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Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US
gollum123 notes new U.S. demographic data from the Pew Research Center which show that the percentage of Americans declaring affiliation with a particular religion has declined sharply since 2007. Americans identifying as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Those describing themselves as atheist, agnostic, or simple having no affiliation took up most of the slack, rising from 16.1% to 22.8%. Members of non-Christian faiths collectively rose from 4.7% to 5.9%. Despite the overall decline, the demographics within the Christian group are getting much more racially and ethnically diverse. The willingness of respondents to marry outside their religious affiliation is also on the rise. The median age of unaffiliated adults is dropping, while the median ages of mainline Protestants and Catholics are rising. The study estimates that 85% of adults age 70 and over are Christian, while only 56% of adults ages 18-24 are Christian. They also say that each individual generation has shown a slight decrease in religious affiliation compared to their statistics in 2007.
Subject says it all.
This is very important, because religious wackos tend to be the ones against modern science and technology.
As far as I can tell technophobia is on the rise.
This medieval superstition will die out eventually.
That should read because of the overall decline, not despite it. Being religious is correlated with lower social status; in the USA, lower social status is correlated with being non-white. In other words, the rich folks, who are predominantly white, are dropping religion, which leads to more "diversity" among those who are left with religion.
This topic just screams out for a Slashdot Poll! What is your religious affiliation?:
1. Something Christian-like (Can anyone tell me what the difference between a Presbyterian and a Methodist is?)
2. Zoroastrian
3. Skinny Hindu folks, who don't eat enough meat.
4. Islam (. . . and all their unwelcome fanatic folks)
5. Flying Spaghetti Monster?
6. "I'm a doctor, Jim, not a religious preacher!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
The benefits that faith brings to individuals and societies are trivialized. The engines of media are actively working to tear religion* down: few films in the last 40 years (aside from those specifically built for sale to the isolated Christian demographic) have identified-Christian characters that don't prove to be motivated to evil thereby.
*hypocritically, the attack is usually on the most benign and banal faiths. The most regressive, reactionary, anti-modern faiths are accorded a curiously protected status.
Finally, the acts of radicals have further poisoned the view of the general public toward religion generally.
This should surprise nobody.
I believe people need faith in proportion to their misery. As long as humanity continues to generally be better off, religious affiliation will decline. But of course, I personally don't expect that will be a ceaseless climb, and people will turn back to religion again.
-Styopa
Ironically, echoing what was happening in the Gospel accounts, the modern religious establishments have to a large degree lost touch with the purpose of the law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus (and so on). People need to move away from blind tradition, look at all major religions that have survived more than a few centuries, and ask exactly why they have been successful in surviving. When it comes to the actual teachings, effort need to be applied to understand the meaning of those teachings in practical real world terms. That means not just explaining 'sin' in terms of 'disobedience' to 'God' without also fully explaining what 'sin', 'disobedience to God' and 'God' mean in real world practical terms, and why, say, 'sin' in then a problem. Too many people leave these words as poorly defined abstract jargon, and end up doing the eight-year-old English lesson thing of just formally rearranging the words according to rules of grammar.
For a mundane example:
There is a cat called Gerald, who has pink fur.
What colour is the fur of the cat?
The colour of the cat's fur is pink.
What is the name of the cat with pink fur?
The name of the cat with pink fur is Gerald.
Now look at some Biblish:
Sin is the result of our disobedience to God. We need Jesus because he died for our sins.
What did Jesus die for?
Jesus died for our sins.
What are our sins?
Our sins are the result of our disobedience to God.
Why are our sins a problem?
Because... because... erm... because they are the result of our disobedience to God, and that's clearly a bad thing.
And that's kind of where such discussions go downhill. The above discussion is an illustration of what happens when genuine understanding is absent, and this is all too often the case, especially amongst members of the religious establishments we have today. On the other hand, just doing the atheist thing often falls into the same traps, but beginning from a different set of basic sentences (there is probably no God; science can explain everything; what is the scientific evidence for the efficacy of prayer). Without fully exploring what meaning can be recovered from ancient teachings given suitable interpretation (and this ultimately must be done by first exhibiting real world practical scenarios where the meaning can be seen at work) we can neither hold them up as truth, nor dismiss them as backward fairytales. Unfortunately the masses are generally doing one or the other.
John_Chalisque
I'm not sure how many years ago it was, but I thought Christianity was rising in the USA (I even think it was a news in /.).
Either way it's good news. I prefer my superpowers secular.
Elok
These scary views of global warming and evolution are causing people to burn for eternity in hell for not believing in GOD!!
We need a pro God president to change the culture of this country so people stop thinking for themselves! It is only a matter of time before we anger him by voting for things Jesus did like providing healthcare and support for the poor and sick and our nation will fear his wrath.
http://saveie6.com/
Even if people aren't following traditional religions, they're still adhering to ideologies that share many of the same traits as religion.
"Social Justice" is a superb example. It rallies its believers around the notion that everybody is equal, but some people (such as feminists, homosexuals, and transsexuals) are far more equal than everyone else.
Much like religion, "Social Justice" brings out inane, anti-social behavior in many of its adherents. This often shows itself as extreme hypocrisy, for example. Take the case of bullying. While decrying bullying as being awful, we see "Social Justice" followers target and harass alleged "bullies" with more zeal and hatred (also known as bullying) than the bullies themselves could ever manage to deliver.
Religions don't have to be hundreds or thousands of years old. Religions don't have to involve worshipping some sky deity. The religious mindset and behavior can very easily work with flawed, hypocritical concepts of "justice" to create modern religions like "Social Justice" that are far more harmful in practice than traditional religions were.
I'd say it is because of Christian inconsistencies. On the one hand they state that God's love is unconditional, on the other they say if you don't love God and follow His laws you will go to hell. There is no logic to religion.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
What happened to "correlation is not causation"?
Today:
Evolutionary biology presents a rational basis for human origin, morality and social structure.
In a couple of centuries:
The great prophet Dawkins, who testified to the truths of our Messiah Darwin, receiving this truth in a series of dreams revealed to him at the great fountain of knowledge by the celestial quantum being called Oxford, tells us that we must cleanse the earth of this scourge called 'rational thinking'. As a ruler with lineage traceable back to the great Dawkins, I command you all to destroy those who are not like us and give me all your money.
Wash and repeat.
Why do we have religion?
Religion is natural reaction to our fear of dying. Until we find a way to make us immortal on earth, there will always be belief in the afterlife.
And religion has benefits to people, like giving them a meaning of life or relaxing them from the dear of dying. So although religion can caused bad things it is only the radical that do so. To most people, religion or no religion, makes no difference except in their personal lives.
And because of it's role in evolution (preventing us from fearing death and allowing us to live without worry of dying) religion will persist forever. Every animal with sufficient intelligent develops it. Elephants and apes have basic behaviours that show they have basic belief in the afterlife, like bury their dead or remember ancestors.
Hopefully the radical like ISIS will go away though. They do us no good.
US is the only developed (or "more or less developed") country where religious nuts are still a majority.
no, I don't have a sig
Religion is essentially "I believe in a sky daddy because I'm ignorant of science."
Theology is even worse, take Islam:
"Hi, I'm Muhammad, I can't write, read or preform simple math. I'm totally illiterate, have epilepsy, like to wear diapers on my head and ride unicorns. Let me tell you about Islam where women are objects, female children, much like Christianity, are rape objects and science must be outlawed at all costs, oh and don't think about drawing a picture of me, or someone could kill you"
Christianity:
"Hi, I'm God, I'm a piss poor engineer who has anger issue and love S&M. I put two or one person in a garden, they had children who killed each other, I allowed incest, rape, murder and slavery. I got really pissed off twice, once I wiped out humanity using a fable which no ration human could believe. I then sent my son to die in the greatest sadomasochist grandstanding in history for being mad at my self, oh and remember to give all your money to the church, because I can't and won't ever show myself or preform miracles."
Mormonism is to stupid to even comment on and the same can be done for ALL religions.
So it's a good thing religious belief is falling, it made no sense back in the day and less sense now. You can't call yourself a logical adult human and believe that your sky daddy created the universe and left no evidence, that isn't rational.
Ever Played "Telephone" as a kid?
That is what has happened with "holy writings" over the centuries. What we are left with is less than hearsay - completely bogus - IMHO. There are so many inconsistencies that religious people easily disregard. The input, if ever truth, which I doubt, has been lost over the ages.
Then there is the argument as to which is more likely
a) never ending, all powerful being who cares anything about humans
or
b) powerful beings made up to scare ignorant humans and to keep them in line.
I know which I think is more likely - neither.
My god is gravity. He exists. I can test that he works the same almost everywhere I can go or will ever go. He is all powerful to everyone else too. My god controls the universe, galaxy, planets, birds, bees, flowers, trees. Nothing would live without my god.
So - when any other imaginary being can touch the things MY god does today, everyday, always, then we can talk.
And how far can you "tell", exactly? If you care about technology and science and rationalism so much maybe you should learn the difference between evidence and anecdotes.
Sad to see. Christians made America the glory that it is. Non-Christians are destroying it.
Yeah sure, religious state are the most glorious one nowadays. The modern world clearly benefit from them. /sarcasmoff
Elok
Gosh! Imagine how low it would be if the Catholic church wasn't helping so many of their patrons illegally immigrate into the U.S.
I think over time religiosity will die out, and that will be a good thing for humanity in the long run.
Thing is you can gradually and subtly shift the balance through education (more education is correlated with being less religious), and exposure to other viewpoints, but if you just up and attack people's religions they get defensive and entrench themselves because they are under attack. So it's best just to let this happen in due time, which means multiple generations. We're seeing the beginnings of this process now in the US, and other countries such as some places in Europe are further down this road.
I was surprised to see that all double blind tests are now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives. The average liberal now has a default "affirmative action" position and is racist against white people. This has been confirmed over and over again in studies, one even showed that liberals are far more likely to sacrifice a white person to save multiple black people than they are the other way around. So we gave truely crossed into delusional type unlogical thinking in politics as well.
And porn consumption is on the rise, Kristen Schaal worries that women are gonna date guys without faces (i.e. they will fall in love with the appearance of their penis, not their face), and the last catholic nun devoting her life to the service of others and self denial took up nun hood sometimes in the mid 90's in the US. Your kids are not gonna comprehend what mother Theresa was about, nor will they know what it's like to get whooped with a stick by nuns in a catholic school, because there will be no nuns around, all convents are gonna shut down, like churches later, and your great grandkids are not gonna know what it's like to get married in church, or more like what it's like to get married at all, it's all gonna be booty booty booty rockin everywhere party time and a bunch of baby mommas supported by the welfare machine fueled by ever increasing taxes until the whole system collapses under the burden and starvation begins. And then those kids will make it without starving to death whose parents stick together, i.e.marriage will come back into vogue, and good ethical behavior too codified as religion, because thats what will make the difference whether a tribe or clan starves and disintegrates, or makes it to the next decade, it's all gonna come down to internal proper behaviourvand lack of corruption, usually codified as religion. In about 200 years. Lots of downhill until then, and easy life, for a while.
:)
maybe the relig-a-phobes will calm down now.
Turn on the evening news tonight. Tell me how many stories you hear that at their core is some form of religious fighting or tribal bigotry. Israel/Palestine. Shiite/Sunni. Most acts of terrorism. Gay bashing. Anti-abortion protests. So called religious restoration acts (actually bigotry in disguise). Child abuse by priests. Oppression of women. It goes on and on. Tribal warfare, bigotry, hatred. While you don't need religion for these things, there can be no argument that religion frequently exaggerates these conflicts.
Would you be comfortable around a group of people who greatly outnumber you and who base a big part of their world view on something so fundamentally irrational and tribal and many of whom have a demonstrated propensity for violence?
From the summary "Americans identifying as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014"
Why the fuck are they acting like an oppressed minority fearing that muslems and athiests are making their lives impossible?
Rich, decadent countries always face a decline in their traditional religion. On an international level, the picture is quite different with Islam and Christianity rapidly gaining adherents throughout the developing world.
This isn't the first time that the public started moving away from Christianity. Reports from the time before the black plague spoke of the irreligiosity of the average person and there were similar events in the 5th and 6th century. When the US's foreign policy and economic chickens come home to roost, I suspect you'll see a lot of people turning back to religion instead of consumerism for meaning in their lives.
-1 Troll
Masturbatory material for militant atheists, stuff that matters.
Fun to see people pop up with the predictable, "science is winning" comments, but of course the science-religion boundary is only a small part of the story, and really not the most interesting to people who are inquisitive.
A much more intriguing line of query involves religion re public and individual liberty, welfare, and pursuit of happiness.
That is, thoughtful people will ask if this news helps or hurts people overall.
Thoughtful people would, of course, never use a phrase like 'religious wacko', idiot, etc, so, alas, this thread will see little deep inquiry.
If there are a few of you, here, you may be interested in this: lack of religion in the us is strongly correlated with poverty; economic mobility (escaping poverty, "climbing the economic ladder", achieving the "American dream") strongly correlates with religious affiliation.
And, historically, religious organizations have been at the forefront of most social change, education and the civil rights movement among them.
Wow, these stats mean that 'ebonics' and 'no child left behind', are actually working.
Watch out, the ATHEISTS are coming! They're coming for your children, to indoctrinate them with logic and critical thinking skills. Younger ones WILL BE EATEN!
These scary views of global warming and evolution are causing people to burn for eternity in hell for not believing in GOD!!
We need a pro God president to change the culture of this country so people stop thinking for themselves! It is only a matter of time before we anger him by voting for things Jesus did like providing healthcare and support for the poor and sick and our nation will fear his wrath.
Not sure if serious or just bad troll...
I find the GP's post to be a wonderful sarcastic post that encapsulates the ignorance and hypocrisy of the Evangelical Christians in the US - and the Republican base.
It's only a "Troll" to you because you don't like what is being said. But that's usually the case on the Net these days. If one doesn't like what's being said, just call them a "Troll" and be done with it. It's just as bad as exclaiming, "I'm offended!" It's just a cheap way to shut people up that you disagree with.
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
Not in the USA we don't. Go to certain parts of this country and openly mock religion and let me know how that works out for you. There are several states where it is technically illegal for me to hold public office if I am an atheist. There mere fact that close to 3/4 of people openly are affiliated (at least loosely) with some form of organized religion proves that your thesis is nonsense.
The benefits that faith brings to individuals and societies are trivialized.
Because in most cases they are trivial in comparison to the problems organized religion brings. There is no benefit that religion brings that necessitates belonging to an organized religion. We're supposed to forgive and forget all the misery, bigotry, tribalism and wars caused by religion just because they open some hospitals and food banks which are really just thinly disguised efforts to convert others to their tribe? I'm supposed to ignore the idiots trying to push their prayers in public schools or theology in the science classroom? I'm supposed to be ok with priests fondling children and never going to jail for it? I'm supposed to overlook the continual and ongoing wars between various religious groups across the world?
I believe people need faith in proportion to their misery.
And I disagree with you on this. People do not have a biological need to believe in fancy mythologies even in times of stress. It demonstrably is not required. Some find comfort in doing so (which is fine) but then some inevitably feel the compulsion to try to force their bizarre ideas on the rest of the world. If believing in something irrational helps you get through the day I have no problem with that as long as you keep it to yourself.
Belief in religion is belief in magic, hence anti-science. That's causation right there.
Evidence, anecdotes and Congressional appointments.
"Lies from the Pit of Hell", you know.
I would be far more likely to be swayed by your argument if you were to show / link / discuss any actual "double-blind tests now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives", Please show me how average liberals are racist against white people, especially 'over and over'. There are kooks everywhere, I know, but claiming massive one-sidedness doesn't work with some sort of evidence by a researcher.
Well it's rather racist to believe that brown people can't take care of themselves and must be protected from the evil white men.
Here are Gallup's historical trends up to 2013. Some things to note:
1. The % of those who say religion is a "very important" part of their life has remained roughly constant.
2. The % of those who says religion is only a "fairly important" part of their life has showed more consistent decline.
3. The % of "nones" seems to be mostly cannibalizing from the "fairly important" group, who are essentially nominal believers. The % of people who are "devout" seems to be more-or-less holding its own.
4. The % of people who claim to have attended church or synagogue in the last 7 days has remained roughly constant.
5. The % of people who self-identify as "evangelical or born-again Christians" has remained roughly constant (except for an elevated plateau from 1998 to 2002).
6. The % who self-identify as "evangelical or born-again" is actually higher (40%) in 2013 than it was in 1992 (36%).
While it'd be fun to take out the atheist triumphalism drum, it's worth noting that the thing being measured is religious affiliation not 'theological position' or 'amount of magical thinking done per day', or 'even the vaguest knowledge of how empiricism works'.
Religious affiliation is quite significant, of course, it's obviously notable that substantially more people both can't be bothered to get their ass out of bed on Sunday morning and are willing to admit that they have no formal affiliation(historically, at least in the US, you might not actually attend all that often, or pay that much attention; but denying association was somewhat transgressive). It's also significant for the hopes of various religious groups to exercise political power through organized bloc voting (the 'moral majority', not that it was ever either, sure isn't going to be done any good by the evangelical protestant numbers, nor is the ability of bishops to bluster during election season going to improve with those catholic numbers.
However, it's by no means the case that religious non-affiliation is necessarily anything other than pure disinterest, or vague belief in supernatural entities(probably shaped by a layman-level understanding of whatever your parents nominally believed, with any overtly objectionable parts left on the cutting room floor). There may also be a story about atheism here; but that isn't really the poll result.
In that sense, the results aren't really too surprising: the liberal protestant and 'cafeteria catholic' congregations have been working their way toward being increasingly irrelevant social activities for years to decades now; some nice people and all that; but pretty light on religion, which meant that they drifted into direct competition with any and all other activities you do with other people, without being obviously more entertaining, conveniently scheduled, or otherwise competitive.
The more conservative groups tended to retain the religiosity a bit more intensely; but they really got burned by their flirtation with state power(let's say roughly Reagan through Bush II in round numbers). They did get some of what they wanted, though not enough to prevent disappointment; but they burned a lot of religious legitimacy in the process. Remember that jewish radical who said that his kingdom was not of this world? Well, it'd be hard to argue that the evangelical power-brokers hanging out at the 'National Prayer Breakfast' and trying to get Washington to do something about homos and abortionists do. Even if your beliefs are fairly strong, and largely 'Christian' in outline, it's hard to avoid seeing the liberal wing of Christianity as increasingly wishy-washy and irrelevant, certainly not worth going to church with; and the conservative wing as dangerously unfocused on the kingdom of god in favor of trying to achieve local political gains.
How many people have faith in something as abstract string theory and mock another for belief in anything they classify as religion? How many people will say that extraterrestrial life exists with 100% certainty without an iota of evidence of that fact? I think some people should check that shit, pronto, before they start feeling intellectually superior.
finally we will be left with only true Beatlemania!
The Fabulous Four be praised.
I don't think we need to perform formal studies here. The evidence is right in front of us.
Look at the response to the Michael Brown case as an example. Most self-described social justice advocates immediately ran to his defence, proclaiming him to be "innocent" and a "victim of racism and police brutality", just because he was black and the officer involved was white.
But then the evidence and the facts of the case came out. Video footage was released, showing that Brown did in fact attack a store cashier just minutes before his confrontation with the police. Later on the grand jury findings were presented. The evidence here yet again showed that Brown attacked the police officer once while the officer was still in his vehicle, with Brown trying to take the officer's weapon. And yet more evidence showed that Brown was in the process of charging at the officer, thus putting the officer's life in extreme danger, when the officer fired the fatal shots in self defence.
The facts paint a very, very different picture from what the social justice advocates were claiming. Instead of looking at the facts, they allowed their racism toward whites to overwhelm their judgment. The reality was completely different from what they claimed. Brown was not innocent; he had clearly engaged in violent and harmful activities prior to and during his shooting. Furthermore, the officer did not shoot Brown because Brown had brown skin; the officer shot Brown because Brown was in the process of bringing physical harm to the officer. Racism was not the cause of the shooting, and it was not a case of police brutality.
Even now, we see social justice advocates who refuse to accept the reality of the situation. They exhibit hallmark traits of religious behavior, including an inability to consider facts over their own (wrong and unsubstantiated) beliefs.
There is plenty of that still around.
Take climate scientists for example.
Please.
(Sorry couldn;t resist.)
It is unfortunate that the percentage in the US is going down.
At it's best, religion here has been a unifying force for good.
Unfortunately, it does not seem to be at it's best often enough.
Perhaps the current decline is because folks have so many other things to do?
I have seen bad and anti-science dribble spread across equally from Religious and Atheist alike. If the science is against their worldview or political viewpoint then they will choose to disagree with it. You don't see too many Evangelical Religious folks touting the dangers of GMO food, or stating the dangers of vaccines (The religious folks may refuse to take vaccines, but not because of the risks or rewards, but due to other reasons).
Also jumping onto the latest diet trend, (Remember the low fat, high carbs movement back in the 1990's)
Religion and Science are not in conflict nor are they one in the same. The "Proofs" against the existence of God, are just as faulty as the "Proofs" for God.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Some good news for a change.
people will really only subscribe to the gods of War and Money.
Because superstition has no place in the modern world.
Are you claiming nothing bad has ever been done in the name of science?
I'm not aware of any wars or acts of genocide that have been conducted in the name of science. Of course I didn't bring science up at all so that's kind of irrelevant.
If you tried, could you find good things done in the name of religion?
Sure but almost always with disingenuous motivations usually related to marketing. Incredible amounts of charity work has been done by religious organizations. But this work is done at the end of the day as a marketing effort. Offering a hot meal to someone who is hungry is wonderful. Offering a hot meal and a bible is no longer charity - it is marketing. Doing a work of art celebrating something you personally believe in is fine. Putting it in a church to impress the public is marketing.
So yes I can find good works done in the name of religion but I have a much harder time finding good works done in the name of religion that lack ulterior motives. Good works done under false pretenses loses some of their luster.
The problem with general opposition to GMO food is that it's a slightly milder form of the objection some people have to 'chemicals'. Saying all are harmful is as stupid as saying all are perfectly beneficial.
There are a lot of different beliefs requiring magical thinking. You can believe in any of them, even many of them, without believing in the others. Some of them are even self-contradictory. There are some atheists that believe in ghosts; but oddly, many Christians and Muslims also believe in ghosts, though they already have a whole theology about what happens after death that does not include hanging around on the Earth, causing mischief and pestering Hamlet.
I don't have polling data, but it does pass the sniff test to assume that one form of magical thinking, inculcated from birth, would tend to make the personality more at-risk of accepting other magical-thinking proposals.
The "Proofs" against the existence of God, are just as faulty as the "Proofs" for God.
That's an important point, wrt not making claims about what we don't know. I realise Richard Dawkins is critical of people who say, "science doesn't understand x therefore I believe in dragons etc." BUT/AND there is the other side where, scientism claims that life after death is impossible, and that's a step too far because, going back to the "we don't understand x", we don't have the faintest idea what sentience is, and nobody has come up with a good answer for how to even define it, or for how sentience arises out of matter, so Occam's razor doesn't help, because we don't know what the simplest answer would even be.
Why if you are a biological machine, are you also sentient? What's the point of sentience? It is irrelevant to life. Ants and birds might not be sentient, they are just machines running, like plants or trees, so why is there also this odd and unnecessary and frankly, annoying sentience? Yet if your body was here, living, yet without you being sentient, it would seem like... being dead? Why are we so identified with sentience, and why have we no idea how sentience works?
Not that I'm saying people should believe in sentience continuing after bodily death, I'm saying people overstep the mark when they claim that it must end and that's that and anyone who wonders otherwise is a religious nut. That's just where a scientific view becomes a scientism view, a belief in itself. So, remain open minded.
I'm not saying there is a god, and frankly my best speculative guess is that there is a cosmos of many kinds of beings, humans, ants, why not other stuff we don't know about, but there is NO evidence for ANY of the Abrahamic Gods, none of the Pagan Gods, whatever, these are all just old stories, and have no evidence at all for any of it. Those guys were not the first to have hallucinations nor the first to start a social movement.
And most of the main religions REQUIRE you to believe in a God, there is no way round that, and that belief or story is a sort of metaphor of then what you believe yourself to be, that comes to define what you believe you are, a sinner; in submission; etc., and all of those stories are simply bad psychology.
So yes, people should quite rightly be becoming atheist as they catch up with the modern world, like, if you are not atheist, then you haven't actually really quite noticed modernity. But that also means dropping the idea that we are "human animals" because, that's actually just another myth. We don't know what we are because we don't know what the real nature of sentience is. And as we discover more actual knowledge, maybe we'll start to discover something about that.
The hardest thing isn't just to drop the religious beliefs, the hard thing is to not go replacing them with pseudo-modern versions, like "we are a clever ape".
Modernity can retain the mystery because like all things we know we don't know, we simply leave it as an open question. And if atheists start getting too dogmatic then maybe we start a new thing called, "remaining being open minded".
The word is "drivel."
"This is very important, because religious wackos tend to be the ones against modern science and technology."
Really? I see a lot of Atheists that are antinuclear and anti GMO.
Sorry but this just about does it for me and Slashdot. I have already turned off Politics on the my front page but the editors of slashdot still keep pushing politics into other sections.
Now they are getting into social issues. News flash folks Slashdot provides as much good information on politics and social issues as People magazine does with science and technology.
For those that want this type of crap on Slashdot. Fine just put into a section I can ignore. If not I guess I will have to vote with my clicks. It is a shame because frankly the community here is so much better than say CNN or Endgadet.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
... on the great contributions of atheists to society.
Little things like feeding the hungry, opening hospitals, composing timeless music, etc.
Sentience is just what brains do. It is hard to describe the shape of a waterfall as it changes moment to moment but it isn't magic.
People are people and some in this world who are sociopath's want power and control over others so religion has nothing to do with it. Same with the so called Islamic fundamentalist they practically use the religion(hide behind it) as an excuse to bring their sick desires of power and control into the real world. You can come up with a "Care Bear" or "My Little Pony" religion and people will still kill or oppress others.
So, I see you carefully draw boundaries around the amount of good done to support your point.
Not drawing any boundaries around the amount of good. Their actions stand alone and speak for themselves. I'm merely pointing out that in many cases their charitable acts come with strings attached. Feeding the hungry is not the same act as feeding the hungry while proselytizing to them.
Take religion out of it altogether. Would you trust a for-profit company to be charitable without any ulterior motivations? I wouldn't. Nor would I trust a religious organization for the same reasons. Doesn't mean their actions are bad but they aren't entirely trustworthy either.
But you are assuming that wars 'in the name of religion' would not have happened regardless of religion, while history shows that wars are not a religious based phenomena of society.
"Wars are not a religious based phenomena"? Bullshit. There are countless wars that have been started in whole or in part based on religious dogma and tribalism. They are so numerous it's basically pointless to enumerate them. Religion is not the only reason wars are started but it's one of the most common ones. Religious conflicts are basically tribal wars with the tribes being the followers.
I also see you conveniently dismiss the good that religious people do, while not dismissing the bad. Its nice to rationalize that away despite the facts.
I don't dismiss it, I just recognize that the motives are not always pure. A good work done for marketing is still a good work (usually). But it would be a better work if it were done simply because it was a good work without any ulterior motives. The same would apply if it were done by a secular organization. A company that does charity for marketing purposes still is doing charity but it's not wholesome in the same way it would be if they didn't try to benefit themselves in the process.
Maybe if people didn't assume religion is a root cause, but rather a symptom or tool, we'd deal with it better.
Oh religion is a symptom of a problem. It's a symptom of human insecurity, tribalism, and gullibility among other things. Organized religion is a means for some people to control and gain power over others. Thought I had made that clear but if I hadn't, my bad. Religion is a definitely a symptom of deeper problems in the human psyche but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem itself.
Any significantly advanced technology appears to the uninitiated to be magic. Just because you don't understand something does not mean that it is not real or that it does not have a scientific basis.
Whatever happened to "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"? There is no reason to believe in the existence of any god, so until there is proof otherwise, forget it. That's not being close-minded, it's being rational. Also, we ARE human animals. Sentience isn't limited to just humans, either. First definition of sentience when I googled for it:
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience).
Animals are capable of both reasoning (solving puzzles, etc) and feelings. Not only that, they are also capable of picking up on the feelings of other species - ask any dog owner if their dog knows when they're depressed or frightened, or if they can tell when their dog is happy.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
The language of the GP was inflamatory.... But keep in mind we were deep throated during the last decades with scores of politician calling us second class citizen, or worst. See also scalia's 2014 speech in university of colorado's christian university.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not that I'm saying people should believe in sentience continuing after bodily death, I'm saying people overstep the mark when they claim that it must end and that's that and anyone who wonders otherwise is a religious nut. That's just where a scientific view becomes a scientism view, a belief in itself. So, remain open minded.
I wish I had mod points, because this is an insightful post. There is a line of thought that says that if something can't be observed, measured or defined scientifically then it doesn't exist. I think that way of thinking closes the mind. There is a lot we don't know or understand, so foreclosing the possibility of other states of being or consciousness is a mistake. We simply don't know, as you say.
Science and the scientific method have enabled us to understand a lot of the world around us. Its value is self-evident. But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it is the only tool we have for gathering knowledge. It can't answer every question, and that's okay.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
it's not going down, it's going under. History repeating. Good Luck!
As far as I can tell technophobia is on the rise.
Don't buy it. As the pool of willful ignorance shrinks, they yell louder.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Belief systems and the practice of science are as unrelated as music and athletics. There are plenty of excellent scientists that are devout believers in various religions. There are more who follow personal spiritual paths that are separate from any organized religion.
There is the unfortunate phenomenon of belief in Science, but that is not science. That is just another belief system, where pseudo-scientists believe that things science once discovered are somehow imbued with an eternal truth. The true practitioner of science knows that: firstly, every single scientific "law" might be overturned at any time by some new discovery that displays reality from a new and different point of view; and secondly, that Science as Religion is totally useless when it comes to guidance with any of the important decisions every one of us must make.
That second part is of direct concern to me, and to many other people. These decisions include whether to tell the truth or lie, whether to work for the common good or grab whatever you can get, whether honor and honesty are more important to the person than status and finding an easy way toward personal goals. Persons who believe in science have substituted Newton's laws and the periodic table for religious/spiritual principles, which just doesn't work. It seemingly gives them a framework that allows them freedom from the encumbrances of morals or ethics. But those encumbrances are part of being human, and without them these persons are just shits.
Will
My girlfriend and I were wondering who exactly the Holy Ghost is. I mean, it's not God, and not his son Jesus, so who the fuck is it? I decided it was God's imaginary friend.
"This is very important, because religious wackos tend to be the ones against modern science and technology." Really? I see a lot of Atheists that are antinuclear and anti GMO.
I'm both Pro nuc (but critical of some of it's proponents) and pro GMO, just not in the pesticide dosing concept
But seriously? Trying to equate especially nuc power with religion is pretty silly. One can merely weigh the evidence from Chernobyl and Fukushima and come up with a rational reason to be wary of nuclear power.
What is the religious equivalent of that? I find you might be drawing a line more between Liberal and what passes for conservatism these days.
Sorry but this just about does it for me and Slashdot. I have already turned off Politics on the my front page but the editors of slashdot still keep pushing politics into other sections.
Don't like seeing anything you don't like, eh? Life can be tough.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Look at it yourself before moderating me down: http://www.pewforum.org/religi...
Insightful? It's completely incoherent!
Belief in religion is belief in magic
I'll accept this premise just for fun. There's far too much ambiguity to consider it further.
hence anti-science
Science has nothing to say on the subject of magic. It is simply not within the scope of scientific inquiry. You'll also find that many practicing scientists are also religious. A recent survey found more than a third claim to "have no doubt about God’s existence", a surprisingly extreme position. Another found that, among AAAS members, more than half believe in "God or a higher power".
All the same, let's pretend we accept this as well and lament that our scientific institutions have not only been infiltrated, but completely overwhelmed by anti-science agents.
That's causation right there.
How on earth do you get "causation" out of the preceding? I can't even begin to guess what you conclude causes ... some other unknown! Even if we accept the previous absurdities, without reservation, this bizarre conclusion simply does not follow.
Required reading for internet skeptics
your post is a little tl;dr for me, so forgive me if I'm focusing on the wrong details here.
But:
"scientism claims that life after death is impossible"
Science makes no such claims. "Science" would say that there's no credible evidence of life after death therefore it probably doesn't exist. Should credible evidence arise, "science" will re-evaluate.
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
This is very important, because religious wackos tend to be the ones against modern science and technology.
True. But then, irreligious wackos tend to be as well.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
I am atheist and while I am pro-nuclear power, pro-vaccine,and believe in global warming I am very much against GMO foods. I against them though because if the transfer of power they represent, not about the food itself. No study has ever shown GMO corn is any less or more healthy than natural corn. GMO foods shift power from the people and the farmer to the chemical company. GMO crops encourage the indiscriminate use of herbicides that put other crops and the soil itself at risk. If you don't believe this, try to grow a non-"Roundup Ready" (TM) crop in a field that has been sprayed with massive quantities of glyphosate for years.
This is a classic power play.
1. Sell seed that make it easier to grow a crop
2. Sell a chemical that removes the competition in turn raising yields
3. Said chemical poisons the soil making it impossible to grow anything but said seed
4. Profit...lots of it, for now and the future
I think it's pretty interesting to see how successful the bible belt evangelical plan to get as many people out of the church as possible by espousing beliefs entirely contradictory to what Jesus said in the Bible has been. It just goes to show how effective a good propaganda campaign can be. The big boss is very pleased.
That second part is of direct concern to me, and to many other people. These decisions include whether to tell the truth or lie, whether to work for the common good or grab whatever you can get, whether honor and honesty are more important to the person than status and finding an easy way toward personal goals. Persons who believe in science have substituted Newton's laws and the periodic table for religious/spiritual principles, which just doesn't work. It seemingly gives them a framework that allows them freedom from the encumbrances of morals or ethics. But those encumbrances are part of being human, and without them these persons are just shits.
What's most interesting is that it's usually the most religious people who buy into the Republican Party's ideology, which includes "grabbing whatever you can get" and espousing Ayn Rand-style objectivist philosophy.
By contrast, the irreligious people are much more liable to vote for politicians who push social welfare programs ("working for the common good").
So the idea of religion giving people any kind of decent morals or ethics is blatantly false.
It's "drivel". Not "dribble". It has never been "dribble".
23 down, 77 to go
Reduction in religious belief doesn't make the part of the population susceptible to it more intelligent, more educated, or less credulous. They'll just have their beliefs captured by the next charismatic demagogue that comes along.
It matters plenty. While it's good news that more people are applying critical thinking skills and choosing to discard that which is incredible, it is very bad news that the vast majority of people lack this capacity.
That says something astonishing about our species and the way the brain works. It's also great news for charlatans. Want to get rich? Make friends and influence people? Tell them what they want to hear. Most of them will buy it hook, line, and sinker.
"But seriously? Trying to equate especially nuc power with religion is pretty silly."
No I am equating the anti-technology views of those that are not atheists with those that are.
"Don't like seeing anything you don't like, eh? Life can be tough."
I don't like the direction that Slashdot has taken. It is like NPR has been taken over by FOX News or MSNBC.
" Chernobyl and Fukushima and come up with a rational reason to be wary of nuclear power."
Actually being worried about Nuclear energy because of Chernobyl is as bad as fearing flying because of Hindenburg. Fukushima should actually make people feel good. The absolutely worst case situation happened it was not the massive disaster of everyone's fears.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I don't like the world wide web.
It sounds spidery.
This agrees with military research that shows religious believers tend to make better officers. Atheists and humanists have a more difficult time ordering others to their deaths, or directing the killing of other humans. Religious believers handle these tasks better because they have coping mechanisms they can use to justify these actions in the name of a higher power. 'Communist' societies (they were all usually dictatorships and not communist) substituted a belief in the party or the state instead of appealing to 'olde tyme' religion, but the result was the same: You are carrying out [God|The State|The Party]'s will, and so your actions are morally justified.
When this life is all you have and all you believe in, it becomes very precious and harder to justify destroying life. If, on the other hand, you are convinced that there is paradise waiting for you beyond this life there are all sorts of nasty actions you can justify.
I really suggest reading Victor Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning'. I don't agree with Frankl's later philosophies, but this is a meaningful look into the depths of atrocities that humans can inflict on other humans. Frankl's work helped explain how attitude and belief helped him and others survive Auschwitz. It doesn't directly deal in this subject, but is an amazing account that highlights both the good and the bad outcome of strong beliefs.
I only come and post (usually troll) here BC of AC. If they get rid of Awesome Coward I'll never come here again.
The problem I have with GMO is that its safety is based on the assumption that ecosystems are built according to the taxonomy of biology: species, genus, family, and so on. We now know that this is a very simplistic way of looking at the dynamic system of relationships that is an ecosystem. A forest ecosystem is defined more by the interrelationships between the great trees, the soil microbes, the fish in its rivers, and the fisher birds that deliver nutrients to the hillsides than by which particular species is filling this niche on this hillside. Ecosystems involving farmland may look simple by comparison, but they are actually more complex, and much more brittle. It becomes difficult to even establish their boundaries since run-off may be influencing more than one watershed.
GMO research needs to demonstrate that the change in the genes in the ecosystem are not going to damage the ecosystem. So far there is no serious attempt to do that: the most that is being done is to assure that genetic drift, the movement of modified genes between species, is not too bad. But the GMO was done to significantly alter some attribute of the crop, so how does that affect the ecosystem as a whole? If this new sugar beet is more drought tolerant, then the subsoil becomes less moist toward the end of the hot season, and what affect will that have on the soil microbes, and available nutrients?
That kind of research is not getting much attention. Mostly because it is so damned obvious that if you start talking about ecosystems, then the problems with monoculture become glaringly obvious, and without monoculture there is no profit in GMO development. And profit is what drives Monsanto. Without obvious profit, there would be no great push to get GMO adopted. Its development would be slow, conducted by agricultural colleges like University of Oregon, under more appropriate systems of checks and crosschecks than Monsanto's profit driven approach.
Will
It's funny that you point out somebody else has faulty line of reasoning, but do not look at what you yourself is saying.
If something cannot be measured, observed, quantified or defined, it is AS IF it did not exist.
So take this entity, we shall call it FSM existed, however it was never ever observed in any way, never interacted with our universe in any shape way or form (not even with the smallest of particles), does not exist in any location (no matter where you go, you will never ever see it), never ever left a trace of anything anywhere....Cannot be measured, is invisible to everything....How do you know it exists? What would ever lead you to that conclusion (that it exists/has existed?) without being insane? Because a logical rational person cannot come to that conclusion. It would require faith (the belief in something despite the absence of evidence).
Take for example dark matter. It cannot be seen, measured. or defined at the moment. But we know it's there. We know because of at least 2 simple reasons (that my simpleton mind knows of, I am not an astrophysicist)......#1 Mathematical calculations predicts it.......#2 It seems to interact with our universe through gravity.
BTW are you seriously going to tell me that satyrs MIGHT exist? I am talking about half men half goats creatures....
The default position for a rational person in the lack of evidence is to not believe. It is not for him to disprove everything somebody can claim. It is up to the person making an assertion that need to prove his position.
Possibly because religous persons are more likely ti donate their own time and money more willingly rather than donate everyone else's time and money like those that are less/non-religous seem to prefer. Make change happen yourself, by donating your own time, and your own dime toward what you feel is important and will make the biggest impact. Its also more efficient that way, rather than creating huge government beurocracies that skill and waste a large portion of the money that is supposed to be going to the "cause".
Unfortunately, as that pool shrinks, they also seem to be gravitating towards public office and legislative positions, which allow them to yell even louder, and pretend that everyone else is just like them.
You raise some valid points, but they have more to do with the shortcomings of organized religion than the differences between religious beliefs, the practice of science, and the shortcomings of persons who get it all mixed up, and believe in Science as if it were a Religion.
Will
Or rather, thank God. Thank your fucking Gawd, whoever she / he / it may be. Maybe the US, one day, will even be a sane country, with presidents that are not re-born evangelicals, and where religion is not a required ingredient of the political game.
What's most interesting is that it's usually the most religious people who buy into the Republican Party's ideology, which includes "grabbing whatever you can get" and espousing Ayn Rand-style objectivist philosophy.
Check out this story on npr: http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/...
Basically it would appear religion is in politics for the same reason anything else is, fat cats want more money. Whoda thought?
Belief systems and the practice of science are as unrelated as music and athletics. There are plenty of excellent scientists that are devout believers in various religions.
While your second statement is obviously true, that does not help validate your first statement. Every limitation can be overcome, even being a religious scientist. I equate it as being similar to a professional basketball player who is under 6' tall. It is absolutely possible but it does impact your play.
Neil Degrasse Tyson has a great lecture which goes over how religious thought has impacted some of the greatest minds in history. He also writes about the concept in an article titled "The Perimeter Of Ignorance." As I understood his point, there have been times when great scientific scholars have stopped their pursuit of knowledge because they were content with the "God did it" explanation.
Newton stopped investigating the movement of planets once his current mathematical knowledge was put to the task of understanding how planets affect each others' orbits. This was the man who invented Calculus and wrote the Principia, but even he was guilty of not pushing forward the boundaries of science because he was content with the "God did it" answer. If not for his religious beliefs, perhaps he would have added inventing perturbation theory to his list of accolades and could have introduced it a century before Laplace did.
I am not arrogant enough to think I could keep religious beliefs from impacting my ability to investigate the world rationally if even geniuses like Newton couldn't.
The most troubling causational link he highlights is how the Islamic world lost its place as a center of scientific progress when a radical version of Islam took hold in the 12th century. Over the centuries that followed, the Islamic world went from being the place Algebra was invented to having 0.6% of Nobel laureates in Physics/Chemistry/Medicine with 23% of the world's population.
My favorite concept from his lecture is the danger of Revelation Replacing Investigation. It is at the core of why scientific thought and religious thought are at opposing sides, even though they can both exist within the same human being.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"But seriously? Trying to equate especially nuc power with religion is pretty silly." No I am equating the anti-technology views of those that are not atheists with those that are.
Mighty broad brush there you re using. Perhaps there is a bit of a difference between mistrustying some "science", and outright rejecting it. A person who has issues with Nuc power, or GMO accepts some of the science, just doesn't trust it.
My fundamentalist grandparents "knew" the earth was created in October 4004 b.c.e., no science needed and completely rejected.
Regardless, there are people of all political and religious stripes. It would not be surprising to find some atheists who reject science.
But making this somehow an equivalent between atheists and fundamentalists is almost an end run toward claiming atheism is a religion.
I don't like the direction that Slashdot has taken. It is like NPR has been taken over by FOX News or MSNBC.
Its not like I actually disagree with your assessment. Slashdot does employ more clickbait than in the past. The ceaseless systemd stuff, the endless men are pigs - Women in STEM articles. I just don't care that much. I'll either click or ignore. I long ago gave up the idea of trying to control others.
Actually being worried about Nuclear energy because of Chernobyl is as bad as fearing flying because of Hindenburg.
Come on now. I'll address that odd comparison. Here is where the Hindenburg crashed:
http://virtualglobetrotting.co...
Here is Chernobyl :
http://virtualglobetrotting.co...
See any difference?
I might take my family to visit the site of the Hindenberg crash, where there is a memorial to the event.Maybe have a picnic. I can hardly imagine doing that at Chernobyl. There's some serious orders of magnitude of personal danger. They didn't abandon Lakehurst New Jersey after the Hindenburg crash, because there was no need to
It's why I am pro-nuc power, but have serious issues with how some try to downplay the nasty shit that has gone on. Your strange comparison of the two is an example of just that.
Fukushima should actually make people feel good. The absolutely worst case situation happened it was not the massive disaster of everyone's fears.
You do reallze that that comment is the absolute hieight of arrogant irresponsibility, don't you? People like you who tell us to feel good about disasters are a big part of why so many people are anti nuc. Hard to imagine even you looking at the disaster and thinking "Not so bad, I feel good about this" Probably the disassociation of distance there, I kind of doubt you'd feel so good about it if it happened in your city.
Nuc power can be safe. But not with that attitude. The power can be harnessed. The arrogance, politics, and contempt of people cannot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I was surprised to see that all double blind tests are now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives.
There's no evidence, but it's a statistical fact that people who despise liberals are 573% more likely to invent studies than other people.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What is the difference between religious, political and non affiliated wackos?
Agreed. Once enough of our species evolves beyond faith based idealism, our eyes will finally be opened to the true wonders of the universe. Science is the vehicle that will get us there, not faith. If you want a good look at what faith will do for you, you need look no further than any Theocracy based government and where their citizens stand in the big picture of things. We can either kill each other off in the name of some man-made imaginary ideology, or we can flourish as a species and maybe finally start understanding the wonders of our universe. In the long term, nothing positive has ever come from faith. Why folks continue to cling to it is beyond my ability to understand or explain.
It is entirely within the scope of scientific inquiry. Whenever a claim of "thing X does thing Y", science can verify or falsify that claim. So far, every single time, the claims have been falsified, and religion/magic shifts the goalposts and says "what we really meant was Z!"
Elephants may not be used to plow cotton fields. While having sex, you must stay in the missionary position and have the shades pulled. If a man and a woman who aren’t married go to a hotel/motel and register themselves as married then, according to state law, they are legally married. Persons in possession of illegal substances must pay taxes on them. A three dollar tax must be paid on all white goods sold. Organizations may not hold their meetings while the members present are in costume. Bingo games may not last over 5 hours unless it is held at a fair. Serving alcohol at a bingo game is not allowed. All from North Carolina http://www.dumblaws.com/
At that point, you might as well argue that Marxism, free-market capitalism, and militant atheism are also religions.
Sad to see. Christians made America the glory that it is. Non-Christians are destroying it.
Hey, man, don't blame it on us!! Those fuckers that wanted freedom of religion, in the first place. We were more than happy to oblige.
If one of them (religions) was right, they would have won by now!!
You can't start at the end.
Our best tool for understanding is scientific process, not jumping to wild conclusions. Religion makes grandiose claims with absolutely no evidence to back it up other than their scripture. That is anti-science.
I wonder what the numbers would be if "Progressivism" were also counted as a religion, rather than JUST a philosophy or political affilication? B-)
Think about it: It claims to prescribe what behavior is good or bad, generally expects its adherents to take its pronouncements on faith, and has a lot to say against various religions - just like ("other") competing religions do to their opponents.
I could go on with the similarities. But since they include suppression of competing ideas by pretty much any available mechanism (including arbitrary down-moderation, personal attacks, and flame wars), I'd prefer to keep the discussion light.
They're not alone in this, either. (c.f. any of several political philosophies, right, left, libertarian, authoritarian, moderate, ...) But they're my current candidate for the largest not-advertised-as-religion-religion at the moment. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
One of those groups can generally defend itself from those that would take from them and the other wants other people to have just enough so that they don't try to take away from them.
And with a wave of your magic wand you ignore all moderate and liberal religious people because of loudmouths in the republican party. And swoosh it goes back again ascribing morality ex nihilo to athiests everywhere. Then a tap on the hat and a rabbit and your conclusion appear. Such magic.
Religious wackos delegate their ethical decision making to some scripture that cannot be questioned or examined critically.
Have gnu, will travel.
What's the point of sentience? It is irrelevant to life
Sentience is what you get if you make a realistic model of the world around you, and yourself in it, with the capability to run complicated what-if scenarios on it, like "if I throw a rock at that bear, it'll probably charge me, but I will be able to escape through that narrow cave entrance if I run fast enough". It helps survival, so it is crucial to life.
But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it is the only tool we have for gathering knowledge. It can't answer every question, and that's okay.
Yes, it is the only tool. Other tools can provide answers, but not knowledge. Knowledge can be used to make predictions, and predictions are testable, and therefore fall in the realm of science. If your answers can't be used to make predictions, they are not useful, and they might as well not exist.
Awww, some 1-hour got offended!
Belief in religion is belief in magic, hence anti-science. That's causation right there.
Oh the irony of that statement.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Far as I know modern science has neither proven nor dis proven existence of .
Until we find that rock stamped "Made By God", I'll trust science.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
NOPE, NOPE, NOPE!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Persons who believe in science have substituted Newton's laws and the periodic table for religious/spiritual principles, which just doesn't work. It seemingly gives them a framework that allows them freedom from the encumbrances of morals or ethics. But those encumbrances are part of being human, and without them these persons are just shits.
That's an awfully broad brush you're using there, Will. Are all religious persons this narrow minded? Do you see what I did there?
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
There is a lot we don't know or understand, so foreclosing the possibility of other states of being or consciousness is a mistake. We simply don't know, as you say.
Cannot be measured, is invisible to everything....How do you know it exists? What would ever lead you to that conclusion (that it exists/has existed?) without being insane?
You rebutted a statement he didn't make.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If you believe for a second "aliens" for religious explanations, which is more plausible, beings that could exist and are far more advanced vs omnipotent being.
At least with aliens it's not magic as science, with the omnipotent being it's magic.
I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was.
I'd be more inclined to believe aliens.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
This study is one small indication for why I argue against those who claim that the country has shifted right - when popular media itself, as a reflection of society, indicates the opposite. At least in terms of religion, this study suggests.. well, I'm not sure it suggests a move left, but it sure doesn't suggest a move to the right. I think those who are fanatically religious are just more shrill than they used to be and stand out more.
As an agnostic, I think this study is a good sign. Religion and government do not make good bedfellows. Religion should be a personal thing if anything. I'm wary of large, organized religion particularly.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
We don't have a complete theory of gravity. What if it turns out to be magic? /s
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
Check the Stainless Steel Rat series...
In that story, the protagonist was atheist. The cohort was amazed that he took the time to move the sleeping people out of the way instead of drive over them...
"Since I don't believe in an afterlife, I will not shorten someone's life"
I oppose GMOs not because "chemicals" or "nature." I oppose GMO because I don't believe it is society's best interest to have a food supply controlled by corporations. I also worry about biodiversity, the sustainability of modern agriculture, and concern over the overuse of pesticides.
Hard-core believers of anything are a problem and they will kill/maim/terrorize because only they know what is right. It could be any cause, like breast feeding, and some morons will take it too far. My sister-in-law was getting phone calls from breast feeding loonies because her body wasn't capable of producing freaking milk.
I've seen anti-war demonstrators beat the shit out of a soldier. What kind of insanity is that?
Damn, I can't give you mod points, but you nailed it. An awful lot of the poeple out there decrying "haters" seem more hate-filled than anyone else, they can't seem to differentiate between hate and basic disagreement with their SJW views.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Humans make decision based on emotion and then try to rationalize those decisions. Religion is a great way to rationalize doing all sorts of things But even if there were no religion, people would find other ways to rationalize whatever they do (including wars, genocide, etc.). Speaking as a non-religious person, I think religion takes some criticism which should more likely be directed at faulty human nature.
"Nuc power can be safe. But not with that attitude. The power can be harnessed. The arrogance, politics, and contempt of people cannot."
Sigh....
No, Chernobyl was a disasters waiting to happen. It lacked a containment building and the design allowed for a thermal runaway reaction.
AKA as different from a modern western reactor as a 777 is from the Hindenberg.
BTW I live with a Western Nuclear reactor in my town. You are right that disasters just that a disaster and are not good. Fukushima was the worst case aka a total loss of cooling but did have the large scale results that many anti nuclear folks by.
"But making this somehow an equivalent between atheists and fundamentalists is almost an end run toward claiming atheism is a religion."
Funny but it sure does look like one more and more. The joy in spreading the belief system, sense of superiority, the joy of seeing more "converts" that is see in many replies to this all look like the worst behaviour of civil religious people.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You should find a country founded on atheism to test your theory in...
I'll wait while you find a country founded on atheism. Good luck with that.
Mostly the comments here are from people who are butt-hurt because christians don't approve of their life style. This leads to some weird fixation where atheists are really focused on christianity, almost more so than most christians.
I don't have polling data, but it does pass the sniff test to assume that one form of magical thinking, inculcated from birth, would tend to make the personality more at-risk of accepting other magical-thinking proposals.
Well, there are some studies which suggest what you say is true, but there are other scientists and psychologists who have claimed that supernatural beliefs and superstitions are "hard-wired" into humanity. Many anthropologists have argued that some sort of supernatural beliefs were necessary for the foundation of complex societies, but there's disagreement about the exact role or types of beliefs and their effects.
On the other hand, regardless of upbringing, there seem to be specific psychological traits that are highly correlated with religiosity, such as lower intelligence or various personality traits. There have been literally hundreds of studies on this stuff, and your proposal that various superstitious thinking may be related to and/or substituting for religious thinking has been studied for close to 40 years.
There seem to be no clear answers and a lot of contradictory studies about whether paranormal/supernatural beliefs are basically innate or mostly affected by psychological traits or intelligence, or whether nurturing children affects those tendencies in significant ways.
The only thing I can say is that people have believed weird nonsense throughout history, and even if you expunge various myths and bogey men, people will find other weird nonsense to believe -- whether it's aliens or conspiracy theories or whatever. You can even look at demographic stats and polls for other countries -- participation in institutional religion is very low in Europe, and many countries have relatively high numbers there of people who are nominally atheists, but various other types of occult and superstitious elements are exceptionally popular.
Bottom line: decreasing religious indoctrination of youth may have some impact on overall belief in "magical thinking," but many people will still find various weird things to buy into as adults. Aside from natural cognitive tendencies of humans to "ascribe meaning" to random or natural phenomena and such, religion is historically about defining social groups as well as beliefs, and there's a lot of evidence that people will buy into all kinds of weird crap if it seems like the stuff that most of the people around them are into.
The less people believe in their imaginary sky fairies the better... better for science and rational policy making as well.
Plus, I'm kind of pulling for The Flying Spaghetti Monster... cause HE IS the real deal you know...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
every single scientific "law" might be overturned at any time by some new discovery that displays reality from a new and different point of view
You're confusing laws and theories. Laws describe what things do, with no concern for how that is accomplished. For example, Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation: F = G(m1*m2/r^2)
This accurately describes what the gravitational force is between two masses, but you're not going to see anything about gravity waves or gravitons or gravity elves in there - there's no "how". For this to be overturned, you'd have to contradict all of mankind's collected observational data on the subject, where everything we've ever observed has turned out to be affected by gravity according to that formula.
Theories are our attempts to explain the "how" - and are subject to correction, reinterpretation, and refinement constantly.
Like what exactly? And please, not astrological-like vague crap, I mean actual specifics?
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
I had to take a double take as I first read the summary title as "Religious Affliction Shrinking In the US".
The World Ends Tomorrow and YOU MAY DIE!
"Bob" has all the answers to questions you never even thought to ask!
THE CONSPIRACY!
The idea that America (or any country) values individuality as the highest ideal is a myth. Perhaps in simpler times it was true, but no MODERN industrial society can really afford a population of unpredictables. This is not surprising -- the long history of our cult's persecution by the Conspiracy goes back for generations untold, and indeed there are signs of their hoary repression of prehuman SubGenii dating from BEFORE "man's" appearance on Earth. All of civilization's painful and misguided climb up from the primeval slime, and its subsequent loss of Slack AND OF ANY CLASS AT ALL, has been indelibly marked, nay, ENTIRELY MOTIVATED, by the aeons- bridging conflict between the Conspiracy's mindlessly chickenshit Witless Principals and the Jehovah-spawned, grandiose depravity of the superior yet ethnically all-encompassing race of latent SubGeniuses. (You should know this -- YOU WERE/WILL BE THERE IN THE BEFORELIFE!) The fact that only in recent years has "our kind" begun to recognize our own sovereignty demonstrates both how vicious have been Their efforts at further denying us Slack and yet now near is our race to TRIUMPH.
All this is ULTIMATE PROOF that Jehovah 1 has not only promoted the SubGenius as His Special Tool, but has SIMULTANEOUSLY pulled the strings which make THEM endarken Themselves with their hereditary ignorance AND US with their cubistic witch-hunt superstitions. His "reason" for this two-faced obedience-school programming, this fissioning of history into binary "war equations," unfortunately, or, perhaps, thankfully, remains at total mystery.
But Jehovah 1 is not alone in His cosmic meddling, for Earth has been periodically visited for thousands of years by BENEVOLENT ALIENS of such technical and psychic superiority that their powers, while no match for Jehovah's, are nonetheless nothing short of "Godlike" to we roaches, the Human Race. These BENIGN SPACE MONSTERS, the "X-ists," have walked among us throughout history, investigating and sometimes resisting the subatomically-pervading presence of Jehovah 1. We are not, then, alone in our battle/subservience. The rise and "fall" of Atlantis, the erection of the Pyramids and other monuments which NO SLOPEHEADS ALONE COULD BUILD, the miracles of the Old Testament, all these and more are events so inextricably interwoven with the invisible background war between Jehovah and the Xists that all the "Ancient Astronaut" fossils in the world furnish only the barest of clues. (The movie rights ALONE to these gut-splitting tales of reincarnancient history are worth MILLIONS!) Yea, it has even been suggested that the Carpenter of Nazareth himself, God Jr., Jesus 'What, Me Worry?' Christ, was in actuality a 'space detective' of the Xists, walking the Earth in human form with the mission of extricating us from the Monster God's grip.
The black shadow of the Conspiracy, unfortunately, has seen to it that even His teachings were diluted and distorted until human attempts to follow them were fully as misguided as the carving of the heads of Easter Island or the 'runways' of Nazca.
And so the true history of the SubGenius has been kept secret from Man. For Jehovah 1 is to the Xists and Us what a hungry fisherman is to a prize fish and his favorite pet worm - the last in the can. How many million other races were used before us in these ghastly galactic water-sports?
UNTIL NOW!!
For YOU are lucky enough to "live" in the End Times when the Word of Jehovah's Prime Ordinance has been made known to "Man"kind by the Primanimal SubGenius, the High Epopt of the Church!
In the early Fifties an industrious young American drilling equipment salesman, while watching late-night TV, was abruptly REMOVED and transported astrally to the 'IDGE' of JEHOVAH 1 HIMSELF! In this s
People voting to rob other people at gun-point (which is how taxes are collected) to pay for something, they themselves consider worthwhile are not "charitable" and driven not by ethics, but by simple greed: "I want a better road, I can not pay for it — ergo, I'll vote for forcing others to pay it for instead." It is so blatant, whenever a poor person speaks out against such "spreading the wealth around", he is accosted as "an idiot" acting against "his own interests". These arguments and accusations are proof, that the accusers' own motivation is not ethical, but egoistic, greed and envy — and that they are stupefied to find somebody else not sharing them.
Whereas the "grabbing whatever you can get" Republicans are happy to limit the "grabbing", to what's rightfully theirs, Illiberals aren't satisfied with such restrictions...
Your generalized hand-waving in support of this conclusion hereby destroyed, do you have anything better to offer as evidence?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Whatever happened to "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"? There is no reason to believe...
...that last word I quoted, it is the source of your conundrum. There is a difference between faith (assuming something that cannot be proven empirically) and fact (knowing something to be true based on proofs or observation.)
Or, put in another way, faith (which you refer to as belief) should have no - repeat, no - place in scientific result or process. Science has no room for faith, as faith is antithetical to what science is or how it works. This is because if you hold faith to be acceptable as scientific proof in whole or in part, then science is no longer science - it becomes religion.
Religion on the other hand has room for both faith and fact - see also clergymen such as Gregor Mendel (the Catholic monk who invented Genetics), Georges LeMaître (the Catholic priest who came up with the universe origin theory now known as The Big Bang), Isaac Newton (though not an official clergyman, he was fervently devout), et al. Most of the founding fathers of scientific process, inquiry, and theories were either clergymen or quite devout (e.g. Isaac Newton, Copernicus, Charles Darwin, etc). This is because a successful religion considers scientific inquiry as a means to better understand how God engineered the universe we live in, and is willing (and let's face it, quite able) to reconcile any supposed differences.
That last sentence brings up one other bit: I dearly wish folks would stop conflating *all* religion with the fringe pack of heretical nutcases who think the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or that Noah walked with dinosaurs... it's a dishonest and stupid comparison.
As for animals and feelings, sure - there are lots of semi-sentient species out there. Trying to prove they have a soul is going to be quite tough to do, considering that the existence of a soul is based (at least at this time) firmly in belief (though not for lack of trying to prove the existence of one by various folks throughout the 20th Century... I think someone even tried to literally weigh it.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"therefore it probably doesn't exist"
Science wouldn't assume that since there isn't any evidence that supports that conclusion. It would remain an unanswered question and possibly an unscientific question as long as there is no way to observe/test the question.
The "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" rule is merely a means to simplify thinking about problems. It isn't a physical law or a bound of reality. There is nothing preventing the existence of complexity.
It is also a subjective rule. You are defining what is "extraordinary" based on your own view of the issue, mostly because you believe that "no deity" is less extraordinary than "one or more deities". Historically, however, that actually puts you firmly in the minority.
There are other people who believe the idea that the universe came into being *without* a deity would be an extraordinary concept.
Which one of you are correct? I have no idea. You're both stipulating something based on your own tastes.
Neither of you can "prove" or "disprove" an entity that is
a) defined as the arbiter of reality itself and;
b) does not wish to be tested outside of direct revelation.
You can't falsify a hypothesis that you can't design an experiment to test. That does *not* mean that the hypothesis is incorrect (or correct), merely that you lack the capability to prove it.
In the end, science is a useful tool that should not be lightly challenged on ground where it can deal with experimental data.
However, discussions about deities is where science is not at all on firm ground. That's why I can listen to smart people like Dawkins and despite the fact that I know they are good scientists, I don't see them as any more qualified to discuss the existence of deities than anyone else. It is just to their taste to believe otherwise and they can make arguments all day, but they've got no more actual proof of their assertion than the Pope has of his.
They won't go quietly, that's for certain. They're going to try to put a stop to things they don't like. They may find more success in some places than others, but overall, scientific and technological progress doesn't stop. If one country tries to dig in its heels, someone else is going to keep forging ahead, and gain an advantage over that country. They're not going to win, not on their terms.
In the longer term, they largely face two choices - adapt, or withdraw from society. I think you'll see a lot of groups, especially smaller ones, picking the latter route, a la the Amish. Larger ones, such as the Catholic Church, or the LDS Church, will probably be the ones that adapt, even if in fits and starts, and will probably focus on the parts of the religion like "don't be complete shits to your fellow human beings."
I also think that, if we ever get to the point where colonization of space becomes a feasible thing, you'll see lots of religious groups heading out to settle, just like they did in times past.
No need to involve politics. Rats, as well as other animals, have been shown to demonstrate empathy and other actions that involve "working for the common good".
Yes, yes, I know. "That is insulting that you would compare religious people to Rats. Rats really can't help themselves." "I, for one, welcome our new religious rat overlords"
Well, no: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/religious-people-are-less-intelligent-than-atheists-according-to-analysis-of-scores-of-scientific-studies-stretching-back-over-decades-8758046.html
I take it that the link between having high intelligence and doing science goes without saying, so there actually is a negative correlation between being religious and doing science.
In many cases, yes. There's always the naturalist hippies though... I bet we end up seeing a lot more of those as future generations don't take up their parent's faith.
National Geographic recently published a piece on the attack on science. Poll items such as belief in the efficacy of vaccines to whether we actually landed on the moon showed less public belief in science and the scientific process. Even though the link between autism and early vaccination has been thoroughly debunked it was still cited as one reason why parents won't vaccinate. That is not an annecdote. The poll numbers cited in this article are a fact.
the same way we deal with earth quake predictions
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
And political wackos have no ethics.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
this is the link i meant to post
I wouldn't be sure that the numbers are correct.
Here in the UK 59% of the population claimed to be Christian in the 2011 census. However attendance at churches of all varieties runs to about 6% of the population. So what happened to the other 53%, are they really Christian or merely putting themselves down as Christian because it sounds better?
One thing that has been reported in the past is that while 40% of the population of the States reports that they attend services each week. However when actual counts are taken the figure is only about 20%
Conclusion? The 77% might be overselling the number of people who are actually Christian compared to being cultural Christians.
There are other people who believe the idea that the universe came into being *without* a deity would be an extraordinary concept.
Of course, they are just fooling themselves into thinking that "a deity did it" actually provides any useful explanation. Even if a deity did it, we still don't know how or why, and we have no information about this deity, or where he came from. So instead of providing answers, we've only added more questions.
So really you're against specific business practices and abuses of the legal system, not GMO foods.
There is no such thing as "natural" corn anymore. All corn that is grown and sold is GMO corn; some strains of it were simply manipulated (and capitalized upon) more recently than others.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
but.. bu...t but....what about the american Jesus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12kcpP-8jfM ????
Newton's "Law of Universal Gravitation" fails at the extremes, does it not? It cannot be used in a region some close distance from a black hole (can we still say event horizon?), nor does it have any application within a black hole, and yet there are definitely black holes in the universe. It also fails at the other extreme, in the realm of "quantum foam", Casimir-Polder forces, and the like.
But more importantly, you are profoundly right that all of science is only about the "how". You have to look elsewhere when it comes to questions of "why". Or to the only truly important question: "What the f*ck should I do now?" Those are matters of ethics or morals, that science cannot answer. And persons who attempt to steer their lives based on an absolute belief in science as the pinnacle of human thought are going to fail it.
I am a tool user. I know that you need to use the right tool for the job. And a true believers' absolute faith in science is not only an attempt to drive a nail with a screwdriver, but is an invitation to a sleazebag salesman to sell that chump a cordless electric hammer and a complete set of left-handed monkey wrenches for those tough "What should I do?" problems.
Will
You'll also find that many practicing scientists are also religious
That doesn't mean anything. You can be a practicing scientist and still be unable to think critically in certain aspects of your life because of your upbringing (like being brain washed by your religious parents).
Try it! Library of Babel
I see what you attempted to do there. Let's get back on track:
Please show me how anything similar to religious/spiritual principles can be derived from Newton's laws, the periodic table, or any of the other findings of science. Please provide an example of using the findings of science, or the scientific method, to answer an ethical or moral problem.
Will
1) the quote was never disputed by the WH, the staff at the epoch or bush himself. In fact if you read what rob sherman reported afterward instead of deniying the WH tries to justify that what Bush said won't affect policy. They would not state that if it was a false quote.
2) it is typical of the christian conservative of the epoch to think something similar
3) it is a step up from the definition of atheist as "wicked , godless" the albeit archeic but previous definition.
Frankly it would have been easy to debunk this from the WH. But they always avoided to even take a stance or denie it. As for the point of the other journalist not hearing it, how many of them simply dismissed it as a campaign wink at his conservative base ? And simply did not see it as news ? Heck if you do not pay too much attention all you get is "we are christian nation blah blah one nation under gods - OK not reporting worth he is pandering". The atheist things could have been misheard by Sherman , but Bush and co never denied having said this. in fact IIRC later he said in 2004 something similar in the imius morning radio show about the elligibility of an atheist.
So suck it troll.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So what you're saying is, that only uneducated, unscientific people would disagree with an expansive social welfare state?
Does this not strike you as a bit dishonest?
No, Chernobyl was a disasters waiting to happen. It lacked a containment building and the design allowed for a thermal runaway reaction.
Yes, yes, and more yes. But tell me, What was the general attitude of the public before all that happened? Were they marching on Pripyat to have the plant shut down?
No, the plant was perfectly safe.
Until it went kablooey.
I would counter that an intelligent person might wonder what other perfectly safe nuc power plants are waiting for defenders of the faith's excuses as to why they weren't safe - after those plants go kablooey. Because there were people saying it was a problem, they were highly resisted. Then what they said would happen - happened.
Fukushima was the worst case aka a total loss of cooling but did have the large scale results that many anti nuclear folks by.
I'm not certain if you meant ot put a "not" in there somewhere, but the issue with Fukushima was not a failure of the plant in and of itself.
The failure was multiple support issues.
Big one was that there is adequate evidence, both in written historical records, and in gravel patterns left by tsunami of the past, that the protective walls were absolutely certain to be breached.
Other problems were failures to accomodate that certainty. Having the emergency generators at the level they were made it a certainty that they were going to spend some time underwater when the inevitible breach happened. Not building high enough seawalls. The seawalls ar ean admission of the eventual failure though, not some magickal cure for it.
The plant had absolutely no reason to be there at all, ever. I cannot say for certain, but I suspect that some well connected person made a lot of money off the siting decision.
In a tsunami prone area, you want to site a nuc plant above the highest recorded wave height/ inland ingress. Plus some safety margin. I had looked at some maps and found an applicable river side site not terribly far from Fukushima that would have been safe from the effects of the tsunami. As well as the nasty effects that salt water has on reactors.
But that is the thing. I can say where a good site is, but that doesn't take care of the politics, the bean counting cost cutters, and all the other bullshit that goes into making a nuc plant. The contained energy is simply too high, and doesn't care about any of that shit. It wants out, and we have to keep it in.
I think that the final say on nuc plants needs to be people like Wally Schirra at his grumpiest. And until they execute a bean counter for making certain that vital stuff was axed, highly focused "Its my ass in the sling" engineering people should have veto-proof power.
Even then, some buy into the concept of trying to consolidate a humongous amount of power in one plant. This is foolish from both an engeineering and strategic point. Engineering because of the hugh amount of energy involved, ant the stresses it places on the entire infrastructure, and strategically, well lets just say if I was at war with a country, I would really love for them to have their power generating capacity in as few places as possible, if you catch my drift,
Funny but it sure does look like one more and more. The joy in spreading the belief system, sense of superiority, the joy of seeing more "converts" that is see in many replies to this all look like the worst behaviour of civil religious people.
I'll just refrain from much comment on that one - besides I have my afternoon prayers to nothing I gotta do this afternoon. Want to make certain when I die that I go nowhere, and the nothing that I worship is not pretty adamant about that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You are forgiven. I believe OP used the term "scientism" to distinguish dogmatic thinking based on someone's misguided idea of the principles of science from the actual thing. Essentially you have just agreed with the OP thus it is kind of pointless to have picked a part out of context to rebut. However, congratulations on all the mod points you received for it.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Or its possible that some people can't recognize personal ethics if they don't contain a book:chapter:verse reference.
Have gnu, will travel.
when you base your dogma upon worship, fear, and ideology. Not reality. Modern day Christianity is mostly the polar opposite of the things That Jesus taught - note that most religious leaders are very fond of quoting the old testament, and saying "God says". When a religion becomes primarily a social self reinforcing group based upon a set of rules, then it is doomed from the beginning to fail.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
"Belief", aka "Faith" is based upon ideology, ie a set of rules imposed by those who determine who is in and who is out of the religion. Spirituality, however, is based upon one person's relationship with their existence, and a search for meaning and commonality.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Please show me how anything similar to religious/spiritual principles can be derived from Newton's laws, the periodic table, or any of the other findings of science. Please provide an example of using the findings of science, or the scientific method, to answer an ethical or moral problem.
Seriously, just Google the term "scientific basis for morality". You could spend the next few years just reading various scientific explanations for various ethical or moral problems.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Sentience is just what brains do.
The problem, of course, is that isn't the result of some empirical investigation, That belief is based on metaphysics, not science. The only answer you'll get from science is "we don't know". "We don't know" is a very important phrase. Let's not do the world a disservice by offering groundless "conclusions" just to avoid it.
Required reading for internet skeptics
"I'll just refrain from much comment on that one - besides I have my afternoon prayers to nothing I gotta do this afternoon. Want to make certain when I die that I go nowhere, and the nothing that I worship is not pretty adamant about that."
Thank you for confirming that one completely.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The half life for glyphosate is ~45 days. What you claim doesn't make any sense.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Whatever happened to "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"?
Begs the question of what is ordinary, and who decides what is extraordinary.
There is no reason to believe in the existence of any god, so until there is proof otherwise, forget it.
Yet, the vast majority of mankind has believed it. So either mankind is irrational, making you the irrational product of irrational humans, with an irrational belief in your rationality; or there are reasons for men to believe in some sort of spiritual concepts.
The default stance is "I don't know", not "that must be false". Because the latter rule can be easily gamed.
"god exists" and "god does not exist" are both "extraordinary" claims, and consistent application of that rule results in contradictory conclusions.
Yes, it is the only tool. Other tools can provide answers, but not knowledge. Knowledge can be used to make predictions, and predictions are testable, and therefore fall in the realm of science. If your answers can't be used to make predictions, they are not useful, and they might as well not exist.
What scientific experiment proves that science is the only valid tool for finding knowledge?
Wow i'm guessing you would to a Stalin or Mao. You are the reason the Anti Federalist demanded a bill of rights. I'm agnostic, Because you can't prove that the guy that wrote the simulation we live in isn't God. Let me also Paraphrase and bastardize Buddha. Your hate is a gift that you are stuck with all to yourself. Your hate is different then their hate how?
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
well said!
Sentience is what you get if you
Let's stick to reality, please. Baseless assumptions masquerading as science aren't going to get us anywhere. Anyhow, let me explain the quote, which you clearly misunderstood:
Why if you are a biological machine, are you also sentient? What's the point of sentience? It is irrelevant to life. Ants and birds might not be sentient, they are just machines running, like plants or trees, so why is there also this odd and unnecessary and frankly, annoying sentience?
The unstated assumption here is that, if you are a biological machine, consciousness is epiphenomenal. As an unavoidable consequence, free will would be illusory. Sentience, necessarily lacking causal efficacy, would be irrelevant to life. It could not contribute, in any way, to survival -- or anything else!
Required reading for internet skeptics
Another found that, among AAAS members, more than half believe in "God or a higher power".
Seems there's a perfectly cromulent reason for why so many scientists are religious:
Science is the inevitable outcome when you go looking for God in all the wrong places and it requires strong belief to keep searching regardless.
Only recently(last few centuries) have things like necessity, altruism, wealth and fame started to overtake outright belief as the major motivator for scientific endeavor.
(disclaimer 'atheist-by-default' poster)
That's pretty obviously the case (politicians pander to religious people to get their votes), but it also shows how utterly stupid and gullible the religious people are for believing them, and then voting for policies which are directly against their own best self-interest.
Possibly because religous persons are more likely ti donate their own time and money more willingly
No, they don't. They'll donate their money to a megachurch or TV preacher so that they can have private jets and live lives of luxury, but they don't actually go out and help poor people unless there's strings attached, like sitting through a sermon. This allegation of yours is a common meme among religious people and it's total bullshit. If religious peoples' donations really were enough, we wouldn't have poverty, and we wouldn't have needed welfare programs.
Well, let's see: which countries have the highest standards of living in the world? That would be western European nations, especially Scandinavian ones. "Expansive social welfare states" as you would say. Now, which nations have the highest levels of education in the world? Again, western European nations.
Which nations have the poorest levels of education? That would be third-world shitholes in places like Africa and the Middle East and Latin America. Which nations have the worst standards of living? The same nations.
Oh yeah, which nations are the most religious? That would be those in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Which nations are the most irreligious? Again, western European ones.
Hmm....
Holy war? What holy war? I am curious to see just what percentage of religious affiliation remains in the people that are in positions of power either in public office or military. Perhaps to live in denial of holy war was decided? Maybe the church decided that with the increasing numbers of homeless people in the US, maybe they are outing a large percentage of followers?
There is a line of thought that says that if something can't be observed, measured or defined scientifically then it doesn't exist. I think that way of thinking closes the mind.
Are you referring to anything or anyone specific here? The closest scientific principle I know to this is Occam's razor: do not multiply entities beyond that which is necessary. in other words, we cannot say that a thing does not or could not possibly exist, but we can say that to discuss such a thing without evidence is pointless unless you are discussing a hypothesis and how to test it. I'll believe in a god or gods when evidence gives me a reason to do so, and not before.
There is a lot we don't know or understand, so foreclosing the possibility of other states of being or consciousness is a mistake. We simply don't know, as you say.
Science and the scientific method have enabled us to understand a lot of the world around us. Its value is self-evident. But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it is the only tool we have for gathering knowledge. It can't answer every question, and that's okay.
There certainly is much we don't know. (Job security for those in the sciences!) That does not, however, mean that it is reasonable to believe a proposition for which there is no reliable supporting evidence. It is a natural part of human nature to believe such things, but this is not the same as being reasonable. Science is demonstrably the most beneficial tool for understanding the world we inhabit, checking that knowledge against new information, and revising it when needed. I don't see religion as a tool for knowledge, rather as one used to cope with what is often a hostile existence, to find meaning where there is none given, and to provide certainty where little can be found. It is a tool I will avoid using. I won't look down on those who do, but it is perfectly justifiable to criticize the ideas that result from it.
You don't. You're making that claim up.
It is a matter of definition. If you want to define sentience as something other than 'what brains do' you will have to justify it. By definition I can also assert without further empiricism that blue is 450–495 nm.
Hate? Where is the hate in my post?
I said that parents brainwash their children with their religion, is that not so? Where is the choice for that children?
How can HE chose what to believe when his figure of authority (his parents) impose their views on him at an age where he can't form his own opinion?
Personnaly I don't impose anything on my own kids. I answer frankly to any question they ask me, but they'll have to decide what they believe themselves.
I'm mostly atheist, was agnostic for a good part of my life, but these days I'm of the opinion that the idea of a supreme being makes no sense. And if we're in a simulation (a distinct possibility), I would not call the creator of this simulation god, he's just a sentient being probably way out of our understanding, but he's not a god.
Try it! Library of Babel
No mod points to give, but just wanted to give you a "I totally accept that point of view even though I may or may not agree with it". :D
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
There is no such thing as a soul, just as there is no god. Both of these beliefs posit something supra-natural, but they are only beliefs, with zero proof, despite. Both have their roots in wishful thinking that, by having "faith", we can deny that when you're dead, you're dead.
The lack of a "soul" has been used as an excuse to enslave people as "just animals." It's been used to justify cruel animal husbandry - they don't "really" suffer.
Fortunately atheism is the fastest growing religious belief, and will be the majority even in the US within 15-20 years. We no longer see things through a glass, darkly :-) Maybe then it won't continue to distort politics and be used as a reason to deny some people who are different the same rights others enjoy.
In other words, you'll become more like Canada, where bringing religion into politics is a good way to consign your political career to the trash heap.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Again, an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof - whereas you don't even have a bit of proof for the existence of a creator or god, and there have been so many similar claims throughout history - so obviously at the very least all but one are wrong :-)
And that's not even bringing up the question "who created god?" People who believe in god have no answer, whereas atheists have an answer - "People did."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Religion has been on a slow decline in the US for decades now. It was probably on the rise back in the 50's or somewhere thereabouts, but not recently.
Those morals/ethics that are often claimed to be god-given are built into the DNA of any number of species that live in any sort of a social structure. That's the other reason that claiming morals can only be provided by a "higher" being is bantha fodder.
Most of mankind is certainly irrational most of the time. Stock market, mortgage crisis, fear of GMOs as Frankenfood, still arguing over climate change, war, especially religious wars, lack of tolerance for people who are different throughout history (burn the witch, anyone?)
So what if the majority has believed until recent times? As my mother said when I was a kid, "would you go jump off a bridge just because everyone else is?"
When you say that the vast majority of mankind has believed it, you're arguing is that tradition is more important than acting on knowledge. The vast majority of people 50 years ago thought that smoking was actually good for you. Sure, it can be argued that it's a great way to lose weight ... one lung at a time ... but smoking today is seen as irrational behavior. Drunk driving used to be no biggie, too. So was beating your wife and kids - "spare the rod, spoil the child". For thousands of years barbers would bleed people to "release the bad humors". And from ancient Sparta to today, parents still kill their daughters because they wanted a boy. So much for doing something because others do it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Thank you. Some people get upset with the idea that humans are the only "rational, sentient beings". Even kids know better, though. Funny how, as we get older, we tend to dismiss the obvious because it's seen as "childish" or "soft-hearted."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If you want to define sentience as something other than 'what brains do' you will have to justify it.
Why? That presumption is unjustified. Why would I offer some other unjustified presumption? Why would we prefer one to another?
Isn't it much more sensible to say, simply, "we don't know" to questions to which we have no justifiable answer?
By definition I can also assert without further empiricism that blue is 450–495 nm
Sure, but that's not science either.
I think I see what you're going for with the "fixed by definition" but it's very silly. Consider this bit of nonsense: "By definition, digestion is what the heart does". You'd reject that, obviously, as it's completely unjustified.
You accept the phrase in question here not because it's been established through scientific means, but on a purely metaphysical basis. It's just as foolish as any other reason to accept an unjustified proposition, but far more dangerous as it unjustifiably lends scientific credibility, and distorts the public understanding of science.
Required reading for internet skeptics
A recent survey found more than a third claim to "have no doubt about Godâ(TM)s existence", a surprisingly extreme position.
This proportion has been trending down for centuries. And take a look at what they mean by "God"--much of the time, they are not talking about the guy Abraham chatted with. Also: Arguably the most important scientist of all time--the inventor of optics, differential calculus and integral calculus--had no doubt about the existence of alchemy. Science is a thing you do or you don't do; it isn't an identity.
Science has nothing to say on the subject of magic
If you want to define your magic and/or your god as a metaphor or something amorphous as to refer to anything, that's true. Science doesn't have much ot say about things that are merely poetically true, metaphorical or too incoherent to mean anything.
But the moment you start making claims about the way things are, the way things were, or the way things will be then science DOES have something to say about that, even if that something is "we do not have any data to reach conclusions or even speculate about X at this time."
Perhaps rational thought will indeed become common place...
Lots of people have religious experiences, which they interpret as perceiving God. My impression is that the human brain is wired to tend towards religion, which is either an artifact of human evolution or an actual sense of the divine (I look forward to discussing religion with non-human intelligent beings). Most people will believe in their senses and perceptions unless they have a good reason not to, and there are no sound arguments for or against the existence of God.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Most of mankind is certainly irrational most of the time.
If the majority of human beings are irrational, then the odds are that you are irrational as well.
So before we even continue this discussion - you have an obligation to prove that you're not irrational like everyone else.
So what if the majority has believed until recent times? As my mother said when I was a kid, "would you go jump off a bridge just because everyone else is?"
They still do. We're not anywhere close to a majority of unbelievers.
When you say that the vast majority of mankind has believed it, you're arguing is that tradition is more important than acting on knowledge.
No, I am saying that this is evidence against the claim that there is no reason to believe in the existence of god.
The short of it is that anyone who claims there is zero reason to believe has shot their own claim of rationality in the foot. The evidence doesn't support it.
Claiming something contrary to the evidence is irrational. Claiming that there is no reason to believe in god is irrational.
Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US? Thank god!
You are completely misrepresenting science. Science works for continuous refinements. New discoveries and theories refine previous ones, and our understanding of nature improves without nullifying the previous knowledge.
Thus it's blatantly false that science gives temporary answers. It certainly only provides an approximation, but generally a sane and useful one. Newton's law of gravity is still widely used to send people in space, even though it has been refined by Einstein and others,
Religion, one the other hand, is blatantly made up stuff that is believed into in the face of tons of contrary evidence.
My Stack Overflow user
You are completely misrepresenting science. Science works for continuous refinements. New discoveries and theories refine previous ones, and our understanding of nature improves without nullifying the previous knowledge. Nothing is overturned.
Thus it's blatantly false that science gives temporary answers. It certainly only provides an approximative model of reality, but generally a sane and useful one. Newton's law of gravity is still widely used to send people in space, even though it has been refined by Einstein and others. No one cares about "truth", besides religious people.
Religion, one the other hand, is blatantly made up stuff that is believed into in the face of tons of contrary evidence. It is not unrelated to science, in fact it makes tons of claims about the physical world. So far, any religious/magical claim that has been studied has turned out to be either blatantly false or ...not magic. Yet, people believe anyways. People go to Lourdes, even though it's statistically bad for them. People pray, even though it has no effect at all. At least in science, hypothesis are discarded once they are disproven.
My Stack Overflow user
I am atheist and while I am pro-nuclear power, pro-vaccine,and believe in global warming I am very much against GMO foods. I against them though because if the transfer of power they represent, not about the food itself. No study has ever shown GMO corn is any less or more healthy than natural corn. GMO foods shift power from the people and the farmer to the chemical company.
Unfortunately, you're conflating a few things that don't necessarily belong together.
Genetic modification to make plants herbicide resistant is only one form of genetic modification. And I can't disagree -- the way that Monsanto has gone after farmers, and pretty much "owns" agriculture is disgusting.
At the same time, there are a lot of other genetic modifications in food that have nothing to do with selling chemicals. You can't tell me that you're also against Golden Rice? They have a whole lot of studies which show that their rice is more healthy than the regular kind in areas that a) consume a lot of rice, and b) where there are various micronutrient deficiencies, such as Vitamin A (the deficiency of which can be a cause of blindness in children. More than 2 million people a year die from Vitamin A deficiency).
There is a lot of good that GMOs can do for this world, particularly in parts of the world with various dietary nutrient deficiencies. GMO doesn't necessarily imply "engineered to be herbicide resistant". As another poster said, your problem seems to be more with business practices and abuse of the legal system (and, I'd add, a political system hat allows these transgressions to occur) surrounding certain types of GMOs. But why lump in those that can actually help people in vulnerable populations lead healthy, productive lives?
Yaz
Pacifist and compassionate actions are a common theme in all of Harry Harrison's writing. Also some extremely cruel actions and twists of fate.
He is one of my all time favorite writers. I wish there was a Stainless Steel Rat movie or two!
Umm, the agricultural university in Oregon is Oregon State University.
All this debate ignores the main point - to more and more people, there is no god, and that's going to change a lot of things. No more people picketing abortion clinics for Jesus, no more discriminating against LGBTQ because the bible says they should be stoned to death, no more politicians sucking up to the majority religion for votes, no more having to teach creationism beside evolution, no more useless arguments about the death penalty ... and this is just off the top of my head.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Because people believe in something is not a reason to believe in it. Circular reasoning at it's worst.
The wisdom of the crowds is disproved all the time - see the stock bubble, the housing bubble, people lobbying against single-payer universal health care even though it's in their own best interests, buying lottery tickets, smoking, gambling at casinos, marrying someone just like their ex, unprotected sex, etc., all prove that the wisdom of the crowds is just a false perception created via cherry picking.
And I'm certainly not rational all the time ... only dead people don't make mistakes in judgment.
Also, I have no more obligation to "prove" my rationality than you do. Consider it like working with noisy data if you wish.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"Sentience" is kinda like "soul": we can start talking about it meaningfully as soon as someone defines what it actually means. Until then, there's no reason to believe that it's a qualitative rather than quantitative difference, or, for that matter, that it is even a meaningful thing in and of itself, and not just an aggregate of some random and unrelated factors (which, in fact, changes over time as we learn more about ourselves and other species) that we believe distinguishes us from all the other "nonsentient" beings.
try to grow a non-"Roundup Ready" (TM) crop in a field that has been sprayed with massive quantities of glyphosate for years.
Monsanto may well be evil, but glyphosate is incredibly useful, and safe compared to alternatives. Soil life is short, just wait a season if it is that bad.
Where do you get this absurd idea that it "poisons the soil"? I plant my veggies a couple of weeks after using glyphosate to kill all the weeds. They grow fine.
I think it was a few years after 9/11 while Bush was still in power. I remember because it hit me that, unlike all other developped country, the religion was rising and atheism was shrinking in the US.
Elok
Because people believe in something is not a reason to believe in it. Circular reasoning at it's worst.
Not the argument. That large numbers of people across the globe with different languages/cultures have independently chosen to believe in the existence of god is evidence of there being reasons to believe in god, versus there being no reason to believe in god.
The wisdom of the crowds is disproved all the time
The only way this is relevant is if you want to argue that the crowd is always wrong. Not just sometimes; always.
Probably shouldn't live in a representative democracy if you actually believe that.
And I'm certainly not rational all the time ... only dead people don't make mistakes in judgment.
So are you responding rationally right now?
Also, I have no more obligation to "prove" my rationality than you do. Consider it like working with noisy data if you wish.
I'm just taking your own arguments seriously. This is a result of your claim that people are irrational, and now you add that that you're not rational all the time.
If you're rational, then you would address why what you're saying right now is rational in light of those starting assumptions. Otherwise, others should just dismiss your post as irrational opining per your own premises.
Pure mathematics is full of knowledge that doesn't get used to describe natural phenomenon, therefore, pure mathematics is not useful and they might as well not exist.
What a failure of logic. Certainly you're not acting rationally in believing that, just because other people believe something they can't provide any evidence to support, that's a reason to believe.
Just like the rest of your post. Please, tell me you're an American. It would explain why Americans are so far behind the rest of the developed world in abandoning religion :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Since you seem to be struggling to comprehend, let me break it down really simply for you:
This is very important, because religious wackos tend to be the ones against modern science and technology.
What happened to "correlation is not causation"?
Belief in religion is belief in magic, hence anti-science. That's causation right there.
Religion, like magic, promotes belief with no evidence. That mentality goes against the entire scientific process.
What a failure of logic. Certainly you're not acting rationally in believing that, just because other people believe something they can't provide any evidence to support, that's a reason to believe.
Large groups of people independently acting in a certain way points at a reason for them doing so. The vast majority of people eat food; there exists a reason why. The vast majority of people believe in god(s); there exists a reason why.
I am not arguing this as a reason to believe; I am arguing that this shows reason(s) to believe exist; where you are arguing that reasons to believe do not exist.
If you cannot grasp the meta argument, kindly leave reasoning to those who have the intellectual horsepower for it.
Fortunately, I don't think so. Religious people got a lot louder, and became stronger in politics (this article, for example, claims that politics became much more Christianity-infused after 9/11). But in terms of population number I don't think they ever increased by a measurable amount.
If you can find a source that proves me wrong, I'd be interested to read it, though.
It may suggest a move toward freedom, as belief in god is one form of tyranny over the minds of men. Whether freedom is well-correlated with conservatism is open to debate, but freedom is not in the realm of the left.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I disagree with the nope.
First, ground rules. We're talking about conventional definitions of God, close to what many major religions use. No fair saying "This rock in my hand is God" or "everything is God". Silliness will not be tolerated.
Proofs for the existence of God always involve logical fallacies such as question begging, intimidation, etc.. No such "proof" has ever withstood critical examination. God can not be proved to exist out of thin air, nor can it be inferred from observed reality.
Proofs against the existence of god start from a different place. Somebody has to propose what God is; the disprover cannot be expected to find flaws in every single unstated possible definition of God. The disprover justifiably demands a clear description of what God is, and before long the describer has hung himself with his own words. Historically, all definitions of God meeting the ground rules have been proven either self-contradictory, inconsistent with observed reality, or both. No exceptions.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Here's a hypothesis for you.
Most American principles and institutions were in place before large numbers of Roman Catholics came to the U.S. One difference between Catholicism and Protestantism back then was that Catholicism had made allowances for human foibles and Catholics were expected to follow church rules within those allowances, and did so. Protestants were given a much stricter code to follow, a code so strict that it was in fact impossible to follow it and live. As a result, American Protestants did not follow their religious beliefs (except on Sunday), thus making it possible to build a great secular government and a free country.
In fewer words: Protestants made America the glory that it is by protecting America from Protestantism.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Large groups of people independently acting in a certain way points at a reason for them doing so.
Yes. Then you look at another large group of people, who are acting in certain other ways, and then you can only deduce that the common parts of these ways have a reason.
Now the common parts are demonstrably non-existent. Large number of people think Mohammed was greatest of all prophets, and belief otherwise is seriously wrong. Another large number of people believes that Jesus was the last of the prophets - he will come back but no one else except people peddling false gods. While simultaneously believing that belief otherwise is seriously wrong. History centric religions are mostly contradict each other.
So no conclusion can be drawn from these large groups of people.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Yeah I've done some little research but couldn't find anything so I guess you're right. It must have been something else religion-related that was rising.
Elok
There, found an article that show that you were right (and wasn't completly wrong).
http://tobingrant.religionnews.com/2015/03/12/7-5-million-people-left-religion-since-2012-three-graphs-latest-general-social-survey/
According to this article, we can see a slight drop after 2001 but the trend is clearly rising. Good.
Elok
Some religions (even christian ones - Seven Day Adventists) believe either that life after death is not automatic or doesn't exist. So it would be completely unfair to try to paint science as the only purveyor of that theory.
The article seems to be focused on the number of people affiliated with christianity and not religion in general.
Just because you choose to not affiliate yourself with organized religion doesn't mean that you don't believe in a supreme being. Christian religious organizations have meddled too much in politics and they are losing people because of it. The statistics just confirm what everyone already knows.
The brain can still be blackboxed and we can call the output sentience. The GP essentially says that because we don't know all the details then we can appeal to magic. If we blackbox the heart we can call the output circulation, but calling it digestion is still inaccurate without having to appeal much to empiricism. We defined cells before we knew how they worked. Your line of thought leads one to think that we can't know anything unless we know everything, which isn't true. Although perhaps I misunderstand.
Yeah, its OSU that I intended to write. The image I had in my head was of the fields just across the river from town, and I was too focused on making my point succinctly to notice I was screwing up the name.
Beaver - Duck, Duck - Beaver... I've spent years in both Corvallis and Eugene and I still get them mixed up. If they'd only play real football rather than that simplistic American football it would maybe be easier to differentiate between them.
Will
Fortunately atheism is the fastest growing religious belief
...again, you express confusion. Atheism is not a religious belief; it is the very antithesis of such.
Mind you, I actually get the complaints against religion... human-run organizations are highly imperfect by definition, because humans are imperfect creatures. That said, the whole concept of "rights" (however you wish to define them) is religious in origin as well, specifically as a Christian one (that is, the concept of all humans being equal in the eyes of God. Before then, people naturally assumed that some humans were better than others, and sorted themselves accordingly... this is even an assumed condition in Plato's Republic.)
In other words, you'll become more like Canada...
This has its hazards as well; recently there have been a disturbing number of cases where voicing *any* opinions in public contrary to LGBT diktat is considered "hate speech", and is punished by law accordingly. That doesn't quite square with one of the US' greatest treasures --that being freedom of speech -- now does it?
Of course, from your POV this may be considered a wonderful thing, but consider that you're merely imposing the beginnings of totalitarianism.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
GMO foods shift power from the people and the farmer to the chemical company.
Just like the use of tractors and other farm machinery shifted power from the people and the farmer to the John Deere company, right?
I'm not entirely fluent, but your translation is a little weird.
Grim god, cold God, God with a book of entries and exits, like a jailer, etc.
Poetic phrasing is hard. "exits" is not being used as a verb, is what I'm trying to clarify. Also note that the use of "tu" could be considered somewhat rude. Also note that "Dios frio" is probably a pun on "Dios mio".
No, you're defining knowledge as empirical knowledge. Also you're being positivist, there are other philosophies.
Empiricism says that knowledge is what can be observed (and hopefully measured). Its problem is that it can only prove statements to the limits of one's observational abilities, which have been extended but still remain bounded.
Rationalism says that knowledge is what can be proved by argument or reason. Its problem is a dependence on choice of axioms and the ability to construct true statements that do not match reality.
There are different views on what truth value you assign to things you can't observe. Saying anything unproven is false is probably positivism. I'm not sure you really want to go there. Suffice to say there are cases where reason is a better tool than observation, possibly including ethics. I'm not really a philosopher, but anyone willing to take a stand for empiricism ought to understand that there are other equally valid ways to determine truth/knowledge.
Not many adults will claim to still have a persistent belief in Santa Claus, of which they were taught to believe in at an early age. Upon approaching maturity, it becomes obvious that this belief is absurd; it isn't big enough of a lie to withstand inspection.
Somehow the other invisible yet omniscient being that rewards or punishes behavior remains perfectly reasonable. Instead of mere trinkets once a year, the promised reward for good behavior is upgraded to blissful non corporeal existence for eternity upon death. Elves become angels and a scapegoat villain is added. Most importantly, certain men (and now women) are now able to claim to be Supreme Being's direct representative.
It just amazes me how that works.
It's funny that you point out somebody else has faulty line of reasoning, but do not look at what you yourself is saying.
If something cannot be measured, observed, quantified or defined, it is AS IF it did not exist.
So take this entity, we shall call it FSM existed, however it was never ever observed in any way, never interacted with our universe in any shape way or form (not even with the smallest of particles), does not exist in any location (no matter where you go, you will never ever see it), never ever left a trace of anything anywhere....Cannot be measured, is invisible to everything....How do you know it exists? What would ever lead you to that conclusion (that it exists/has existed?) without being insane? Because a logical rational person cannot come to that conclusion. It would require faith (the belief in something despite the absence of evidence).
You cannot possibly make such a statement. You cannot say with any certainty whatsoever that something has not interacted with any matter, even the smallest particles, anywhere in the Universe. Your observational powers aren't even close to being able to make such a measurement. My position is that I cannot say whether the FSM exists or not. I allow for the possibility of the existence of a FSM. You seem to have foreclosed that possibility, which illustrates my point nicely.
Take for example dark matter. It cannot be seen, measured. or defined at the moment. But we know it's there. We know because of at least 2 simple reasons (that my simpleton mind knows of, I am not an astrophysicist)......#1 Mathematical calculations predicts it.......#2 It seems to interact with our universe through gravity.
BTW are you seriously going to tell me that satyrs MIGHT exist? I am talking about half men half goats creatures....
The default position for a rational person in the lack of evidence is to not believe. It is not for him to disprove everything somebody can claim. It is up to the person making an assertion that need to prove his position.
Of course Satyrs might exist. I have no reason to think they do, but they might. There are still places on this earth that have not been fully explored. We discover new species all the time. I don't know what kind of life there is on other planets either. Maybe the Satyrs will show up in a spaceship tomorrow, I really can't say.
Did dark matter exist before we detected it? I would argue it did. But from your reasoning it did not, practically speaking. This is precisely my point and why I love this line of inquiry. The only assertion I am making is that we should not let the limits of our observation limit the world of the possible. We will discover things in the coming decades (and hopefully centuries) that will make the unknown known and the impossible possible. The Universe is not limited; we are. And yet we continue to deny the possibility of things rather than having the humility to tell the truth; that we simply don't know.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
All I can say about people moving away from religion, or an affiliation with them - too many religions and churches are like clubs, with members who use that club to beat up on people who do not believe in their religion, or go to their church. Why would anyone want to belong to such a a group or organization that demeans and threatens people with hell and damnation?..
The brain can still be blackboxed and we can call the output sentience.
That would be called "behavior".
Required reading for internet skeptics
Yeah, religious people give more of their own money while non-religious give OTHER people's money. Even when you're only counting secular charities, religious people give a higher percentage of their money to those as well.
There's a great column by a liberal columnist in the NYT:
Bleeding Heart Tightwads
Update your philosophy.
Now the common parts are demonstrably non-existent. Large number of people think Mohammed was greatest of all prophets, and belief otherwise is seriously wrong. Another large number of people believes that Jesus was the last of the prophets - he will come back but no one else except people peddling false gods. While simultaneously believing that belief otherwise is seriously wrong. History centric religions are mostly contradict each other.
You say that people who believe in god do so because they believe a particular historical person is a prophet, that is, a messenger of god. You have just listed a reason why people believe in god.
This contradicts the other poster who claimed that there is no reason to believe in god. That you disagree with those religions' reasons is an entirely different thing than the reasons not existing.
"They have no reason to believe; they are irrational" is a different argument than "the reasons they use to believe in god are wrong". Confusing the two arguments and using them interchangeably is sloppy thinking and unbefitting a rational position.
So no conclusion can be drawn from these large groups of people.
You confirmed my conclusion. Independent groups of people believing in god is evidence that people believe in god for a reason.
You say that people who believe in god do so because they believe a particular historical person is a prophet, that is, a messenger of god.
No I don't say that at all. In fact the reason why they believe in god doesn't matter for this statement at all. I'm saying they believe mutually incompatible things, so "wisdoms of the crowds" are canceling each other.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
You and your pink cats really need to get some science. No STD is curable. If you become infected, even if the infection is eliminated, you will still be permanently maimed by the damage it has done.
Though, entertainingly, PP is close to the mark - and then he goes on the whole "Christians are being persecuted" tangent which is pure nonsense.
But he got the opening line right:
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
Which again proves that the truth is subversive.
Yes, we do live in a world of empiricism - because that's how the world is, whether we like it or not.
And such world will always put concepts of faith and religion under pressure. Just like it puts everything else under pressure.
It's only that PP finds the reality expressed in that sentence threatening.
I'll digress for a moment... I want to show a familiar example to point out something.
Remember how in "Godfather 2", Fredo tells Michael's son, Anthony, about a "secret" for catching fish?
How he'd always say a "Hail Mary" when throwing the line and he, out of all the kids, would catch the most fish.
Then later, we see him still doing that just before he gets "taken out" by Michael's assassin, Neri. SPOILERS!
Now, that's a '70s movie, done by a Catholic. Not very "observant" as he puts it himself, but still very "religious".
So, that is not "Fredo the idiot" - that is "Fredo the unloved child, becoming a traitor out of unrequited love and childlike innocence". And John Cazale pulled that off perfectly.
Today, that SAME character would be someone with mental issues.
Someone who does not understand the world around him, with that story hinting not at his childlike innocence but at his childlike mental capacities.
That's the '70s.
Showing that by then even for a religious Catholic director something like saying a prayer before every action that you feel is up to chance is something that only a child or someone as innocent as child might do.
An adult doing that... That's someone who's a bit iffy. One way or the other.
Cause Fredo sure as hell has issues. He's not an idiot... but he has emotional issues written all over him.
Compare that to Barry Pepper's Private Jackson in "Saving Private Ryan", praying for "true aim" and "victory in battle".
Which feels completely in character AND not disparaging at all. It feels like something that a young man might do in the war, during 1940s.
And nobody invented that prayer - he's quoting Psalms.
Which are basically a collection of ready-made prayers for various "troubles" one might find themselves in, and for saying "thanks god" for being delivered from them.
There are like 150 specific ways to cry "HELP GOD!" and to say "Thanks god!" just there.
Same thing with all those saints, protectors and patrons of this and that, and their corresponding amulets.
Or with all those relics of various saints, apostles, pieces of "true cross" etc.
Or with all the gods in Hinduism, or all the kami in Shintoism.
For everything out there that may harm or benefit one's existence and/or circumstances - there is a prayer, an amulet, a saint, a kami, a god...
But none of them deal with empirically provable aspects of the thing they are supposed to be influencing.
There is no "make sure that fire has flames" god or amulets - though there are dozens of fire-gods.
Or a kami you could pray to "to make water wet". Though there is a water kami.
Or an amulet with a saint whose job it was to make sure that apples are apples and not oranges. Though there is a saint of apple orchards - St. Charles Borromeo.
There is even a "fear of mice" saint - St. Gertrude of Nivelles.
Because, when you DON'T LIVE IN AN EMPIRICAL WORLD, when you live instead in a "Demon Haunted World" - you need a protector, an amulet, a prayer for everything.
Whatever it is you're not certain of, be it fish biting on a particular day or bullets hitting their target - just use the right amulet or prayer and shift odds in your favor.
If
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They were told off for leaving some of the people alive when they took the city, according to one of the fights in the OT. They were PUNISHED for not killing the innocent, children and animals.
Unless you're claiming your bible is fiction, it's 100% happened in your religion.
Therefore I know who is here. Me. No god is here. Not a single one.
"Denying a God isn't as easy as saying: you claim this, therefore you have the burden of proof and hence it is your liability to prove it." Yes it is.
Because if not, then my claim is there is no god and I don't have to have any burden of proof behind my claim that there is no such thing as God.
If you want me to prove there is no god, then you're doing what you claim I cannot do with your god claim.
If you don't want the burden of proof to prove ME wrong in my anti-deity claims, then we're back to you having to prove your claim, which you haven't even started.
You can only "prove" god exists by presuming he exists. Just like every other faked story in the universe.
If god is bigger than the universe, then so what? It would require
a) he exists,not yet proven.
b) and is bigger than the universe.
Well, that's two things you have to prove, now. Worse
c) you have to prove that him being bigger than the universe means he could not be proven not to exist
which 100% does not follow on from your assertion.
It's amusing to watch faithiest fundamentalists flail about presuming there IS a god, therefore saying that proves there's a god.
Never works.
Never stops them trying. Because insanity is like that.
that is an evolutionary step forward. humans no longer need rulers they become united and an important barrier of separation moves out. there would be less separation and more brotherhood
"When this life is all you have and all you believe in, it becomes very precious and harder to justify destroying life. If, on the other hand, you are convinced that there is paradise waiting for you beyond this life there are all sorts of nasty actions you can justify."
I'm curious: do you support abortion? I think abortion is the Achilles heel of modern society's focus on freedom and empiricism. Many modern people tout "the better" for all and the "atrocities of religion" while ignoring the completely arbitrary way that we treat the beginning of life because facing it with genuine science would force us to deal with the inconvenience of unplanned/unwanted members of our society.
No I don't say that at all. In fact the reason why they believe in god doesn't matter for this statement at all. I'm saying they believe mutually incompatible things, so "wisdoms of the crowds" are canceling each other.
So because two crowds each believe in god ...
Their beliefs cancel out and the crowd has no particular belief one way or another on whether god exists.
I think you're going to have to break down the logic for me.
By the way - the Wisdom of Crowds example of weighing a pig involves each individual guessing a specific number that contradicts everyone else's guess. It's not about agreement, it's about averaging out errors.
So, back when most people believed the world was flat, that made it right? Or that the sun and stars revolved around the earth? How about the people who voted for George W Bush the second time - like they couldn't even learn from their mistakes? The voters who weighted that last pig sure got it wrong!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Fortunately atheism is the fastest growing religious belief
...again, you express confusion. Atheism is not a religious belief; it is the very antithesis of such.
Wrong - a religious belief is a belief about religion, not necessarily IN religion. It can be pro or con, same as a belief in or against the death penalty.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"Greater things shall ye do."
So, back when most people believed the world was flat, that made it right? Or that the sun and stars revolved around the earth? How about the people who voted for George W Bush the second time - like they couldn't even learn from their mistakes? The voters who weighted that last pig sure got it wrong!
Why are you repeating the flat earth myth?
You still don't get the argument. Here are the logical steps:
That's all. It's not saying that people believe in god for the right reason. It's not saying that the majority are right, or must be right.
Rather than address the argument, you've attacked arguments not made, you've repeated a myth, insulted Americans; anything but support your original claim that people believe in god for no reason.
That's not how rational people behave, "Barbara". But then, rational people don't believe they can change their sex/gender, either.
There's your problem - point one. No, it doesn't take a reason (in the sense of a fact) for the majority to believe something.
The majority believed in slavery. They had their reasons (the bible, prejudice, personal profit, etc) to believe that slavery was justified. Didn't make them right. Same the the majority believing that the Earth was the center of the universe. Same as the majority believed that the housing boom wouldn't end ("this time it's different").
If the "reason" or premise is false, any conclusions are highly suspect.
There's a HUGE difference between a reason with no underlying rationale and a good reason. We call the first an excuse, or when it's really lame, a poor excuse, not a reason. Same as someone doing something "because everyone is is doing it, and everyone else can't be wrong."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
there never was a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now)
And there were others who thought Atlas held it up, or that it was on the back of a turtle, or an elephant on a tortoise.
Doesn't matter how many believed it - it was wrong.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
There's your problem - point one. No, it doesn't take a reason (in the sense of a fact) for the majority to believe something.
So you think only facts are reasons. Why does it take this many exchanges to get to this point?
The majority believed in slavery. They had their reasons (the bible, prejudice, personal profit, etc) to believe that slavery was justified. Didn't make them right. Same the the majority believing that the Earth was the center of the universe. Same as the majority believed that the housing boom wouldn't end ("this time it's different").
People don't believe in slavery. They believe that slavery is okay, or it's not okay.
Now, what fact provides the reason to believe that slavery is okay, or not okay?
If the "reason" or premise is false, any conclusions are highly suspect.
Duh. But "wrong reason" is not "no reason". Irrational is different than wrong.
And rational/irrational does not mean good/bad. An irrational love for one's friends and family is not somehow bad because of the lack of reasoning behind it.
There's a HUGE difference between a reason with no underlying rationale and a good reason.
Sure. But a wrong reason or "excuse" is still not the same as no reason.
Also, your link only refers to what scholars believed. It even acknowledges that this probably wasn't the prevailing view among the peons:
You have no facts to support that the peons believed in a flat earth. You have "no reason" per your own definition to believe that the majority of people irrationally believed in a flat earth.
OK, let me put it this way. Many Muslims do NOT believe in "god" - "La ilaha illillah". There is no god but Allah. Believing in "god" gets you a reserved place in hell.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
That's because current political wackos ARE religious wackos.
"Identifying as" "Describing themselves as". It's not like these people used to spend Sundays in church, and study the Bible, and memorize the Gospels, and have long family discussions about Christ and Christianity, but now they're stopped. It's just that it was very unfashionable in most of the US a while back to not say you're a Christian; and less unfashionable now.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I was surprised to see that all double blind tests are now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives. The average liberal now has a default "affirmative action" position and is racist against white people. This has been confirmed over and over again in studies, one even showed that liberals are far more likely to sacrifice a white person to save multiple black people than they are the other way around. So we gave truely crossed into delusional type unlogical thinking in politics as well.
Let's see now, where's the pony inside this pile...
"Overall, Republicans are slightly more likely to assess blacks unfavorably on these dimensions. For example, 39% of Republicans place blacks on the “lazy” side of the scale, while 31% of Democrats do. But by and large, Tabarrok is quite correct: both parties include substantial fractions willing to stereotype blacks unfavorably....This graph shows that identification with the Democratic Party tends to decline, and identification with the Republican party tends to increase, as attitudes toward black become less favorable—at least when attitudes are measured with two different racial stereotypes." http://themonkeycage.org/2012/...
"We examined the relation between political ideology and racial categorization. People categorized morphed faces that ranged from 100% Black to 100% White. Conservatism (vs. liberalism) was associated with the tendency to categorize racially ambiguous faces as Black. Relation between ideology and categorization was mediated by opposition to equality. This research helps to explain the ideological underpinnings of hypodescent." http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
" in Studies 1a and 1b we found that liberals were less willing to endorse the killing of an innocent person on consequentialist grounds when the name of the individual suggested he was Black than when it suggested he was White. Study 2 demonstrated that liberals’ biased application of moral principles, when made salient in a within-subjects design, was eliminated. When given both the Chip and Tyrone scenarios, participants were strikingly consistent in their use of consequentialist or deontological principles, such that their responses on the second scenario almost always mirrored those in the first. This suggests that participants explicitly believed that the principles they were invoking were general enough to apply regardless of the victim’s race. In Study 3 we found that conservatives were more likely to condone the killing of innocent civilians in a military attack when those civilians were Iraqis killed by Americans rather than Americans killed by Iraqis, while liberals did not demonstrate such a flexible set of responses. Finally, in Study 4 we primed participants with either patriotism or multiculturalism, and found that, analogous to the effects on self-reported political ideology in Study 4, participants primed with patriotism (compared to those primed with multiculturalism) were more likely to accept collateral damage when Iraqi civilians were killed by American forces, but not when American civilians were killed by Iraqi forces." http://journal.sjdm.org/9616/j...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I would be far more likely to be swayed by your argument if you were to show / link / discuss any actual "double-blind tests now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives", Please show me how average liberals are racist against white people, especially 'over and over'. There are kooks everywhere, I know, but claiming massive one-sidedness doesn't work with some sort of evidence by a researcher.
So.... have you never met a rightwinger before?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Ah. Doesn't sell and be profitable.
Oh, and there are far better ways of undoing the vitamin deficiency (they evolved in the region to adapt to the local foodstuffs, remember, so something changed to make that wrong. Exporting rice. No money to make locally grown food other than rice, ergo nutrition problem).
There ARE good GMO options. Those, though, are like "Farma", where plants are modified to produce chemical products we need. Here's where it gets a pass (somewhat): they aren't grown by the megahectare out in the open, but in a closed area where they won't infect or be infected, won't be predated and won't harm the ecosystem because it's kept outside. Therefore if we discover a problem later (see Thalidomide), we can contain it and undo it.
Even golden rice would, if we found out in 20 years time that it was fucking up the ecosystem (see Bee Colony Collapse) would result in no way of undoing the problem.
But Golden Rice, despite being the poster boy of GMO fluffery, fails because it hasn't been done. Because there's no profit in it, it was a PR stunt pure and simple.
OK, let me put it this way. Many Muslims do NOT believe in "god" - "La ilaha illillah". There is no god but Allah. Believing in "god" gets you a reserved place in hell.
They call their god Allah. How are you not able to abstract that both crowds share a belief in a supreme being, even though their beliefs in the supreme being's attributes vary?
Yes, the religions disagree with each other. That doesn't cancel out and make all of them non-religious groups.
The days of the mom&pop run farms is over. A large percentage of the North American food supply is controlled by corporations. You can't lay that at the feet of GMOs or claim that if GMOs went away then so would the corporations. As far as reduced biodiversity, agricultural sustainability and overuse of pesticides go, these risks are all still there if GMOs go away AND some GMO 'products' have no risks related to any of these. Likewise, many invasive species are more harmful than GMO's; try zebra muscles, purple loosetrife, sparrows, domestic cats.... With that said, I do think corporations, and independent mad scientists, should be accountable for what they release on the world. Anything created to increase the use of a pesticide is not in the Earth's best interest. Anything created that can out-compete and eliminate natural species should be highly regulated with the potential for fines large enough to reverse damage done.
They call their god Allah
You say so, you might even believe it. But it is highly misinformed according to many Muslims I know, and also according to a much more popular interpretation of "La ilaha illillah". Allah is NOT god.
That doesn't cancel out and make all of them non-religious groups.
I am not saying that by cancelling they become non-religious. Each individual religious group remains religious.
I am saying that popular disbelief* of Muslims in god makes belief in god wrong. And popular disbelief in Allah by Christians makes Allah wrong according the the wisdom of the crowds.
And by disbelief I don't mean merely indifference. If it were merely indifference, it would not cancel the other group's belief. But they are warned strongly against "false gods" in their gospels and by leaders. I mean active disbelief and denial.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
If your answers can't be used to make predictions, they are not useful, and they might as well not exist.
Is murder wrong? You probably believe there is a useful answer to that question. I assert that there is no way to test the answer.
You say so, you might even believe it. But it is highly misinformed according to many Muslims I know, and also according to a much more popular interpretation of "La ilaha illillah". Allah is NOT god.
Don't be stupid. Small case g "god" is a generic term for deity/supreme being.
Allah may not be the "God" that others worship; but he is a god that people around the world worship; and Muslims believe that he is the only true god amongst other false gods.
That puts Muslims into the group of people who believe in god, as opposed to the group of people who believe there is no god.
Trying to muddy those plain distinctions makes you foolish; and as far as you know better, a liar who deceives and obfuscates.
I am saying that popular disbelief* of Muslims in god makes belief in god wrong. And popular disbelief in Allah by Christians makes Allah wrong according the the wisdom of the crowds.
You are stupid if you think Muslim is a religion centered around disbelief in god. But since you can use a computer and hang out on Slashdot, that's not very likely.
That makes you a liar. Lovely.
"Allah is Great" celebrates the Muslim belief in zero gods, apparently.
I am saying that popular disbelief* of Muslims in god makes belief in god wrong. And popular disbelief in Allah by Christians makes Allah wrong according the the wisdom of the crowds.
Here, have a lollipop. Please don't talk with your mouth full.
An irrational belief (for example, in god), is not a reason to do something fundamentally evil such as discriminate against people based on religion, sex, or sexual identity - it's just an excuse.
Parents know when their kids are giving excuses rather than reasons.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And you have no reason to believe they didn't - but it was your citation, not mine. You made your bed by picking it - so sleep in it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You refuse to try to understand any of my posts in this thread . Expected, since you hang out on Slashdot.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Like moths to a flame.
Moths to a flame.
FWIW, I recall some studies (maybe a decade ago) which suggested that while Christianity was slowly declining in the US, Evangelicals were on the rise, and I think one of those studies may have been on slashdot at some point. Also, not only were Evangelicals increasing as a percentage of US Christians overall, but even increasing relative to the general population. This would accord with my anecdotal observations. Sorry, no links.
- T
You refuse to try to understand any of my posts in this thread . Expected, since you hang out on Slashdot.
I diagree with you.
This could be because I would have agreed with you, but deliberately chose not to acknowledge your superior understanding ...
Or, I could be disagreeing with you because your position is that stupid.
Muslims believe in a god, idiot. They call their god Allah. Their belief in Allah counts as a belief in god. It takes a real special kind of "intellect" to take two groups that believe in some sort of god, and conclude that everyone is an atheist on average.
You brought up "most believed in a flat earth".
You have not supported that statement with any evidence. On the other hand, I've demonstrated that it's a myth; and that there is no record of that being a learned belief amongst scholars ... which is also evidence against it being a misbelief of the common man absent evidence otherwise.
An irrational belief (for example, in god), is not a reason to do something fundamentally evil such as discriminate against people based on religion, sex, or sexual identity - it's just an excuse.
You said that only facts are reasons.
What fact is the reason that discrimination, or slavery, is evil?
Parents know when their kids are giving excuses rather than reasons.
No they don't. You just said the majority of the world is irrational. "Knowing" is a rational thing, not an irrational thing.
It is not disagreement when straw men are being invoked in your every post.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
It is not disagreement when straw men are being invoked in your every post.
You said:
. Many Muslims do NOT believe in "god" - "La ilaha illillah". There is no god but Allah.
"There is no god but Allah" categorizes Allah as a god, the only god according to Islam. But then you said:
You say so, you might even believe it. But it is highly misinformed according to many Muslims I know, and also according to a much more popular interpretation of "La ilaha illillah". Allah is NOT god.
I've already elaborated that my argument is based on people possessing a belief that there is a god; not that they believe in the same god.
You want to take Muslims' belief that Allah is the only god, as disbelief in god (generic, any), so as to refute my position. But it can't, because that's stupid.
There is no god but Allah categorizes Allah as a god, the only god according to Islam
Wrong. At least according to a popular theory which you are too stupid to understand.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Your mis-quoting what I wrote, which was a direct quote from your citation. If you're going to pick and choose what parts of your own citation you're going to believe, you're no better than they hypocritical Xians who pick and choose what parts of the bible they believe.
If you're going to troll, you have to do much better than that.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
What fact is the reason that discrimination, or slavery, is evil?
The universe is amoral. It has zero sense of good and evil. THAT is a fact. As for why people engage in stupid behaviour, their EXCUSE (not reason - it's not a rational action) is that the societies they were in believed in something (god) that has zero evidence. This was true even when the Egyptians, and later the Romans, believed in their goofy gods as an excuse to maintain the status quo, which was profitable for those who had the status.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Wrong. At least according to a popular theory which you are too stupid to understand.
So according to this popular theory you assert exists, Allah is not a god. What is he, then? Just "Allah"?
So, supreme being with authority over humanity, creator of the universe ... but not god. Just Allah.
Why would a non-Muslim categorize Allah as something other than "god"?
Your mis-quoting what I wrote, which was a direct quote from your citation. If you're going to pick and choose what parts of your own citation you're going to believe, you're no better than they hypocritical Xians who pick and choose what parts of the bible they believe.
You brought up flat earth beliefs first. This is what you wrote:
So, back when most people believed the world was flat, that made it right?
I disputed that most people believed in a flat earth; and as you made the accusation, you ought to have had evidence showing such.
And again, for the record, this is your failing to grasp that my argument is that a majority believes things for a reason. It may be a wrong reason, it be not be a very good reason, but it's still a reason. Bringing up wrong beliefs is irrelevant; you need to bring up popular irrational beliefs.
The universe is amoral. It has zero sense of good and evil. THAT is a fact.
So ... calling discrimination or slavery immoral is irrational then.
One doesn't need an excuse, then, or even a reason to discriminate or enslave, according to your position. It's not even wrong.
And I showed you that your own cite said that it was quite possible the majority believed the world was flat. Not my cite, yours. Why do you have a problem getting that.
The majority do not believe things for a reason. Belief in something that contradicts the facts isn't reasonable. They can make excuses for it, but they don't have a reason - just excuses.
The majority is wrong so often that trying to say they do things "rationally" - based on reason - is just wrong.
Believing something by fiat - for example, the bible - is not using your head rationally. It's willful ignorance, not reason.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And I showed you that your own cite said that it was quite possible the majority believed the world was flat.
That's not remotely evidence that the majority believed the world was flat.
It's possible you're a liar. That possibility is not evidence that you're a liar.
Not my cite, yours. Why do you have a problem getting that.
It's not evidence, you dimwit.
The majority do not believe things for a reason. Belief in something that contradicts the facts isn't reasonable. They can make excuses for it, but they don't have a reason - just excuses.
So far, your definition of "excuse" has been "reasons for things I don't like".
The majority is wrong so often that trying to say they do things "rationally" - based on reason - is just wrong.
What fact makes being wrong, wrong?
There is no "fact" that makes any of those actions illegal. They're all common in nature. For example, ants enslave other ants all the time.
However, we have our own sense of what is right and wrong - to use - and we reserve the right to impose it on others. There's a problem with this, because too often it's turned out that our sense of right and wrong is wrong, as history shows.
Still, we're going to apply our own rules because that's the way we roll, and the way we advance. Anarchy just doesn't cut it. We even act against our own belief of "survival of the fittest" by rejecting social darwanism (except for some who have gone full retard). Is it reasonable? It could be argued either way. Most of us are offended by social darwinism, just like most of us are offended by discrimination - but both of those were popular - maybe even the prevailing view - 100 years ago.
Just because the universe is amoral doesn't mean we can't choose to define our own morals and ethics.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When you say it's not my cite but yours, you're lying. You're the one who linked to it first, not me. You can't pick and choose just the portions of your citation that agree with you and ignore the rest. That is not only intellectually dishonest, but just plain dumb.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When you say it's not my cite but yours, you're lying [slashdot.org].
I didn't say it was your citation. My citation was in response to an unsupported claim from you; that you have still failed to support with any facts.
You're irrational. You managed to trip up on summarizing the discussion and who has the burden of proof on which claims.
You're the one who linked to it first, not me.
My linking the article is not in dispute. I linked it in response to your unsupported claim.
You can't pick and choose just the portions of your citation that agree with you and ignore the rest.
The Wiki article does not state that the public at large believed in a flat earth.
That is not only intellectually dishonest, but just plain dumb.
You believe that a quotation that avoids taking a position either way is evidence for your position. You are dumb, and your accusations of dishonesty have no weight.
There is no "fact" that makes any of those actions illegal.
Remember saying this?
No, it doesn't take a reason (in the sense of a fact) for the majority to believe something.
If there's no fact making slavery/discrimination "illegal", then those aren't reasons, those are just excuses.
Just because the universe is amoral doesn't mean we can't choose to define our own morals and ethics.
In an amoral universe, there is no morality. Nor does rationality matter. There's no such thing as a reason why a confused transsexual like yourself shouldn't be discriminated against.
Enjoy the harvest of what you sowed.
You still don't get it. Your own citation acknowledges that it may very well be that the masses believed in a flat earth at one time. So, unless you have a time machine (which I seriously doubt) or the results of historic polls of the general population, my position, according to your own citation, is quite reasonable.
I don't have to provide absolute proof, just reasonable proof. Just as you can't provide absolute proof against it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Nice to ignore my point - that WE get to decide the rules. These rules are not based on any natural facts - they are quite arbitrary. As such, they are subject to change. See stuff like same-sex marriage.
There is no morality as a part of nature - only what we decide is moral and ethical. If you have a problem with that, then you need to look up the definition of society.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Nice to ignore my point - that WE get to decide the rules.
You think WE is irrational.
These rules are not based on any natural facts - they are quite arbitrary. As such, they are subject to change. See stuff like same-sex marriage.
If it's not based on facts, you say it's not a reason. Thus, no reason, just an excuse. Irrational.
If you have a problem with that, then you need to look up the definition of society.
Why are you asking me to use reason with definitions when society is irrational, morality is irrational, and all the rules are based off of excuses?
Your own citation acknowledges that it may very well be that the masses believed in a flat earth at one time.
The sentence doesn't take a position. It may very well be that the masses never believed in a flat earth at any time.
Logic is hard for the irrational.
my position, according to your own citation, is quite reasonable.
Based on 0 facts. You only have excuses according to your own standards. Why do you use excuses instead of reasons? You've actually said why: "And I'm certainly not rational all the time"
You're being irrational right now ... and most of the time.
I don't have to provide absolute proof, just reasonable proof. Just as you can't provide absolute proof against it.
History doesn't do "proofs", you ignoramus. There's historical evidence, and there's lack of historical evidence. And then there's false histories fabricated to support ignorant prejudice, like the flat earth myth.
Rational people don't feel a need to lie about other people present and past in order to feel better about themselves, "Barbara".
Never said society was rational - that would be an obvious falsehood. Our "morals and ethics" have, as I've pointed out previously, changed in contradictory ways over time. Nevertheless even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Look at how many people use the bible as an excuse - they're not acting rationally based on any evidence. The bible is worse than wikipedia. While they're both written by a bunch of people, at least with wikipedia we can independently verify the sources.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Then why do you do it?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Do what?
Our "morals and ethics" have, as I've pointed out previously, changed in contradictory ways over time.
In an amoral universe, "morals and ethics" do not matter. They are no better or worse over time. Since you don't think they have any factual basis, contradictory is no better or worse than consistency.
Look at how many people use the bible as an excuse
In an amoral universe with no facts to support morality, everything is an excuse. Why single out the Bible?
they're not acting rationally based on any evidence.
In an amoral universe, why does it matter if people act rationally or irrationally?
The bible is worse than wikipedia.
According to what? The morality you made up today, based on excuses?
While they're both written by a bunch of people, at least with wikipedia we can independently verify the sources.
What does independence and verification matter in an amoral universe where morality is based off of excuses?
Lie, duh! Oh, right, you believe that just because people believe there is a god, that's a reason to believe there is a god. No logic there!
Same as people who believed that an eclipse was caused by a toad/wolf/dragon/bear was eating the sun and had to be chased away by banging pots/magic/whatever. Just because people believed it is not a reason to believe in it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
As I pointed out before, in an amoral universe, the only sense of ethics and morality comes from us. We get to decide. Why do you have a problem with that, since there's no evidence that the universe is ethical or just or moral?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Lie, duh!
I have no interest in lying to you.
I don't believe people are irrational and wrong the way you do. That's why we ought to expect moral behavior from them; which you expect also, even as you believe in a universe where such expectations are irrational.
Oh, right, you believe that just because people believe there is a god, that's a reason to believe there is a god. No logic there!
I explained my point, and it's not what you are saying here. Oh well.
We get to decide. Why do you have a problem with that, since there's no evidence that the universe is ethical or just or moral?
You are confusing "I" and "We". You are not "We". You are a freak who looks down on mankind as irrational beings.
I do not. And that's because morality is not a popularity contest amongst the irrational; one piece of evidence for that is that you would strenuously object to being burned at the stake for being a transsexual - even if that is the popular thing to do to freakish people.
I would object as well, as annoying as you may be on this online forum. You still have a dignity as a human being that should be respected. Destroy the belief in that moral standard at your own risk.
If you expect moral behavior from people, history disagrees with you. This is compounded by the fact that what is considered moral changes over time - radically. One example is same-sex marriage, which since the turn of the century has been gaining public support and legal acceptance (and which the US Supreme Court will probably also recognize as a Constitutional right soon).
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Morality is a human construct. The fact that what we consider moral or ethical changes with popular belief shows that it is a popularity contest of sorts. For example, as more people abandon religion as their ultimate guide to right and wrong, child beating and spousal rape have been criminalized. 42 years ago the medical community officially declared that same-sex attraction, until then considered a treatable illness, was not.
Now you claim I am a freak and mentally ill because I am a transsexual. The medical community disagrees with you. So does the law.
Also, while you think that burning at the stake is "the popular thing to do with freakish people," it certainly isn't in my part of the world. So, unless you're posting from Uganda, which American right-wing religious zealots exported hatred of those who are LGBTtQ, your statement is another lie. After all, our society sets what is and what isn't moral and ethical, and where I sit, we have laws against that.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If you expect moral behavior from people, history disagrees with you.
History is not a person that can disagree with me.
I'll clarify, though. It's not that I think people will do what is right; it's that I think there is a universal standard of behavior people ought to live up to. We live in a moral universe; that's why we expect morality of people and do bad things to those who don't do so.
Now you claim I am a freak and mentally ill because I am a transsexual. The medical community disagrees with you. So does the law.
I didn't say mentally ill. You cannot help lying about what I actually said.
Your boy parts don't become girl parts just because you're willing to mutilate them. That level of delusion is what makes you a freak.
Now, why do you care what the irrational proclamations of the law and medical boards say about you? (irrational majority, remember?)
while you think that burning at the stake is "the popular thing to do with freakish people
Replace "is" with "were to be". It was supposed to be a hypothetical, not an observation. I guess English is not your native language.
After all, our society sets what is and what isn't moral and ethical, and where I sit, we have laws against that.
What has changed can change again. Why do you expect consistency from an irrational law set by an irrational majority?
So do all of them. The distinctions still fails.
Also, how is doing bad things to people who do bad things moral? The definition of "bad things" has changed over time. Inter-racial marriage is no longer a "bad thing". Same-sex couples is no longer a "bad thing." A society where there are no class divisions is no longer a "bad thing." Same-sex marriage and child adoption are not longer "bad things" - to the contrary, children raised by same-sex couples are exposed to far less domestic violence. Divorce is not longer a "bad thing."
If there were a universal standard, we certainly haven't found it. After all, the xians who hold up the bible as such a standard like to forget that it condones genocide, racism, slavery, child beating, polygamy, etc. That's the thing about "universal standards" - there are so many different ones.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Provide proof that we live in a moral universe.
Wrong question.
Evidence that we live in a moral universe: We care about morality.
How many times have you appealed to morality "defined by us" as a standard of behavior?
The absurdity is that "defined by us" morality is no morality at all.
Also, how is doing bad things to people who do bad things moral?
You don't believe in self-defense, then. If a young girl is being attacked by a robber, a rapist, a murderer ... you would call her immoral for defending herself with a weapon and doing bad things to her attacker. She must submit to the robbery, the rape, to die ... or be called immoral by you.
Funny how you do nothing about the immoral robber, rapist, murderer. You help the immoral instead of the victim ... and you call this "morality"?
If there were a universal standard, we certainly haven't found it.
You confuse rebellion against a universal standard with an inability to find the universal standard.
Same-sex marriage and child adoption are not longer "bad things" - to the contrary, children raised by same-sex couples are exposed to far less domestic violence.
Liar.
Divorce is not longer a "bad thing."
Liar yet again.
" Divorce represents one of the most stressful life events for both children and their parents."
That's the thing about "universal standards" - there are so many different ones.
Yes, there are an infinite number of wrong answers.
1+1 = 3 is wrong. 1+1 = 4 is wrong. 1+1 = 5 is wrong ....
That does not mean there is no right answer. That does not mean that it is impossible to find the right answer. People who argue what you just argued are beyond stupid, you are foolish.
The stupid can't help it; the foolish choose it. The upside is that you can choose to stop being foolish. Repent.