simple as anything that forces one to look outside their own selfish center can produce those results and prayer and faith is one way that people do that.
If one removes the religion aspect from prayer, is it not just another form of meditation? Or are you saying that the stress reducing effects of meditation are also just confirmation bias? Why is it so hard for people to step back and look at the practices of people who profess faith in a sociological/psychological way and leave religion out of it? Catholics bear their soul to a priest and that is superstitious while everybody else does it to a therapist and that is different.
People who practice a faith do so by choice. People who do not practice a faith do so by choice. In a society that espousing freedom of expression, it seems that we should be able to tolerate people expressing their choices.
So many points, so little time. I am not sure why you think theology said the world was flat. The ancient Jews, along with the the ancient Greeks (pre-Socrates) believed it was, but the early Christians, being heavily influenced by the Greeks, thought it spherical from very early in their religion. But by the Middle Ages, much of Europe thought it was flat and the catholic church was pushing against that falsehood. So in this case, religion was on the side of science.
I agree that there is no immutable barrier separating religion from science and never has been. However, your Bob and Alice ancedote is meaningless and contrived. But, using your question, would that mean a cure that medical science could not explain after somebody prayed would be proof of divine intervention? If not, why not? I am not proposing that as the case, by the way, but only that the case presented doesn't show anything as there are limitations on science, the biggest being we can only test for those things we already know of or have an idea about. Did gravity exist before Newton? Of course. The same is true for the Higgs boson that was verified not too long ago. But if we never expected there was a Higgs boson,we would never had devised a test to find it and it would still be unknown.
Science, like religion, changes based on the experience of those who came before us. The difference in the change is related to the difference in the experience. Science can explain many things, but there are many things that it cannot. Science may be able to explain how I was born, but it cannot explain who I am or what is my purpose in life. Religion, as a form of philosophy, tries to explain those things. Religion isn't the only way to explain those things. It is just one way, one form of philosophy.
Modern religion is not anti-science, at least not the catholics, anglicans, orthodox, and a host of other mainstream religious groups (there are some though that are). It does seem that to be accepted in academia, modern science most be anti-religion and that is a shame. Religion may not have anything to help with our understanding of science, but then again, neither does philosophy or ethics and yet one would hope our scientific community would not be opposed to those subjects, either.
It might be humorous on TV when Sheldon Cooper derides people who have a faith, but when it happens in the real world it is still bigotry. It doesn't mean those people are correct, but again, most of what we hold as correct in science today, will be wrong tomorrow, at least if history is our guide.
However not so when this comes before it:
DEITY= [ "The State" | "*Communist Party" | "* Socialist Party | "* Workers *" | "Democratic Party (USA)" ]
--
If I have not made you fit to be tied, I have NOT done my job, OK?
You asked a question, I answered it. Sorry for not realizing your question was apparently rhetorical. I didn't mean to interrupt your monologue.
It's fun watching the goalposts get hauled down the field. My post said only, bearing the anaiology in mind, that non-stamp-collecting is indeed an active hobby for some. The followups arguing why that is the case - when I said not a word about the reasons, many of which as cited seem quite reasonable - each serve to prove my point.
By all means, carry on.
If they've already got a stupid mental condition, of course you're going to have a better outcome, because you'll have something you can actually treat them for.
Such a system of belief allows for the Placebo Effect to be fully engaged, something which is not a certainty in other cases.
And now we give this report a big 'ol DUH for effort.
It is one thing to stand one's ground and another to go on the warpath. Just sayin'.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
My wife is one of 7 bros and 5 sisters. Two of each became depressive. One sister, after a 4t child, which was, we believe due to hormonal change. The two guys just became that way as they entered the thirties. But when you a) insisted they do moderate exercise (walking, jogging), and they took up a hobby intensely, (One took to religion, the other to paiinting, their depression diminished so where it passed or disappeared.
We could not get the guys to do anything like that, and they essentially took a very long time to get better.
At the time, they used to give lithium, and valium, during the peak. Sadly the drugs damaged kidneys and in one case caused diabetes. One brother-in-law died before he was 40, from the effects of lithium poisoning..
Yes, giving the person a valuable recognition (electrician, businessman, painter, mother), in what they wanted to do, re-inforces the postive feelings and allows that person to avoid medication.
Exercise is best medicine.
But, again, hardly late-breaking. Read Jung.
I'd grant that uneducated people, which would be a majority during the Middle Ages, could well have thought the world is flat. The best consensus we have right now is that a spherical Earth was more commonly accepted by educated people. If anything people have incorrectly accused the Church if fostering the myth if a flat earth.
On the Bob and Alice example, we'd start with a hypothesis stating that prayer prevents cancer. The first step is to establish if people who pray are less affected by cancer, and work from there. Assuming the prayer group is indeed significantly less afflicted, the next step is to understand why? Barring a mechanism to account for this, science could at least establish that there is indeed an observable phenomenon. Whether that could be ascribed to divine intervention is debatable. Barring any naturalistic explanation, the honest answer is we don't know.
I don't think science is anti-religion, nor should it be. Science can be used to test some claims, but cannot prove or disprove all religious beliefs. I can argue that Yahweh, as described in the Bible, is internally inconsistent. That doesn't mean that a god doesn't exist. Science changes, but not for experiential reasons. It changes because of evidence and theories that have greater explanatory use than the ones they replace.
To close, I don't agree with ridiculing religious people. Some religious beliefs are plain silly, no doubt about that, and that needs to be addressed if one would be intellectually honest. I see many Catholic rituals as being little different to shamans waving animal bone fetishes to ward off evil. Doesn't mean I can't respect Catholics. I used to be a Catholic, and still count many as friends.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
My post said only, bearing the anaiology in mind, that non-stamp-collecting is indeed an active hobby for some.
Yes, but that's exactly why I pointed out that you're making a bad analogy: because you're making a bad analogy!
Ezekiel 23:20
I am in a state of realist depression right now.
Please prescribe a religion who's sacraments involve the performance of oral sex by extremely hot chicks.
Thanks.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
"New study shows that believing you have a purpose helps you to believe you have a purpose."
Belief in God translates to better outcomes, but having a living faith in a living God translates into a better life, in every area. That's why Jesus said “Come to me all you who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest for you souls. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." That's the way to go through life.
Denial, according psychoanalytic theory, is a defense mechanism. It defends the ego, which can be a good thing, mediating a reality that would be otherwise crushing the ego which is without strength to defend itself. It's all academic because the 'believer' really had the resources to defend their ego all along. Doesn't mean there is a god. It means they are better at denial as a coping skill.
I am an engineer and a family doc and an admitted believer, sort of, now I don't know if I believe in Gitchcy Manitou or Homer, I am starting to swing to the Higgs Bosin or what ever, but I do know this! We all know we don't know it all. The funny thing throughout the thread to me anyway, was the massive response! Not trying to convert anyone but darn right if some one has a piece of driftwood to hang on to in a shipwreck it helps and it sure make my job easier!
As Willy the shake said "Me thinks the lady doth protest too much"
Tj
The results of this research were obvious. Believing in god is necessary to be cured from the mental disorder commonly known as religion.
Surely that correlation only exists because belief in a god is a sign you need mental health treatment.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
think about it douche... to be an atheist requires an understanding of what god is to be able to reject the existence of it
a three year old has no concept of god or religion... hence, non-religious
in any case you probably still won't understand, so maybe if i start talking in your language we might be able to communicate better...
blahblahblah googoo fabalshap
Higher Power doesn't always mean anthropomorphic paternalistic personified deity. It may just mean that there is reality in the Universe greater than oneself, the opposite of Solipsism. If one is consumed with experience originating in one's own consciousness, in a self-centered way, and one feels hopeless about the outcome than it might be hard to hold out hope against depression, whereas if one sees the pain as something to embrace, that will pass, that has external causes, possibly, and can find a solution that involves new experience, than certaintly the prognosis will be better.
I knew someone I wold characterize as a megalomainic, who had bouts of suicidal depression. This person believed in too much personal power and in not trusting the outside world to either disprove the need to control it or other solutions than to fight everything. The person really didn't trust in any kind of higher order.
So you're suggesting that atheists get together in groups, keep discussing dogma, whch consists of repeating the phrase "god doesn't exist.", and on the basis of these activities and the existence of said dogma we have ourselves a religion.
no, not really. from wikipedia, "Religion is an organized collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values.". religion is generally social, but many Christians and Catholics don't regularly go to church, and many go just for the social interaction and community involvement.
i may in fact be religious myself, but i'm not aware of the name of my religion. all the labels that i know of don't fit my beliefs to the extent that i would be comfortable identifying myself with such a label.
Having seen no evidence or reasonable argument for the existence of any god I assume there isn't one
for someone who seemingly denies repeating the phrase "god doesn't exist" you manage to come up with some nice preaching. if you google "atheism" you will find a plethora of similar dogma that aligns with the accepted definition of atheism, both written on the web and spoken on youtube videos.
i'm not saying you're wrong, but i'm also not saying you're an atheist. if you call yourself an atheist, you are throwing yourself in with a group of people who also identify with that label, and that label has an accepted definition. if you don't agree with that definition, perhaps you should reconsider the label you use to refer to your beliefs.
i tend to use the label non-religious mainly because i haven't found a label that otherwise suits, and i figure there's probably no point inventing one because nobody will understand anyway. non-religious doesn't imply lack of beliefs, but simply that my beliefs don't conform with any of the various current religious dogmas that i'm aware of. maybe you are in the same boat and that's fine. you don't have to label yourself non-religious if you don't want to.
the other problem with popular labels is that you often get factions that try to misconstrue their meaning to fit their own beliefs. i think that's why some "atheists" get offended when someone throws the generally accepted definition at them. there are possibly quite a few "atheists" out there who merely associate themselves with atheism because of the lack of a better word, of which there is also nothing inherently wrong with. it just sometimes makes for some confusing conversation when different people have different ideas of what a word means :)
If I were to be given some credible evidence I'd change my mind to align with the available facts
i think it would take a mountain of evidence to convince many real atheists of the existence of god... certainly more than is required to prove there isn't one. that's a natural consequence of faith-based belief. there's nothing wrong with it, but it's really no different or better than other religious faith-based beliefs.
Believing I was he king of the fucking world would be great for my mental health, too. Wouldn't make a speck of fucking difference to reality, however.
From that excerpt from Wikipedia it's clear that atheism doesn't fit that definition of relgion.
And I have googled atheism. I haven't seen a "plethora of similar dogma". I have seen discussions of other religion's dogma. I asked you for some "atheist dogma" and the response was hardly a plethora. Again, what dogma?
Lots of things probably don't exist, but that doesn't make such conjecture dogma.
Exactly how was I preaching? I merely gave my view.
If you do **believe** in God, all the fanatics and pariahs who believe in churchs, schizophrenics, will have LESS excuses to harm people with food and other techniques. If you do not belong to church.... they ll have free reign and can claim religiousness. Those studies are made DISREGARDING the SCHIZOPHRENIA of people around others. MIND IT: they will only stop hearing voices, MAYBE, once they are the only Adams on Earth.... and probably it already happened. It is now eight years of explicit analysis of the issue, and some companies (Hindi, Mexican Indians, Africans), have already managed despite all my care to leave me with permanent physical scars from their food tricks. The same is true for many researches I ve seen lately, if you ACK the effects of schizophrenia (invisible mass information synchronization from hidden schizophrenic sources), conclusions fall in naught. _I_ should NOT have hands looking older than my 70 years old mother, at my age, but I did drink coffee in Dun kin Do nuts and McDonalds. Danilo J Bonsignore
Absolutely, yes, athiest and anti-thiest have been conflated, particularly the Wikipedia articles which seems to guide discussions. Part of the reason it's all shagged up though is not just religious edits - who like to move atheism further down the extremeist line, shrinking numbers and highlighting anti-religious sentiments, but there is also the 'athiest groups' et. al. who wish to inflate the number of followers, pulling in ostensibly agnostics, with the weak/strong things, driving their own numbers up. Everyone's wrong. Grow up, internet.
Those discussions are in the real of philosophers and theologians.
If by that you mean in the realm of mental masturbation, then sure.
When someone has proof of a higher power, rather than saying, "well, maybe the universe is this way", give me a call.
Maybe these people are having such better outcomes from their mental health treatment not BECAUSE they believe in God, but because, in receiving mental health treatment, they are, for the first time, being provided a new way to think about their life problems in a way that is healthier than the religious perspective which, although works for some people, clearly was not working for these depressed individuals.
So, in contrast to the unreligious people whose worldview was probably already based on the sort of ideas provided by therapy, it wouldn't have been such a radical shift in perspective, thus, not as helpful in the short term.
"...belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without." Yes, it's very reassuring that the big man in the sky is looking after you, and when things don't go to your plan, well that's part of his plan, so be cool! Oh, and I get to see my loved one's when I die. Awesomeness! This would make anyone happier. "This raises interesting questions. Does this support the concept of depressive realism?" Of course there's depressive realism, it's depressing to know that this life is all that is, and those that do bad, like wipe out a bunch of wealth from people's pensions - they're not going to punished in an afterlife. Really depressing! "If the association is found to be causal, would it be ethical for a psychiatrist to prescribe religion?" I'm sure there's a causal association, but I want to truth, so of course it would be unethical to prescribe bogus religion. In some sense, psychology already tries to find a more meaningful story for the patient, a better self view, and it might be true, but pushing them to a religion is wrong - religion is judgmental, arrogant, and what's worse is that grown ups shouldn't believe in mystical beings. Face the hard truth, and live the best life you can, because you only have one.
check your calendar, 2013 is based approximately on when historians think Jesus was born.
go to a biblical archaeology trip in bible land.
check out how history followed and is following daniel and revelation.
i used to be an atheist for some time, because i asked God for something but he didn't grant it, therefore i emotioned that he didn't exist.
it is like emailing bill gates and he doesn't reply, therefore bill gates doesn't exist.
want to reconsider? check out some amazing facts.
First, gotta love Slate -- trying to use an oh-so-pitiful bit of manipulation to get us to post our REAL NAMES-- or be called Anonymous Coward. Actually, I think Anonymous Coward has a nice ring to it. It kind of dignifies the act of craven weakness and gives it gravitas. It's like calling Slate an actual magazine. Now, on to God: Harvard used to have a decent reputation, right? Guess maybe I’ll have to consider Hogwarts now—are they accredited? Many questions here: Wonder which God works best? Or which one of the 3 Abrahamic religions are we talking about? Are eastern religions excluded? The reason I’m asking is that the Old Testament God of Judeo Christian belief was a real prick, PMS-ing about, creating floods, practicing infanticide. The son, Jesus, was cool though, according to them. Decent bloke. But, I don’t think I’ll be asking for His help anytime soon. Besides, God’s got his hands full, right? Trying to decide which sports team to support or handling prayers from the sick and dying—or granting children special favor. Wait—that’s Santa Clause. Well, we’ve come full circle; they’re all just all forms of magical thinking, innocuous enough I guess. —I mean, except for the crusades and all. But that's like the Iraq war--everyone's sort of forgotten about it, except for the Iraqis. Seriously, any 2nd year psych student or pot head knows religion fires up the same pleasure center of the brain as drugs. But I can already hear the nut balls out there, the eschatology freaks, the end-timers, the .... never mind. Just pray your asses off. I guess it's good for you.
Thank God I’m an atheist.
Reread the post, note the use of the word 'insofar'.
I believe there is a strong correlations between atheism and evolutionist leanings.
Thanks.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Well, let me simplify it for you ... The Theory of Evolution says that the good, at surviving, get to reproduce and that continued survival-reproduction process is where any sense of morality ends.
For evolutionists the meaning of life is to survive and reproduce.
For the religious the meaning of life is to serve a higher power or meaning.
You may not wish to concede that 'survival of the fittest' is a kind of moral principle... but then you would be wrong.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
1) I'm not a troll, I'm trying to present another point of view( ok, maybe a little trollish, but just a little )
2) I see you have a problem with metaphor, let me help
From YOUR God, The Wikipedia:
"Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or wrong)"
Here we can formulate a basis for morality within the framework of The Theory of Evolution. To wit, that the "good" are those who survive and reproduce and the "bad" are those who fail to thrive and perish. In an uncaring universe with no law higher power this is the end of what can be described as good or bad.
Glad I could shine a little light into your world!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Did you not read a single thing I wrote? You're an idiot and you don't have the first clue how evolution works. You should stop before you make yourself look any dumber.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
i think we might just have to agree to disagree
Better outcomes ? How about calling a spade a spade...the observer or medic is in fact observing what he wants to see...religion is an aberration and further, there is utterly no evidence of any "cure" for depression through their quackery without the use of psychotropic anti depressants which alter the serotonin levels to sometimes but infrequently helps those affected. If religion helps than the cure is perhaps worth than the disease. I suggest that a depressed person is merely responding to the fact that they no longer have the illusions of an afterlife, hell, absolute good or a y of the childish nonsense that
religions foist on people. one is a lot happier facing the beauty and awe of the universe without pap...Get used to it and revel instead on one's passage through our organism's temporary part of it and know that it will just end and that is that...big deal...Knowing we are but a micro wisp of energy in a near infinity of possible outcomes is fine by me and ought to be for a sane person. To live in illusion with Gods and demons, rules from a ghost idol in the sky...hah hah...now that is truly insane. The conclusions by these shrinks is about as useful as magic potions..
Religion is the opiate of the people. It's like being on drugs without the drugs. They really needed to do a study about this?
If its lack of belief then here. I'm telling you there is a god. Now that I've told you there is a god you are required to actively disbelieve aka believe there is no god.
Not engaging with questions where you might be wrong about your fundamental assumptions is intellectual cowardice. If you require proof of god then ask for proof. If its not provided then don't believe in god. You can't just ignore the question and claim a position on it.
Again, I am not a theist nor am I a proponent of prayer, but doesn't the Harvard Study negate confirmation bias? The study does not show that prayer works, but it does show that there are some tangible benefits to it for those who believe in it.
Ok, we are agreed then, prayer doesn't work. To reiterate the answer to your original question: People who believe that prayer works are ridiculed more than those who believe that life exists on other planets because prayer doesn't work. Therefore they believe in something that has been demonstrated to be false and that's the difference.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Nobody cares if you believe in God, they only care if you don't believe in God. People only "care" if you flaunt it. Every atheist is seen as being as bad as an evangelical activist, because simply not believing is considered a bad thing
I happen to believe that there is a God and I will probably be modded into oblivion just for saying so. The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.
"I believe in God, and I think Slashdot is a group of bigots that will mod me down for my personal beliefs" is flame bait, and should be treated as such. If you left off the taunt on the end, you might have not deserved the negative mods you are expecting, but haven't gotten at the time I post this.
Actually, I experience the opposite. Atheists care a great deal that I believe in God and because of my belief, make all sorts of assumptions about me in order to ridicule me. The door swings both ways.
> For evolutionists the meaning of life is to survive and reproduce.
I don't think that follows... as AK Marc pointed out, the "meaning of life" is not a scientific concept. Surviving and reproducing is what life does. That's an indisputable fact, and it was observed long before evolutionary theory came along.
So-called "evolutionists" (meaning people who accept or "believe in" evolution, not those who study it) may think there is a meaning to our existence, but it really has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is all about the forces at play in nature which led to us being here in the form we're in. It's the "how," not the "why."
Being delusional makes you less depressed. Makes sense.
Most articles on Slashdot: 90-200 comments
Article on Slashdot that mentions God: Over 800 comments
I think there's some selection bias here. Only evangelical atheists will push their ideology on you, so you only end up talking to evangelical atheists. You don't notice the quiet ones who keep to themselves.
That statistical knowledge doesn't make unpleasant conversations less unpleasant, I realize, and it doesn't stop the militant ones from being militant. But there's gobs of tactless and pushy people out there, in lots of arenas other than religion. Dodging them in all aspects is one of life's unfortunate burdens.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
The tragedy of it is, standing one's ground is often perceived by the person you're pushing back against as you going on the warpath. (And I mean that in lots of contexts, not just this one. Ask my daughter what she thinks I'm doing when I insist she put pants on before going outside. Many people just don't like being disagreed with, and find it highly objectionable.)
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
That wasn't actually my point. Many atheists do actually go on the war path. They seek out agnostics and the religious and try to convert them. One in particular has even been known to take out adverts in the papers and published one on a bus. I name no names, but I am sure you take the point. Like with most groups(I deliberately avoid the contentious terms religion and 'belief system'), it is the vocal minority not the reasonable majority that is the problem.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
Some atheists assert they cannot know definitively if a god exists or not, but that they have seen no evidence to support the assertion that one does. (Hypothetical orbital teapots, invisible unicorns, etc. One cannot prove they do not exist, but likewise, no evidence exists to say that they do exist either.) This is sensible atheism, founded on reason and rationality. They typically don't have an agenda or opinion about people who do believe in a deity. They simply don't share that belief.
You had a huge stretch above where you didn't seem to be acknowledging this group as existing, and I was about to argue with you before finding this post. There's a lot of blurriness in the definitions, and also in how people self-identify, and it seemed to be you were insisting everyone in the quoted group had to be called agnostic, when plenty of them are going to self-identify as atheist. I see a lot of people who may also put themselves into the group above and self-identify as agnostic, while I know plenty of other "agnostics" who are wishy-washy; or dabble in lots of things because hey, there's no evidence for anything, try it all; or secretly think they're atheists but use the softer term so as not to ruffle feathers of family or co-workers, and so on. As far as I can tell there's a roughly even split between the "agnosticism=sensible, atheism=hardline" group and the "agnosticism=wishy-washy, atheism=sensible" group, and the endless bickering between those two groups over semantics just muddies the whole issue.
Then there are "atheists" who jump the shark. ... Usually when a deist referrs to "athiesm" as a religion, they are referring to this latter demographic.
This may be true, but I don't really believe in letting an outside group have priority when it comes to setting the definitions. It disregards and disrespects all the "sensible" atheists you pointed out above, and allows the theists to attack all atheists for being hypocrites, and then treat them all as shark jumpers. I find it more appropriate and sensible to educate the theists about the broader range of atheism, and then say if they want to pick a bone with the shark-jumpers that's all well and good, but they're flat-out wrong if they try to say all atheists are shark jumpers.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
There is NO positive or negative scientific proof for a creator, other than LACK of measurable facts. But MANY or MOST humans need to HAVE a creator to deal with reality in life, it seems. Personally I am an agnostic (don't know the answers and don't claim to know) due to two things. First NONE of the religious books make any sense to me, other than as historical documentation of how tribes did government in the bronze age. Secondly, the 'white light' and out-of-body and other experiences of people who died on the operating table and came back are really intriguing. I am a 'dilettante scientist' who works in technology - not good enough at the higher maths to become a good physicist, but have the 'scientific viewpoint'. Facts are observed, theories are formed to explain facts or relationships between them, etc. This is almost mutually exclusive with 'blind faith' that 'the bible is true' or the many other controls that exist in ALL religions I have looked into when younger. So ORGANIZED religion is not for me, but I STILL appreciate the mountains, trees, sky, stars, etc and am in awe of the universe. I just don't know who's cranking it and what happens if they stop !
Using religion to "cure" depression is just substituting one neuroses for another.
This could only possibly be true because belief in God is not properly being diagnosed as dementia.
Conduct this study on the religious again in 10-15 years when the world is majority atheist (as the trend seems to be going in that direction) and we will see if the tables have turned. I'm betting they will.
From YOUR God, The Wikipedia:
Actually, I'm Christian. Wikipedia is not my god (at least according to Wikipedia).
Here we can formulate a basis for morality within the framework of The Theory of Evolution.
That's right, you can make up all sorts of goofy philosophical rubbish --- but it's not part of the Theory of Evolution, and not something that you must believe if you consider Evolution to be an accurate explanation for the order and diversity of lifeforms (with no reference to "good"/"bad" whatsoever).
Glad I could shine a little light into your world!
What you're spewing is usually called "sewage," not "light" --- you seem to be having trouble distinguishing the two.
The contention here is that patients have more success when they determine what is "best" on a spiritual basis rather than a material one.
And it does matter what it is. A belief in big-foot is irrelevant to most individual's experience, however a belief in The Maker of Physical Existence who wants good things for people over the short span of their existence might be.
Somehow, a belief in a sympathetic powerful Supreme Being might be a little more compelling than a belief that the world and the individual's life is nothing more than a cosmic accident
While I am not a theist, your argument fails as their is more evidence that prayer works than there is life on other worlds
The studies done on prayer have shown that those who think they are being prayed for have a worse recovery rate than those who don't think they have any special prayers for them (it was postulated that knowing others are paying attention to your disease causes stress which worsens the outcome, whether people were or were not praying didn't affect the recovery rates.
What have you seen that provides "evidence" that prayer works? Everything I've seen demonstrates it doesn't work, and some demonstrate it hurts. Without that premise, the rest is unfounded.
and yet people who believe that life exists on other planets, without any evidence to support that assertion whatsover are not subjected to the ridicule that people who believe in a higher power or deity.
I find that to be untrue, on multiple levels. There are a number of movies and other popular media that makes fun of UFO hunters. Even in Independence Day, the buffoon was the guy that ran around warning everyone of the aliens. He was right, and was still ridiculed by everyone, even after the aliens came.
And, if you look at it as someone separate from out planet, we have proof life exists "out there" so long as we include ourselves "out there". Without proof that we are somehow "special" the natural hypothesis is that there are sufficient other planets and stars that it's improbable that life evolved on one and only one. The evidence that life is out there is us.
You would think that as fickle as the human person is, if all of those prayers and practices you mention continuously failed, people would simply cease to appeal to their deity and move on to something else. Yet that hasn't occurred.
Good to know that no Christian ever committed suicide, or turned to drugs, or anything like that. Oh wait, you mean plenty have given up in [diety] and moved on to some other coping mechanism? Well, throw that argument out the window with the others of yours.
Learn to love Alaska
Are these real people, or some hypothetical atheists you have imaginary conversations with?
When I was in college, there were numerous religious speakers who would speak in the square. When "forced" to walk past people talking about the evil of gays and such, some students would challenge these speakers. So, who ridiculed who? Was it the religious speaker who picked a location of note to reach the most people, then spoke to them, or the one, walking past, who was being spoken to who then responded?
I've never met the atheist group that targeted religious people or organizations simply for existing. The ones I know of only targeted people and organizations that used religion as a reason to attack others first. If you'd stop holding the sign that says "God hates Fags" then perhaps atheists would be less confrontational in ridiculing your beliefs.
Learn to love Alaska
If its lack of belief then here. I'm telling you there is a god. Now that I've told you there is a god you are required to actively disbelieve aka believe there is no god.
I disbelieve your statement. I still don't care enough about the god question to have formed an opinion either way. I can actively disbelieve the messenger without evaluating the question they were saying. My belief that you *can't* "know" that there is one doesn't make me atheist. I am not actively believing in a no-God because you created a false dichotomy.
Not engaging with questions where you might be wrong about your fundamental assumptions is intellectual cowardice. If you require proof of god then ask for proof. If its not provided then don't believe in god. You can't just ignore the question and claim a position on it.
Your first sentence was discussing "believe there is no god" and the last "don't believe in god". Which is it? I believe them to be different things. Believing there is no god is a different issue than simply not believing in a god. That's why I started calling it the active belief in a no-god. Because so many people confuse them, as you have.
Learn to love Alaska
The people you're describing have nothing to do with me. I don't believe "God hates Fags" and I have no agenda that involves making you listen to anything I have to say unless you express an interest. Sadly, most people think all religious people are like the vocal few who they encounter. There's nothing like judging an entire group based on the poor behavior of a few. Believe as you will.
I've seen Christian speakers go to town centers and such, and never an atheist. How do you know atheists care what you think? Do they ask about your beliefs? How would they even know if you didn't tell them first?
Learn to love Alaska
Apparently you care what I think, otherwise you wouldn't continue to engage me.
You responded to me before I responded to you. You engaged me first.
How do you know atheists care what you think? Do they ask about your beliefs? How would they even know if you didn't tell them first?
Learn to love Alaska
There are religious people, and then there are people who catch the "religious bug." You know the ones. It's the most important thing in the world to them. They will take any casual dinner conversation and bring it around to their faith. They live every day for their faith.
They drive the rest of humanity nuts, but I have to admire them somewhat because they actually believe what they're professing. Most of my Christian relatives don't seem all that concerned that I'm headed for Hell to burn for all eternity. At least, if they are, they keep it to themselves.
...Or the dietary and sexual proscriptions and general calls to psychotic craziness that most sensible believers ignore.
It's popular because it's very comforting to believe that your 4-year-old daughter died for a reason. That there was some purpose to it, it was part of a grand ineffable scheme. That she lives on in a nicer place now, and one day you'll get to see her again.
It's comforting to know that someone is watching over you and loves you unconditionally when it seems no one else does.
It's comforting to know that even when you die, it won't be over.
Of course, this doesn't make religion any less untrue. But then again, the placebo effect in medicine points out the blind faith in a non-existant cure works wonders on over 20% of people.
But that is the difference. These people were killed by the state because they did not conform. Like how Christians were thrown before the lions in ancient Rome. You may not agree (and I sure don't) but it being an official state policy makes it distinct from loose groups operating individually in a society to weed out all the (non-)believers, outside of any law. Of which there are many, especially in Africa and the Middle East , but as far as I know there is not one with an atheist signature.
I realize this is a pretty late reply to your post.
But from my experience I've encountered just as much zealous atheists as religious people in my life, of which all of them were Christians, Muslims and various sects of these mainstream religions. I haven't met a single intolerant Jew, Hindu or Buddhist so far, although I strongly assume that those exist since it doesn't require education or intelligence or lack of thereof to believe anything.
But when it comes to arguments about the existence of something, beyond mere faith, the burden of proof doesn't lie upon the non-believer. -> Russell's teapot. This is not only a scientific dogma but a fundamental principle of philosophy, which may also be considered a dogma, but is so far our only way to set a standard without letting everyone create their own reality.
Another thing where I can't blame the more educated atheist is when it comes to Creationism. When people really think that the world was created in such a short time and everything was engineered for a purpose and completely ignore all the evidence we have collected to support evolution, then I can't help myself but to think that my education was indeed superior.
Those loose groups are the ones who form a state, once they've gained critical mass. They didn't wait until they were an official state to start behaving badly. They all started as loose groups.
You should know better..: A quick search for Atheist Militias:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant_atheism
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Believe in My version of God or die. Better mental health? Kiss my ass.
In your opinion if you please. I am an atheist and do not have a lack of belief. I simply do not believe in god(s). I am not interested in proofs since none exist. Don't bother quoting scripture written by men, as they are not proof of gods. Religion, unquestionably the most devious brainwashing tool ever designed by man.
I am an atheist and do not have a lack of belief. I simply do not believe in god(s).
Please explain how "I do not have a lack of belief. is distinct from "I simply do not believe".
Learn to love Alaska
How can it be that this comment has not been modded up?
My guess is, some people interpret "lack of belief" to mean "belief is missing when it should be there."
I prefer to say "absence of belief" but there's no real difference except connotation.
So... the article mentions a "belief in god" and then conflates it with a "belief in a higher power". Well? Which is it?
See, this is why these kinds of studies are so full of epic fail: they are using terms that are so ill-defined and could really mean anything.
When a word could mean anything it ends up meaning nothing. That's exactly what we have here, unsurprisingly.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
I'd like to see the results of a similar study using subjects that believe in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus. Might the health benefits be the same?