Ok, well I can't get my camera working so I'm gonna have to keep posting text responses. Since I'm snowed in I figured I'd finish up the outline I've been working on.
First off I'll deal with the argument that its disrespectful for atheists to take out the bus advertising. Well yes it is, but its disrespectful to gods, not to people. I mean the exact wording is "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Thats not really disrespectful. The problem here is that religous people have enjoyed a bizzare protected status for a long long time, so that no one can say they are wrong. Simply because something is your particular religous belief does not mean that no one can tell you you're incorrect, and when someone comes in and doesn't instantly "respect" your beliefs, they aren't wrong for doing it.
The next point...well question you raised was rational thought. Basically it boils down to the argument of faith vs evidence. I can't believe something simply because someone else is really really sure its real. I just can't.
I can't believe in god because someone has told me they felt him any more than I can believe in fariys, unicorns, or genies. For me to accept something as real there has to be basis. There has to be a logical argument, supported by evidence and capable of withstanding critisism and still being valid. Religion is none of these things.
Quick rehash of your argument that christians are either A) more prone to self sacrifice or B) self sacrificing for a different reason. As to A) I addressed that in my earlier post and, no they aren't. Now for B) again, its not correct. You can tell yourself that you're willing to sacrifice your time/money/effort for god, but...well we were talking about this in the car yesterday, the tendancy for humans to be altruistic to individuals that we don't know is not a religous thing, but an evolutionary adapatation to tribal culture. If you want me to go into the details on the blog I can, but I'm going to skip that for just now, as this is me responding to points you are raising and not an ethology lecture.
Now we move to your point about what are my problems with christianity. Ok thats kinda broad and slightly misleading. I have very few problems with christianity, other than the obvious "its based on myth." In his article "Atheists for Jesus," Richard Dawkins spoke to this issue and I've put in a link for it off to the right. Basically, Jesus was largely tilted to going against the grain. He didn't accept things because they had always been that way and he came up with a wonderfully better system of ethics than had been handed down to him by the religious orthodoxy. Would that everyone could be so bold. My problems with christianity are the same
as my problems with paganism or Gaia worship: You're not basing it on facts. You're basing it on feel good tradition and hoping for messages from god. Well god's not there and he's not talking, so what you get is messages from man, and boy is man failable. Find your ethics in moral philosophy, find your ethics in emulating someone who you wish to be like, find them in something rational. To pharaphrase Plato, Is tourting babies wrong because god says it is or does god say tourting babies is wrong because its wrong? My ethics are not grounded in something that I have to prove exists, they are grounded in social structer and an understanding of what is good for society and my fellow man is also good for me as an individual. Altruisim helps the altruist as much as the one recieving the aid over the long term and this is a wonderful basis for an ethical society.
As for my problems with Christianity...well its a good idea. Jesus was a pretty good guy as he is protrayed in the bible. Now the old testament god...woah. Yeah, not tolerating that as a basis for morality. Its pretty horrible by anyones standards, and the length that I can go into on those issues, I'll save for a later post, I'm going to use this one for answering most of your other questions.
Now the question of authority, no I do not have a problem with authority, when the authority is legitimately based on something. The government doesn't declare things good or bad by arbitrary declaration, it does it by debate and understanding different sides of an issue (or it does in a proper system) whereas religion just claims authority and then stomps on the questions of those authority with allegory.
Ok, I'll wrap up for now, back to you bro.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
You worry me.
Also: was that thing talking out of its eyes? And seriously, Xenon? Your alien is a gas! (whee bad puns)
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Quick follow up
I realized that I forgot to respond to your question:
"...what are your problems as an Atheist with Organized Religion
Now that is one statement that could lead to hours of speaking on my part. Or paragraphs, as this is more text than dialogue. Literally entire books have been written by people who I hold in the highest regard doing nothing but addressing that selfsame question, so forgive me if I approach this with a bit of trepidation, I doubt highly that I'll be able to give you a simple and concise answer.
My problems with organized religion, specifically the cases where large gatherings of people will come together to listen to one person speaking with authority, specifically god given authority, and take the words of this person as an absolute truth is...well frightening. Now I will concede that in the vast majority of instances of this occurring (for examples, go to any church in America) its benign. The preacher will speak out to his congregation to be good, the congregation will think "yes I should be good" and everyone goes home to a nice lunch. The problem arises when you grant someone authority over your personal mores with no good reason.
It is here that you will think I'm picking on the fanatics. The extreme right wingers who stand on street corners and hold up the "Thank God for 9/11" signs, but they are exactly the ones I'm trying to pick on. They are the ones who have given up the rational sides of their thought processes in order to believe what someone who claimed authority on no more basis than "I'm claiming this authority," and will let these self proclaimed teachers feed them whatever bull they want.
Organized religion, even in its friendly social gathering type of organization is setting up a groundwork that can be exploited by outsiders for malevolent purposes. If you tell someone from the time they are an infant that religious authorities draw their authority from God, and tell them that you have to believe the authority you have created an exploitable network of thought processes that can be undermined at the first opportunity, and in many cases will be.
Ok, new point: Organized religion as an ingroup/outgroup dynamic labeling setup. Humans tend to cluster into "us vs them" dichotomy's along any lines we can jump to. Xenophobia is in our genes, and there are some very good evoultionary models explaining why. This doesn't make them right, it just shows that xenophobia is not only likely to evolve, it's going to remain stable and will be very difficult for a different system to arise once it takes hold. I won't go into the whole argument here, but you can find the papers on it with a simple google or wikipeda search. Ok, sorry had a slight digression there but it was ncessary for what I'm going to bring up now.
Religion is an incredibly easy system for forming outgroups where none exist. Case in point, Northern Ireland. Iraq, Iran, and any arabic nation where the sunni vs shi'a insanity takes place. These are people that are indistinguishable, save a SLIGHT disagreement on what some jerk said 600 years ago. And for that jerks words they kill one another. Now the Irish aren't killing someone with the thought "oh look, this guy believes in trans-substantion of the communion, oooh I hate that!" Of course not! They are killing a catholic because a catholic killed their protestant friend who was killed because some catholic was taking revenge for a protestant that had killed one of his catholic friends. Its outgroup labeling, pure and simple and it needs to stop. Now I don't for a minute think that if we take away religious labels that suddenly world peace will fly into existance...of course not, people will find some other reason to label the outgroup and we will turn our aim to that and fight it as strongly as we do religion, racisim or nationalism, but I will not, nor will many others, sit by and accept it as a fact of life.
Well thats 2 proplems with Organized religion, I'll stop before I drift into my problems with religion as a whole.
All yours bro.
"...what are your problems as an Atheist with Organized Religion
Now that is one statement that could lead to hours of speaking on my part. Or paragraphs, as this is more text than dialogue. Literally entire books have been written by people who I hold in the highest regard doing nothing but addressing that selfsame question, so forgive me if I approach this with a bit of trepidation, I doubt highly that I'll be able to give you a simple and concise answer.
My problems with organized religion, specifically the cases where large gatherings of people will come together to listen to one person speaking with authority, specifically god given authority, and take the words of this person as an absolute truth is...well frightening. Now I will concede that in the vast majority of instances of this occurring (for examples, go to any church in America) its benign. The preacher will speak out to his congregation to be good, the congregation will think "yes I should be good" and everyone goes home to a nice lunch. The problem arises when you grant someone authority over your personal mores with no good reason.
It is here that you will think I'm picking on the fanatics. The extreme right wingers who stand on street corners and hold up the "Thank God for 9/11" signs, but they are exactly the ones I'm trying to pick on. They are the ones who have given up the rational sides of their thought processes in order to believe what someone who claimed authority on no more basis than "I'm claiming this authority," and will let these self proclaimed teachers feed them whatever bull they want.
Organized religion, even in its friendly social gathering type of organization is setting up a groundwork that can be exploited by outsiders for malevolent purposes. If you tell someone from the time they are an infant that religious authorities draw their authority from God, and tell them that you have to believe the authority you have created an exploitable network of thought processes that can be undermined at the first opportunity, and in many cases will be.
Ok, new point: Organized religion as an ingroup/outgroup dynamic labeling setup. Humans tend to cluster into "us vs them" dichotomy's along any lines we can jump to. Xenophobia is in our genes, and there are some very good evoultionary models explaining why. This doesn't make them right, it just shows that xenophobia is not only likely to evolve, it's going to remain stable and will be very difficult for a different system to arise once it takes hold. I won't go into the whole argument here, but you can find the papers on it with a simple google or wikipeda search. Ok, sorry had a slight digression there but it was ncessary for what I'm going to bring up now.
Religion is an incredibly easy system for forming outgroups where none exist. Case in point, Northern Ireland. Iraq, Iran, and any arabic nation where the sunni vs shi'a insanity takes place. These are people that are indistinguishable, save a SLIGHT disagreement on what some jerk said 600 years ago. And for that jerks words they kill one another. Now the Irish aren't killing someone with the thought "oh look, this guy believes in trans-substantion of the communion, oooh I hate that!" Of course not! They are killing a catholic because a catholic killed their protestant friend who was killed because some catholic was taking revenge for a protestant that had killed one of his catholic friends. Its outgroup labeling, pure and simple and it needs to stop. Now I don't for a minute think that if we take away religious labels that suddenly world peace will fly into existance...of course not, people will find some other reason to label the outgroup and we will turn our aim to that and fight it as strongly as we do religion, racisim or nationalism, but I will not, nor will many others, sit by and accept it as a fact of life.
Well thats 2 proplems with Organized religion, I'll stop before I drift into my problems with religion as a whole.
All yours bro.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Joe's Response
Well, that raised 3 different questions to address, so I'll list them real quick:
1. Atheism is becoming a religion.
2. A christian is more likely to self-sacrifice than an atheist.
3. Atheists shouldn't campaign against religion.
On the first point, atheism is not a religion. At all. Period. That's a fallacy that is brought up numerous times...I guess as a point in the favor of religion? It seems that if it can be proven that atheism is religious, then it shows that we all NEED religion and those of us that reject gods are just replacing them with humans.
Wrong. Dead wrong and not even close to right. Religious belief is all about faith, whereas atheism is all about rational observation of the world. If you showed an atheist that there is a god, gods, flying spaghetti monster, etc. ad nauseum, we would spin about on a DIME and be a believer. We do not base our belief on a religious train of thought. Bear in mind that I speak for the atheists that I have talked to, there may be some "fundamental atheists" out there, who I would say are just as wrong. Belief should be based on something rational, and it should NEVER be held sacred for its own sake.
Ok, second point. An atheist is no more or less likely to self sacrifice than a christian or other religious person. Well, short caveat: We won't kill ourselves because our clergy tells us its a good idea. Yes christians don't get into all that(for a few hundered years), at least not mainstream christians...but thats my point. We are both moral, its just that atheists admit that our morality is driven by observation and intelligent thought, just like yours is. Christians just pretend that theirs comes from the bible.
Self preservation and self sacrifice are not broad sweeping ideals that can be given to a group as a whole, they are private decisions that you have to reach on your own. If you'd like an on my own reach for my personal stance on it, I'm going to pull the medic card. On many occasions I have exposed my precious flesh to gunfire in order to reach someone else to render aid. I did this of my own free will and knowing there is no god and no eternal reward for doing so. I did it willingly and unthinkingly in every situation. If I was going on an ideal of "preservation of my genes" or whatever else it is you think science teaches us, it would have made absolutely no sense, and I would have been wrong to do it, but thats just it, science doesn't make ethical claims, that's philosophy's field.
Science doesn't make absoult claims about this world, it makes statments based on observed reality. Genetically speaking I can point you to John Maynard-Smith's and others research on genetic basis of altruism and stastical models that show that a species that is altruistic WILL survive better than one that isn't due to resourse sharing resulting better ability to survive a time when food/water/shelter gets scarce.
Now we come to the part that atheists shouldn't speak out against religion. On that I have to ask...why? If I think that someone is basing their life on a lie, its immoral of me NOT to point that out to them. The idea is not to incite a religious war and then go "Ha, told you so!" the idea is to try to...well for lack of a better word, prosletize. If its wrong to speak to others about their beliefs, why is wrong for atheists and not christians?
1. Atheism is becoming a religion.
2. A christian is more likely to self-sacrifice than an atheist.
3. Atheists shouldn't campaign against religion.
On the first point, atheism is not a religion. At all. Period. That's a fallacy that is brought up numerous times...I guess as a point in the favor of religion? It seems that if it can be proven that atheism is religious, then it shows that we all NEED religion and those of us that reject gods are just replacing them with humans.
Wrong. Dead wrong and not even close to right. Religious belief is all about faith, whereas atheism is all about rational observation of the world. If you showed an atheist that there is a god, gods, flying spaghetti monster, etc. ad nauseum, we would spin about on a DIME and be a believer. We do not base our belief on a religious train of thought. Bear in mind that I speak for the atheists that I have talked to, there may be some "fundamental atheists" out there, who I would say are just as wrong. Belief should be based on something rational, and it should NEVER be held sacred for its own sake.
Ok, second point. An atheist is no more or less likely to self sacrifice than a christian or other religious person. Well, short caveat: We won't kill ourselves because our clergy tells us its a good idea. Yes christians don't get into all that(for a few hundered years), at least not mainstream christians...but thats my point. We are both moral, its just that atheists admit that our morality is driven by observation and intelligent thought, just like yours is. Christians just pretend that theirs comes from the bible.
Self preservation and self sacrifice are not broad sweeping ideals that can be given to a group as a whole, they are private decisions that you have to reach on your own. If you'd like an on my own reach for my personal stance on it, I'm going to pull the medic card. On many occasions I have exposed my precious flesh to gunfire in order to reach someone else to render aid. I did this of my own free will and knowing there is no god and no eternal reward for doing so. I did it willingly and unthinkingly in every situation. If I was going on an ideal of "preservation of my genes" or whatever else it is you think science teaches us, it would have made absolutely no sense, and I would have been wrong to do it, but thats just it, science doesn't make ethical claims, that's philosophy's field.
Science doesn't make absoult claims about this world, it makes statments based on observed reality. Genetically speaking I can point you to John Maynard-Smith's and others research on genetic basis of altruism and stastical models that show that a species that is altruistic WILL survive better than one that isn't due to resourse sharing resulting better ability to survive a time when food/water/shelter gets scarce.
Now we come to the part that atheists shouldn't speak out against religion. On that I have to ask...why? If I think that someone is basing their life on a lie, its immoral of me NOT to point that out to them. The idea is not to incite a religious war and then go "Ha, told you so!" the idea is to try to...well for lack of a better word, prosletize. If its wrong to speak to others about their beliefs, why is wrong for atheists and not christians?
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Another Example of Atheism becoming an Organized "Religion"
Click Here for Story Atheism Advertising?
I feel like this is wrong and contradictory to what the "New" "Evangelical" Atheist are saying about religion. Why are Atheist who do not believe God, who would say religion is dangerous because of the emotions that it causes and the fighting amongst religion. Why would they launch this kind of advertising campaign in an area that has organized religion? Are they trying to provoke outcry and anger from Religious peoples that read the signs? They are causing the very thing they hate about Religion, which is war and fighting!?!?! This is not tolerance or peace-seeking, instead it seems to me to be very controversial in nature in an attempt to cause fighting. Maybe that is the underlying hope, If religious people get upset about a sign saying God does not exist then the Atheist are proved right i.e. religion cause fighting. If the religious people say nothing about these signs then they are not true to their faith. It is a lose lose situation. This campaign ad makes no sense to me. Why are they doing it? Please explain why. Thanks Joe...
I feel like this is wrong and contradictory to what the "New" "Evangelical" Atheist are saying about religion. Why are Atheist who do not believe God, who would say religion is dangerous because of the emotions that it causes and the fighting amongst religion. Why would they launch this kind of advertising campaign in an area that has organized religion? Are they trying to provoke outcry and anger from Religious peoples that read the signs? They are causing the very thing they hate about Religion, which is war and fighting!?!?! This is not tolerance or peace-seeking, instead it seems to me to be very controversial in nature in an attempt to cause fighting. Maybe that is the underlying hope, If religious people get upset about a sign saying God does not exist then the Atheist are proved right i.e. religion cause fighting. If the religious people say nothing about these signs then they are not true to their faith. It is a lose lose situation. This campaign ad makes no sense to me. Why are they doing it? Please explain why. Thanks Joe...
Own
I don't know about you Joe but it is an Own going discussion for me. I really "own" what we are talking about. j/k I was just trying to be right and I must say you are right about my typo.
As Joe said he will most likely quote biologist, i will push him to think out side of Science as well. I will most likely be quoting logic and reason from other philosophers and theologians that i have found helpful over the years. We'll start up a discussion and see how far it goes very soon...
As Joe said he will most likely quote biologist, i will push him to think out side of Science as well. I will most likely be quoting logic and reason from other philosophers and theologians that i have found helpful over the years. We'll start up a discussion and see how far it goes very soon...
You can't type
That's "ongoing discussion."
We've tried to keep a written record of some of our discussions, to our ultimate failure, as each time we start writing one of us gets off on a digression for half an hour, and then its just a good debate session with no minutes. As such we decided it was either make a blog to debate on or just hire a transcriptionist and be done with it.
Anyway, as Jennings said, I'm the resident godless liberal. I usually let Jennings start these off with first point as my talking points tend to read like a biology lecture, and that's not what this blog is supposed to be about. That said, expect me to cite quite a few biologists in making counterpoints, as I believe very strongly that a scientific approach will lead us to ultimate truth in this world.
We've tried to keep a written record of some of our discussions, to our ultimate failure, as each time we start writing one of us gets off on a digression for half an hour, and then its just a good debate session with no minutes. As such we decided it was either make a blog to debate on or just hire a transcriptionist and be done with it.
Anyway, as Jennings said, I'm the resident godless liberal. I usually let Jennings start these off with first point as my talking points tend to read like a biology lecture, and that's not what this blog is supposed to be about. That said, expect me to cite quite a few biologists in making counterpoints, as I believe very strongly that a scientific approach will lead us to ultimate truth in this world.
First Post
Joseph and Jennings like to discuss Atheism and Christianity. Joseph being a believer in the former and Jennings being a follower of the later. This Blog will be a reflection of our own going discussion. The ultimate pursuit is Truth and not to prove who is the smartest (we already know Joe wins in this category). We'll see how it goes. May God bless us in this pursuit.
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