Atheism vs. Religion Dead Horse Beating Round 473!

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Roman citizens may have, I don't know, but remember that most of the subjects of Rome were not citizens of Rome, and Greek was the trade language.

 

How so? That does not make any sense to concede that we humans ARE wired to do this but grant an arbitrary exception for JFK Cts because you kind of want to believe them?!

Nope. I think what I was contending here was the 'bait-and-switch' equivocation fallacy where you may have(hard to remember as these forums don't allow for multi-quoting) presented "theory" in regards to the 'Conspiracy theory' context but then switched to a scientific usage without recognizing the corresponding change in definition.

"Theory" in science means something entirely different than "theory" in common usage and in the term "conspiracy theory".

Appeals to anonymous authority don't work.

Granted but my only point here was that the fact that there are people who doubt something is not at all valid evidence for or against an explanation.

Politicians. Gotta love 'em! If you, in an act of blind faith, accept whatever definitions they put forth for themselves then it will be impossible to define ANY of them. Bush Jr. would be a "compassionate Conservative" who was very concerned about defending the Constitution, protecting Americans and working with the rest of the world.
Likewise JFK would be both a Conservative and a Liberal who both respected and denounced Liberals while feeling Nixon was a more sensible/agreeable guy than ANY of them.

JFK was not a Liberal, even by his own definition in the article you linked to(I have not yet been able to track down the actual source of the piece but have not spent much effort yet).




Will create a separate thread shortly.

 

Good because, no matter what some Americans may say, JFK has not been deified as far as I know.

 

Thanks. My point remains though.... Trying to understand usages of words by taking the word itself and breaking it down into it's component parts is just bad.

That link supports my argument perfectly! Thank you!

It makes me BOTH a strong atheist AND a strong agnostic. I do not suspect we agnostic atheists are going to start re-defining ourselves to conform to your own preconceptions and ideas.

Fine. YOU don't know any personally. Now what does THAT have top do with the point I was making? Again, treated as a god IS a god! If someone worships the sun then the sun is their "God". If someone worships Kim Jong Il(as many do in N. Korea) then he is their "god".

I am an 'atheist' to these gods, NOT because I deny that they exist or lack a 'belief' in their existence. I am an atheist because I do not grant them willing worship.

Nope. Not "beliefs" at all(anymore than I "believe" 2 + 2 = 4). The supernatural does not exist and I just accept that truth(though I do not like it anymore than you do). I could be proven wrong here if someone were able to propose a definition of "supernatural" that made sense and/or then coughed up an example of a supernatural thing.

Hmmm...so your contention then is with atheists who also happen to be Naturalists? Why not just attack 'Naturalists' then instead of inventing this "ultimate atheist" that seeks to portray a 'sub-set' of atheism as irrational?

Prove that I too can say I have "met plenty of them" and that this is a logical fallacy?!

They were genuinely atheistic by almost all usages of the term. The noted difference for both were that they sought to establish a Theocracy wherein THEY were the Godheads.

Bald assertions.

It is also a bunch of BS...with all due respect.

"Hate" is a pretty strong word here and I am not sure it applies. What I am saying is that your usage of "extremist" and such, regardless of your stated intentions, usually mean a certain thing in this context and this seems a bit of 'tactical linguistics' on your part.

That is not a tenet of atheism.

Neither are these.

I still do not see it.

The film is all over the map! It spends time on 9-11 conspiracy theories, Masonic CTs/New World Order nonsense, war, general politics etc. But even IF this film in particular were solely or partly about a desire to convince people there are no gods, so what?! Trying to convince someone of the correctness of your position(even if your position is wonky and your case poorly put together) is not what is at issue here.

Except for the last part, I agree.

Believers in UFOs and Sasquatch I run into almost every day. A good number of the ones I have met(online mostly) say they have "seen plenty of those!" or they have a close relative or friend who states such.
My point is that this is bad form regardless of whether you are talking UFOs, supernatural entities or psychics.

I would suspect this IS a bit more realistic than beliefs in fairies, extra-terrestrials, ghosts etc. but that is not my point here.

Okay, you have met one or two then. I'm going to move on from this for now...

I believe you. I think maybe "insult" is too strong word here so that would be my fault. I think my term 'tactical linguistics' much more fitting.

Again, that is not MY "insistence" at all.

Correct...to an extent at least. But it is not MY assumption.

Okay let's go with your above definition(I have some minor problems with this which I will detail below). An imaginary thing is something that cannot effect it's surroundings. Now what do we do with the tooth fairy who CAN effect it's surroundings but for whatever reason has not done so that we can detect, thus far?

And what ARE an imaginary thing's surroundings? The centaur in my head can destroy and rebuild it's surroundings because it's surroundings are equally imaginary. It cannot effect the surroundings WE share because imaginary things cannot effect REALITY.

And again, so to do genies and tooth fairies become potential "immutable facts" which we have not yet discovered. See the problem here? You are willing to posit "God" as something real that does not yet reveal itself to us, even though this contradicts a lot of what we know as fact about reality(namely that the bigger the impact a thing has, the more evidence of it's existence we generally find).

Neither are strong atheists. Atheism itself is represented by around 15% of the general population of Americans for example but strong atheists are a somewhat rare minority amongst atheists. In any case your argument was simply fallacious and wrong.

Anyone calling themselves a "strong atheist" will almost certainly be educated enough to know what the term means though and by the above are you referring to YOUR definition of 'strong atheist' or the one that is actually used in philosophy and by strong atheists?

Again, this not only sounds absurd on it's face and is still an appeal to anonymous authority, but it is also an irrelevant conclusion fallacy.

I will have to go back and quote the entire parts in context to show you how wrong this is. But in any case, no...these do not represent "dogma" at all.
Again, your case is akin to saying that someone insists on making sense in communicating ideas is "dogmatic" in his "sensibility".

Yes...and?

Science itself cannot "perceive" anything. Science is a methodology. HUMANS(and other entities but for our purposes here...) perceive things and then use science to examine what they perceive and make sense of it all.
Now are there things which humans do not currently perceive which may be real(i.e. various particles, germs, etc.)? I would be shocked if this were not so. But this is avoiding my point: Either things exist and are therefore under the jurisdiction of (humans using)science to reveal, regardless of whether we survive long enough to do so OR these things are NOT subject to scientific revelation and therefore do not exist.
My contention in all of this is for the most part with the "transcendental" crowd who say things like "God exists but he is beyond science" and such.

No, you cannot. Even if I allow a scientist to use all manner of technology at his disposal he cannot prove that I do not have a fairy living in my front pocket. he cannot prove that Santa Claus does not deliver presents every year as per the tales we tell our children. The reason being that for every evidence you present, the claimant can offer a 'transcendental' rationalization. Re: Fairies do not show up on our tech-devices because of their magical nature. Santa alters our memories after every delivery, etc.

I am not an idiot and assume no such thing. I simply take the scientists who work in these fields at their word on this since I myself have not done extensive study(and am not qualified to do so) on such.

Exactly but I think where we disagree here is with what is actually possible. If we apply your reasoning consistently then all things are possible. But this cannot be such an existence would seem to me to be as nonsensical as an existence where NOTHING is possible.

Irrelevant. I was not talking about the historical "Saint Nicholas" who may have lived in Germany and may have delivered presents to children during the winter solstice.

Please do so then.

We CAN do that for logically inconsistent proposals though, be it the "supernatural" or a God who is omniscient as well as having free will.

No. I am saying that if you grant exceptions to "God" that you do not grant for Santa Claus, genies, etc. then you are being inconsistent and selective. Your arguments thus far presented work as well for genies as they do for "God", which is to say...not well at all.

Same here(re: alien life). The difference between us then is that I apply the same standards to ALL extraordinary claims, be it unicorns, genies or gods etc. without granting special exemptions to specific ones I am fond of.

It was not a straw man though. Nice dodge btw.... Your Dexterity must be at least 16!

 

I have no idea what you are even talking about here!? I do not find the term "perfect" to have much relevance or meaning at all, generally speaking and do not apply it to anything really. You are straw manning me here.

Science is primarily, as you describe above, a human methodology. As such I would be the first person to say that it is all too common for humans to misuse science, misapply science, do BAD science etc. But science is also self-correcting and fueled by the goals of proving ideas false. I am reading about just such a thing in this months issue of Skeptic Magazine where a 1993 study found Saccharine to be harmful and causing seizures and so forth.

This was bad science that employed many methodological flaws(small group, selection bias etc.). This study was later refuted by scientists using better science. No one is saying that science is "perfect". Perfection entails more than just being capable(even supremely so).

And science is also a philosophy. There are principles and ethical tenets and such.

But if this applies to God then why does it not apply to genies, fairies, etc.?
Why believe that ONE specific extraordinary claim which is as completely lacking in rational justification as any others, is true but yet to be discovered while the rest are fiction?

What exactly does "Knowledge of what is not" actually mean though here? Doesn't knowledge of what is cover things here as it seems that knowledge of what is NOT would be infinite and therefore not fitting within your circle.

I do not share this belief(I have no idea how "strong" or popular such belief is though) in other dimensions(just stating for clarity here).

Anything really since we have no grounds to infer they exist.

I don't find it even remotely sensible(I mean I literally cannot make sense of the ideas you present above) so I cannot assign even the slightest degree of probability to such things. To my mind it is like saying "in another dimension, a "fox" might be: "swing my back for otter is purple in the slithey toaves!".

Is engineering not science in your worldview? Is technology(which I DID qualify as something apart from science) not a product of science? Also my point stands in that the more we learn about reality, the less we have to learn about reality. There will always be the unknown because we do not live in a static reality. To illustrate what I mean, take a look at the human brain and it's workings. Though we still have much to learn about the brain, we don't have anywhere near as much to learn as the ancient Babylonians did.

Debatable but not important to my point so...

First of all, no I have not. In fact I have repeatedly stated that there are MANY gods in existence. Gaius Caesar was the God of ancient Rome and that God would have killed you slowly had you called him "Caligula"(a childhood taunt that meant "little boot"). The sun exists. The moon exists. The universe itself exists.
I DO assert as a rationalist and Naturalist that the supernatural does not exist(and that includes supernatural gods) but I don't think this supports your case here.
I have no "beliefs" except in the sense that I believe in principles like libery and justice.

No, they are not. I do not "believe" I exist or that I require oxygen to survive. I do not "believe" that 2 + 2 = 4. I accept these things(with the provision that if someone can show me to be wrong, I will join in their dissent).

You are not making sense here. How does the reality of a self-evident truth prohibit irrational people from dissenting from that fact?! Materialism is self-evident. We can observe and confirm that ideals have only a dependent existence in that without the material brained entities, they would not be.

Not at all. Read again. Ask questions if something needs clarifying.

I've demonstrated this to be false already as well.

I seriously doubt this. In my experience when you disprove a belief that people have a great investment in, the reaction is not to concede such but rather to rationalize the proof away.

Concurrent observation is good evidence that SOMETHING happened at location 'X'. For example, one person claiming he saw a fire breathing dragon(or God) at one time and another person later claiming the same thing, is worthless to us. But if everyone on my street screams and points to a space above my house just before I am given 3rd degree burns by a winged lizard, that is seemingly good evidence for ME to believe in the dragon(but not for a skeptic to agree).
But the problem with anecdotal evidence like this, regardless is that there are too many rational explanations for such. We regularly see that people in massive numbers will cough up anecdotes even for things we know could not have occurred or existed. False memory syndrome is all too common a culprit, as is mis-perception etc.

1)This is NOT a "common attempt" at anything for ANYONE. I have yet to even hear an actual skeptic put forth the "mass hallucination" explanation so I think this is another straw man.

2)This is not the domain of "atheists" but rather skeptics . Atheists only disbelieve in gods. Many of them WILL believe in ghosts, spirits, psychics etc.

3)Video is easily faked. I can do it right from my PC if I want.

What claim are we talking about here?

"Villain" may be too strong on my part. My point was that we can trace a theological evolution from the earliest writings/gospels to John and Jews are increasingly portrayed as...less heroic/less innocent/more nasty as you go from the earliest to the last.

Let me try to clarify this again. Jesus was an amalgam of several characters both real and fictional. Such is not unusual in history. Those early Christians needed a compelling mythology for their own sect. Apollonius would not do since he did not fit the bill. They needed a messiah that fulfilled the prophecy within the Torah. They needed someone who was Jewish but a step away from the fire and brimstone Old Testament Yahweh, while still able to be a demigod. So they borrowed the 'virgin birth' from various sources, the crucified savior from other sources, the peaceful prophet from other sources etc.

?! Where are you getting this stuff?! I have made no such claims nor do I say that Josephus was or was not a reliable source. My debunking of the Testimonium Flavium was only refuting the notion that extra-Biblical contemporaries of Jesus verified his existence. YOU mentioned Josephus as one such.

Keep knocking down straw men...

What is false? That there are ANY contemporary historical mentions of this Jesus existing. All mentions of this character occur decades AFTER he was alleged to exist.

But did not Jesus live and die in Rome(half the planet was part of the Roman empire at that time)? Do Christians not alleged that Jesus had a monumental impact on history and events of the day? This seems a disingenuous argument here.

No. Occam's razor states that we should not unnecessarily multiply entities for explanation. That does not translate to "less complexity"(and "complex" here is a rather vague term as we shall see below).

This is EXACTLY why I corrected the errant definition. There is no mistaking what an "unnecessary multiplication" is in OR. But "simple" and "complex" are like amorphous blobs in this regard. "Magic did it" is as simple an explanation as you can get but it won't help you to figure out why your car won't start.

The earth being flat may be the "simpler" explanation but it is not applicable to OR(Occam's Razor). An example of a violation of OR would be getting a flat tire, pulling over to find a rusty nail sticking out of the tire and to then assume that magical gremlins fired magic nail guns at your car to get back at you for something Merlin did to them 2,000 years ago.

You see how sneaky you are with the tactical linguistics? "Better" implies that this source is somehow invalid or already refuted/answered. That Hitchens was one of maybe TWO journalists who dared to investigate Mother Teresa leaves him open to this sort of nonsense. My question for you is do you have anything to refute his detailed accounts of Teresa's exploitation of the children of Calcutta, the false "miracle" attributed to her(that was later refuted by the very photographer who took the picture in question), her receiving of the stolen money(she herself admitted to) and refusal to give it back to the people it belonged to, etc.?

People are often granted mythical qualities or have their own achievements exaggerated by others. Teresa was just one of these and, like the JFK stuff I mentioned before , people have heard the myths so much all their lives(how often do we hear someone say "He's no 'Mother Teresa'..." to describe someone's nastiness or lack of humanity?) that when they finally hear someone say these are not true, their reaction is to think this person crazed.

False. I suspect you are not familiar with the term "extraordinary claim" as it is used in this context. An extraordinary claim is one which IF TRUE, would force a drastic revision of, not only the state of knowledge and understanding of reality that we have, but also the means we use to attain such knowledge and understanding. If the tooth fairy DOES exist then we must revise dentistry and really every facet of how we understand reality.

Ergo, the extraordinary claim that the tooth fairy exists should ONLY be supported by extraordinary evidence.

Same goes for God(depending on how you define such but I am mostly referring to the common monotheistic versions). If God exists then everything we think we know unravels like a frayed sweater whose loose thread is tugged.

False(on the third at least).

Again, you misapply "assumption" here and reject my acceptance of time as a linear conceptual reality as "false" without being able to demonstrate such.

I suspect you are aiming at a selective re-definition of omniscience here(one that differs from the Biblical notions attributed to God) but I will point out anyway that if God IS omniscient then the future MUST BE "fixed"! It cannot be other.

It is a contradiction by it's own Biblical definition! God in the Bible is said to know the future as well as he knows the past and that all his knowledge is complete and beyond question. The whole comic-booky "multiple time lines" rationalization seems like a safe haven until you actually think about the implications and nonsensical nature. What does it even MEAN to such a God that I have sinned in this one(of the infinite total) time line/reality when somewhere amongst these infinite realities exists a "perfect time line" exactly as God desires? What of realities where existence was snuffed out completely by a chain of events that began in 2240? Do Bibles exist in each of these realities and if so are they as fluid at their reality would dictate in how God is portrayed? What about the reality where God is a Deist God or some such?

I think I understand that you are trying to suggest that time lines are only possibilities instead of realities but this just leaves you with the same problem of the contradiction between omniscience and free will. If God KNOWS that in THIS time line/reality humans will exist then he cannot EVER ponder a decision about whether humans will be created in this time line.

In effect you have not made this any less a paradox. You have only broadened the paradox to include infinite multiple realities or time lines.

No he wasn't. He did not KNOW his whole story at all until he finished it. he had to ponder decisions along the way, make changes that suited him, correct errors, etc.

You have a funny idea of what "debatable" means.

The analogy still fails for the reasons I have already stated and speculating that ANYTHING is separate from "our" reality is not just a stretch but downright ludicrous.

What I should say is that this is not and cannot be credibly scientific at all. No competent scientist would do such a thing and expect anyone to take heed. It is not enough to simply state something does not exist and then say that it is falsifiable(i.e. "Bring me a fairy and my hypothesis will be falsified!") and call it a hypothesis.

False and until you are able to prove that my pocket fairy does not exist, you have no leg to stand on here.

Nonsense. That would make any comic book collector who appraises the value of comic books guilty of worshiping those comics. Worship entails much more than that. This is the reason we don't call 'stamp collecting' a religion and we don't designate Christianity as simply being a hobby akin to stamp collecting.

What I said was that the act of worshiping something is demeaning to the worshiper and this stands. The act of worship entails ritualistic praise and devotion and typically entails submissive posturing such as falling to one's knees and such. God, while fictional is still a person in that he has a mind. If someone worships Britney Spears then no one would argue that they are not demeaning themselves before her. The same thing applies to God regardless of whether you assume he exists or deserves such worship or not.

There are options beyond "worship other people/things" and "be a sociopath or narcissist". There is humility for example. I am a very humble person myself. I have zero problem with(and regularly admit) that there are FAR better debaters on the internet than I, as well as far better artists, writers, musicians, thinkers, etc. Humility is good. Worship is NOT a synonym for "humility". It is an act that entails much more.

Sorry...low blood sugar yesterday and was hurrying.

The "weak" and "strong" qualifiers in the terms "weak atheism" and "strong atheism" have nothing to do with strength of conviction. Period. They have only to do with whether you are asserting something actively(i.e. "God does not exist") or passively(i.e. "I have no belief that God exists"). Strong = active and weak denotes passive.

Did I miss something?

That may be true for all I know. But it is irrelevant to my point here as I am not "relying" on Josephus for ANYTHING, nor am I hear to defend his scholarship.

 

Wow, is this horse dead. I haven't seen such a dead horse in years. Dead Dead Dead. I recommend packing away the textbooks and having a game of Parcheesi.

 

I thought you were only allowed to play Uno...

 

Homer Simpson says "Mmmm, Parcheesi!".

 

Which part of "I'm not taking sides on these CTs" did you miss in my post, DS?

I am merely stating that there are various reasons, other than the one you gave on this thread as an example, of why people may believe that the WC may have been wrong.

We are not "wired" to believe the WC may not have had all the facts and evidence, and may have been wrong. Or that the other inquries, issues and evidence brought forth should be ignored. My own personal take is that it is unsolved:

1. Oswald was never convicted of the crime of shooting John F. Kennedy.

2. There was never a trial to hear his side of the story, or for all the evidence to be shown in public because....

3. He was shot by a known mafia associate before he ever got the chance to tell his side of events.

4. The government refused to make some evidence public at the time. Only in 1994 iirc was a commission set up to release all the documents and evidence.

There was a full Congressional hearing in 1976, which concluded that the case is unsolved. YOU seem to be the one with the "strange need" for closure (particularly the WC version) in this instance:

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/contents/contents_hsca.htm

Also, I never commented that Kennedy was "a liberal." I said that he was a moderate who was a "self-proclaimed" liberal (which I demonstrated). We could avoid much confusion if you would please read a little more closely.

I agreed with you that Kennedy's liberal credentials were "rather thin." But just because he and Nixon were friends (which is fairly well-known) before the election of 1960 hardly makes him "a conservative." That is a very weak point. There are many people, and even in some marriages, where people can be of different political persausions and still be close personally. But I doubt if Kennedy was "more comfortable" with Nixon than he was with his two brothers, Bobby and Ted, who were real liberals, btw.

And since you brought up Nixon, some who have looked at his policy record have concluded that he may have been more moderate than conservative. Despite his obvious character flaws, his record is rather good on health care and the environment. So it just may be that Kennedy and Nixon were both pragmatic politicians and not political ideologues - as both sides like to make them out to be - and thusly understood each other quite well. Perhaps you should revisit that evidence.

 

I disagree with you there and refer to the point that people understood what those words meant. You are calling them "mis-definitions" but that may simply be because you don't use them not because other people (including much of society) don't.

Then you never heard of hero worship which is different from religious worship but still has a level of devotion to and/or respect of someone or something.

And that doesn't include even followers of a given principle be it equality, justice, and so on who may or may not view that principle as related to a religion or supreme being but certainly honor and follow it.

Its not an assumption. I've actually spoken with people who are fundamentalist Christians (born again and JW on different occasions) and the way they are loyal to a dogma/ideology is similar to the way some of the atheists I've come across are loyal to a dogma/ideology.

This isn't assumption but experience and the ability to compare multiple people.

Straw man arguments are based on pushing a concept or idea to a silly extreme that is unlikely to be real. I've actually talked to people who fit what I describe and are very much real.

You calling it a straw man is an assumption on your part and perhaps an indication of bias as well.

Yes, you were making an assumption. I was talking about personal experience and you were writing it off as part of a large misconception.

What you are doing is similar to if someone noticed the woman grabbing her purse tighter and mentioned it. With you then denying it happened at all and that the person didn't notice what he/she did but suffered from a large-scale falsehood.

I'm not sure if that is a complex dodge or not but it could be.

That is you admitting you weren't there at the time and thus weren't a witness to the discussion I had but asserting that I am wrong anyway.

Presumptive at best.

So you're assuming I thought atheists were dogmatic before I spoke to these individuals and thus I had a preexisting assumption that there were dogmatics atheists out there?

I ask that because you still seem to be ducking the specific point that I communicated with people that acted in a way similar to how a different but comparable group of people acted.

You appear to be trying to find a way of papering over or dodging the actual people and situations I have come across.

I mentioned concepts of karma as a way to be open and honest. Also I may wonder a bit in my thinking but thought of something that seemed to connect with what you said.

Moreover it is ironic that you say something I brought up is irrelevant when you appear to be dodging the situations I have been in by referring to something that wasn't in play at the time.

So not only were you not there but you are telepathic thus able to read my mind to know what I was thinking at the time.

For the record I've had atheist friends long (years) before I ran into the group of atheists that struck me as dogmatic. I simply thought of atheists (in general) as people who came to a different conclusion about the existence of God than I did. It was only after I spoke with these individuals and started looking into their arguments more and the type of atheism itself they follow that I realized there is a type of atheism active today that very much has an ideology/dogma.

You pretty much described what you were assuming about me, and I can safely say it doesn't include the experiences I went through.

At this point it is a deep irony that you called my peepers "warped".

It became a fairly long discussion but I'm sure both I and someone else pointed out to you that there was a link to the discussion I referred to early in this very thread (page 1 to be specific). The point where one of the other people there said it was a pity I wouldn't be killed was around August 9th if my memory serves correctly.

It seems the reason you cannot come to a conclusion on the discussion is because you are choosing to not view it.

Do you avoid examining evidence that contradicts an assumption of your's often? You are in this case.

A comparable situation would be if you were a policy officer/emergency room staffer and a someone came to you and claimed to have been stabbed. And instead of examining his/her body for wounds you decide to stand there and talk about how he/she may or may not have been stabbed and even if he/she had been it may have just been by youths who didn't know any better (what you seem to be implying by your reference to teenagers).

Granted being stabbed is requires immediate medical attention while talking on blogs generally does not so the level of emergency is different but not that you had an opportunity to examine evidence and ignored it while you postulated and tried to play down the claim put forth.

So instead of looking you're still debating if this ever happened.

And it reflects on this discussion because if anything it serves to indicate that there are still atheists in the world today (thankfully few as far as I can tell) who are actively willing to and supportive of doing harm to others because those others aren't atheists like them.

You said there are no atheist fanatics. I think someone (Atheist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, and so on) who would be willing to harm or kill someone else simply because that person is not the same with regard to religious beliefs qualifies as a fanatic.

This situation relates to our discussion both because at least one of the people I was talking with could arguably be a fanatic and because at least a couple of the atheists in that discussion were of the dogmatic variety.

What you are describing above is different from what I pointed out.

We already talked about fanatics and used people willing to kill others as a criteria to define them.

The person I was talking to at the time expressed direct support for the killing of others.

Perhaps I should have made my point clearer by saying "vocal and/or irrational". You seemed to be downplaying the possibility atheists would be either before.

Dawkins paints a misleading picture that feeds into the views of an eager audience. Not that different from right-wing radio as we have described it.

I noticed you added the word "ritualistic" in there when neither I nor Dawkins used it. Now many rituals are religious in nature there are some things that if defined as rituals are do not have to be one bit-such as school graduations being a coming of age ritual.

If the female genital mutilations are being done in such a fashion then they may be both ritualistic and still not religious. But I didn't say they were ritualistic and that some people have been having them done in an under the table/behind the scenes manner makes me doubt at least some of them are done as part of a ritual.

I don't know if you added the word ritualistic because you thought that is what I and Dawkins referred to or if it was done purposefully so you could try to misdirect discussion of female genital mutilation and its causes.

Dawkins made the comments I referred to around 9 minutes and 30 seconds into the video-give or take up to 15 seconds.

His allusions to those as religion's fault are arguably misleading but they fit a trend of Dawkins being eager to embrace the laying of blame on religion.

I can readily separate religion from tradition. I like bratwurst and they commonly are made and sold in my state. I don't have to be a member of any religion but my understanding is that they are one of the number of sausage styles with germanic roots brought to the US by immigrants from Germany and the germanic states that existed prior to its unification (a number of which settled in this region). Thus they are a something of a traditional food here (though I wouldn't begrudge anyone else without germanic roots enjoying them either).

The same argument can be put forward for some types of clothing and a number of things that don't have to relate to a religion.

The picture Dawkins tries to paint is one of religion being a bad thing in general and he very much focuses on the negative with little or no mention of the positive. This is misleading as it doesn't even try to paint a whole or accurate picture of the situation.

And this would be true even if everything he alluded to was true/accurate in what he said. I think he was deceptive with his specific points about spousal abuse and female genital mutilation.

If the only things I was told about Martin Luther King Jr. were the bad ones (such as that he wasn't faithful to his wife) and there was no mention of his efforts for equal rights, social justice, and that people tried to do some nasty things to him simply because he wanted the rights we take for granted and his response was to promote nonviolence then I would have a different and inaccurate picture of him and why he is an important figure.

At least a decent portion of the bad would result even if there was no religion. When I pointed to spousal abuse and female genital mutilations those are two that, in specific, would.

Also we don't know if all of the good would happen with or without religion. But we do know he did little to mention any of the good that has happened relating to religion/religious groups.

Dawkins thus is still painting a misleading picture.

He may not be as rabid as Rush but he certainly appears willing to mislead people and insult his 'enemies'.

Then why did you call them "absurd" without even reading them? That is a pretty strong indication someone is biased and/or rushing to judgement.

At this point your assurance means less to me than when I started reading your reply.

If I made a claim and tried to back it up I get the feeling T2Bruno, NOG, and Aldeth would make an honest attempt to think it over and examine it even if they disagreed with it.

I'm not so sure you would based on your last comment to me since in parts of it you unabashedly failed to do so.

I have been increasingly critical of your reply but I think my criticisms have been fair ones.






EDIT

I noticed this when passing through your last reply to NOG:

NOG: Take a second look at the followers of Mao or Stalin. While the leaders may or may not have been genuinely atheistic,

You: They were genuinely atheistic by almost all usages of the term. The noted difference for both were that they sought to establish a Theocracy wherein THEY were the Godheads.


NOG: ... or have been motivated to put religion down by their atheistic beliefs, the followers were vicious, merciless, and violent because of their atheistic beliefs and their beliefs that theists were somehow sub-human or dysfunctional.

You: Bald assertions.


NOG: That is a specific sub-set of atheism, and one specially designed to be vicious and heartless, but it is atheistic in basis.

YOU: It is also a bunch of BS...with all due respect.


But earlier:

NOG: Ah, but that's not what we were saying. Atheism itself isn't any more to blame for Stalin or Mao slaughtering believers than Theism is for the Inquisition, but a particular sub-set is just as much to blame as the Catholic Church is.

You:

Now comparing what you said earlier and later indicates you have contradicted yourself.

You were emotional enough to call what NOG said "BS" while you did it.

 

Umm, you may want to re-read that. He is specifically quoted as saying he developed the term to express his ignorance on the issue and, more specifically, to define the position that no one can possibly know either way (what I call a strong agnostic). Therefore an agnostic does not deny the existence of gods, because doing so would be to claim knowledge that they don't exist.

Again, re-read the definition of an agnostic given by Huxley himself.

The point is that no one in this thread other than you is defining 'god' that way and, for the purposes of this discussion, it is a useless definition. To insist on following it is pointless.

... I'm sorry, but that's a belief. You may be quite certain of it, but it is still a belief. Trust me, I'm quite certain of my God, but that's still a belief. 2+2=4, however, is a good example of an axiom. It is proven simply by the definitions of the terms.

I assume you mean metaphysical naturalism and not naturalized epistemology or the predecessors to so many modern scientists. I'm sorry, but naturalist is too vague, general, and non-standard of a term to be practically useful in such a conversation.

No, sorry to confuse you. I meant prove the motivation is religion.

 

Hello all,


Been pretty busy the last several days and right now I am dead tired. I HAVE read through most of the latest replies directed at me and will respond to them as I am best able to.

Chandos: I meant to start a new thread for discussing the JFK conspiracy theories and such but had not the time before. I will start a new thread now though and copy/paste your above into the OP and respond there.

I will try and get to at least a reply to pplr or NOG by tomorrow hopefully.

 

Take your time. A good response in time is better than a bad response that's rushed.

 

Wha-wha-wha wait!? There's a positive side to religion!?

Specifically to religion? Positive factors that are specifically part of religious thinking that are not explainable in any other (more plausible) fashion? A positive side that has nothing to do with anything else than religion?

...care to elaborate?

 

Religion tends to keep people complacent and easily led. Concerning the monotheistic religions especially people can be convinced to accept quite poor conditions in this life, working their behinds off for a future reward in the afterlife. I think much of the wealth of Northern Europe is built upon Lutheran work ethic for instance. Accept your place with grace in this life and receive a better one in the next. That can have some positive effects on a society.

 

Uh, yeah, I suppose protestant work ethics' are the reason why China's the largest holder of the U.S. debt...

I'm not quite buying protestant work ethics as the reason for Western World's successes during the last century...Sure, it might be possible that the ethics played a part, but what was the significance of that part, that's the interesting bit...

 

Yet again the lack of basic reading comprehension skill baffles me during a thread on these forums.

 

Oh you mean me ignoring 'Northern Europe' and comparing the economies of the States and China?

That was intentional. Please try to be more constructive with your attempted criticism.

 

*sigh* This is starting to get rather sad, you know?

Iku, I think Joacqin was posting it as a joke, presenting something that most people would see as a downside as 'really a good, good thing, we swear it is'; i.e. irony.

As for things that are good about religion and a factor of only religion, define 'things'. By that I mean, charity is not restricted to religion alone, but religion does appear to possess a unique ability to promote and motivate charity. Does that tendency toward and encouragement of charity count as a 'thing'? I think that's the sort of things you'll see all around. Religions across the world are used to teach moral/societal values in a way that secular teachings have never matched. Religions drive positive action across the board, while at the same time condemning negative action (from a societally relative position). Whether this is 'good' or 'bad', 'positive' or 'negative', largely depends on your opinion of the society in question.