Atheists, when will you start believing in god?

When the voices in my head start knowing more than I do.

unchallengeable, first-hand-witnessed miracle*

*we can do so much shit with cgi and holograms and whatever that it would have to be FUCKING comprehensive, like 'building falls on me during nuclear explosion and i live'

The old recant-on-your-deathbed trick is always a good to keep in mind, cause y'know suprises do sometimes happen.

where was that thread full of hot chicks in christian t-shirts?

oh right, sandbox:

http://www.ilxor.com:8090/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=141&threadid=336

The old recant-on-your-deathbed trick is always a good to keep in mind, cause y'know suprises do sometimes happen.

I once saw a sign outside a church that said:

"Those who think they can turn to God at the eleventh hour often die at ten o'clock."

When He actually shows up in front of me and introduces Himself.

Would a worldwide vampire apocalypse caused by genetically modifying the measles virus make you more or less likely to believe in God?

less

http://www.mts.net/%7Ehooch/images/flying_pig.jpg

I once saw a sign outside a church that said:

"Those who think they can turn to God at the eleventh hour often die at ten o'clock." Heh. Hope I don't sound patronizing here but in case anyone doesn't know what I meant, the idea of recanting on your deathbed is famous, I guess, as as shortcoming in Pascal's wager (i.e. you lead a life of reckless hedonism, and at the last minute recant and get into heaven without the work. The Simpsons made a pretty funny joke of the nature is the episode where Homer skips church.

I dunno, the whole fun for me is the not knowing, and what I imagine to be never knowing. Atheism was always a step too far, believing in "God" was always a step too wrong.

*in the episode.

Lisa: Why are you dedicating your life to blasphemy?
Homer: Don't worry, sweetheart. If I'm wrong, I'll recant on my deathbed.

Bah, I thought it was funny

is it socially proper to masterbate using a handpuppet that comes from an evangelical christian childrens show

That's all right, that's all right, that's all
right. Sometimes you feel like trouble, sometimes
you feel down. Let this music relax you mind, let
this music relax you mind. Stand up and be
counted, can't get a witness. Sometimes you need
somebody, if you have somebody to love. Sometimes
you ain't got nobody and you want somebody to
love. Then you don't want to walk and talk about
Jesus, You just want to see His face. You don't
want to walk and talk about Jesus, You just want
to see His face.

Lol Who doesn't believe in G-d?

-Jim Swells

morelike Gym Smells

I'm a pretty strict agnostic (as in, you can't really prove it either way to me) but if suddenly the entire world paused as if frozen in time and Jesus showed up, hung out for a while, and was able to tell me the secrets of life, where the things I lost when I was a kid ended up, and all the other questions I had, I'd totally start believing.

When He actually shows up in front of me and introduces Himself.

Then I will punch that fucker right in the kisser.

I clicked on that sandbox link and I'm not seeing the hot chicks in Christian t-shirts -- someone please start this thread ASAP.

Even if he appears I will try to remain an atheist. Whether he "appears" or I believe (like millions of others do), does not matter: he simply does not exist.

i will start believing in god when that belief starts fulfilling a set of social/culutral/intellectual needs

(needs that i need met, i mean)

I clicked on that sandbox link and I'm not seeing the hot chicks in Christian t-shirts -- someone please start this thread ASAP.

-- wanko ergo sum, Thursday, December 27, 2007 6:01 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

A stunning loss.

i will start believing in god when that belief starts fulfilling a set of social/culutral/intellectual needs

-- max, Thursday, December 27, 2007 3:43 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

give me 10 logically sound proofs that shows it absolutely doesn't.

i can't really make myself believe in God, but i go about my life trying to anyway

i am very much like a mother theresa figure

NEVER FORGET

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/2328/06ministerxlarge1eg1.jpg

when hell freezes over.

When will Christians start believing in Mohamed?

Then I will punch that fucker right in the kisser.

Presumably, you only punch things you believe exist, amirite?

http://www.justjen.com/Product/ixoye-tshirt.jpg
lolmg

Should Christian attire accentuate the bosom?

Should Christian attire accentuate the bosom?

NO.

This reminds me of a funnyish anecdote I read (ironically enough in a synagogue) about A.J. Ayer (analytic philosopher, logical positivist, and strict atheist extrordinaire) who apparently choked on a piece of salmon, and he claimed saw an all guiding, omnipotent red light speak to him or something. He later wrote this off as a hallucination caused from a lack of oxygen to the brain.

citation?

online article is here

Atheists will never start believing in God. They're atheists. Agnostics might.

Yes, humans never change their minds about stuff.

Their atheism wasn't actual atheism then. Can you choose your beliefs? Your actual beliefs, rather than your chosen affectations?

Seems you have your own definition of atheist.

I clicked on that sandbox link and I'm not seeing the hot chicks in Christian t-shirts -- someone please start this thread ASAP.

-- wanko ergo sum, Thursday, December 27, 2007 6:01 AM

the shirts were from a company called DATOmana.

...for posterity's sake.

thank you, mehlt

Huh?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062300813_pf.html
"Twenty-one percent of those who describe themselves as atheists expressed a belief in God or a universal spirit"

They've seen the "atheists even more hated than terrorists" poll results so they're just trying to convince themselves that there May Be Something Out There so society will happily accept them. It only takes some hollow acts and statements every once in a while to look like a believer, that's all anyone asks. Intelligent people lie and still privately believe in their god Athos.

"Twenty-one percent of those who describe themselves as atheists expressed a belief in God or a universal spirit"

Lots of people I know who are 'casual atheists' ie "I see no reason to believe in the God of Christianity that God is bullshit anyway" still have a vague belief in "the force of the universe." I'm not surprised a noticeable portion of atheists feel the same way.

those people are not atheists.

Thank you Mister Hitchens.

Don't thank me, thank dictionaries.

A belief in a vaugely warm & fuzzy "force" in the universe that lacks any sentience or benevolence is hardly a belief in God. You're making that leap, buddy, not these folks (among whom I don't count myself).

It may for the folks you know, Hoos, but the problem lies in the sentence as it is quoted in the article which is a clear contradiction.

u rite my brain skipped right over the word "God" and read that "many atheists expressed a belief in a universal spirit," which while rather namby-pamby is not an illogical position i don't think

yeah..."universal spirit", "force of the universe"...this is where you get into the gray areas. I can't help but wonder if the survey wasn't done in such a way as to stretch the truth to make religious people feel happier about atheists.

Spent some time w a new atheist irl recently. Got barraged by links of Bible interpretations and youtube videos. If it wasn't Richard Dawkins playing to his crowd it was New Atheists deconstructing Bible passages. It is funny for people who say they don't believe in God they tend to have very definite ideas about what God is and what the Bible says. There was one video of a new atheist guy quoting a few tiny fragments of the Bible and then giving a 10 minute analysis.

Before the 20th century these would just be standard theological debates. The questions of how evil can exist w a good God and how to reconcile the contradictions in the Bible are questions asked by religious scholars for millennium. The difference now is you repeat the words "Objective truth" and "Based on evidence" and you are a brave new thinker.

being an atheist = great
being vocally atheistic = terrible

haha p much

I debated this new atheist (in between Richard Dawkins youtube videos) on what, I'm not exactly sure, cos when I asked him what his argument or point was, he would say "I am presenting evidence. The conclusion comes later. This is how science works."

Every time I would say "You know, Rabbis say differently about that passage..." he would say "that is esoteric" or "that is not what most Christians believe". There was no deviation from the narrative he had built up, that Charles Darwin should be the cutoff point for science, that Christians believe God is a certain thing, and that the Bible is meant to only be read literally. I told him it is an interpretive work like everything else written and he said no, the objective truth is that there is one way to read the Bible.

He kept telling me he is concerned only in truth. I told him everyone thinks that, everyone believes that their life is truth. He said no, some people do not value truth.

At this point he sounded identical to a religious fundamentalist.

if you want to dispute the validity that's cool, just do yr research first, is that too much to ask

validity of religious texts

I meant to say

cuz I agree it's weird when "scientific"-minded people have no interest in examining extant evidence about how these texts evolved, changed, were/are interpreted, etc. They have a fundie strawman they want to eviscerate and that's kind of the whole story, a lot of the time.

well this guy knew all about gnosticism and when the texts were written and stuff but still could not get past this idea that the Bible is not a faulty instructional manual. yes the fundie strawman. it was like i was witnessing half of an argument.

I'm already sure enough every "religious text" is bullshit, why would I waste time investigating further. This is not a valid stance to "win" an argument but who cares, you'd never win the argument anyway.

just wish mankind would stop wasting its collective time and brainpower on these texts. we've wasted so much already.

some of us can afford it

Friend's fiance (or fiancee, whatever the male one is) started writing for atheistrepublic.com so I get "did you see my article?" when I see them and I don't have the heart to tell him that I skimmed it and was horrified by his self-importance and apparent desire to treat believers like toddlers.

They keep inviting me to an atheist meetup group, which I just don't get. We have nothing inherently in common aside from a lack of belief, why do we need to hang out? What do we discuss, how shitty religion is?

OTOH, just as annoying to be told by others that I must not be an atheist because I'm not an asshole about it and semantic arguments about how atheism is just as irrational as belief because it's positing a declaration that there is no god (and no amount of arguing can convince them that no, it really just means a lack of belief).

Seems to me atheism is a rejection of the anthropomorphic creator God, not of the experience of the transcendent or one's relation to the infinite, etc. Hence arguments about God with most people who identify with a faith are entirely semantic — one side uses mythical / archetypal / symbolic language, the other the language of science (often with some eastern mysticism thrown in).

i'll believe in God when he starts killing people I don't like more often

Pretty sure he kills them all in the end.

fuckin spoilers man

None can match the zealotry of the recently converted.

just wish mankind would stop wasting its collective time and brainpower on these texts. we've wasted so much already.

the day publicly religious people stop running for office then i'd be fine w completely forgetting this stuff.

as it is every year someone does something in the name of these texts, and a large part of society excuses anti-social behavior on account of these texts. best to learn what it says and the history behind it imo.

new atheists could do a lot of public good by creating a real and historical context for this stuff rather than preaching to the converted. people get away w shitty behavior i think largely because most people don't give these texts a lot of thought.

dinnerboat otm.

Seems to me atheism is a rejection of the anthropomorphic creator God, not of the experience of the transcendent or one's relation to the infinite, etc. Hence arguments about God with most people who identify with a faith are entirely semantic — one side uses mythical / archetypal / symbolic language, the other the language of science (often with some eastern mysticism thrown in).

― dinnerboat, Thursday, November 5, 2015 5:08 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But what exactly is "the experience of the transcendent or one's relation to the infinite, etc."? That seems spread thinner than deism.

what if this all could have been avoided if Isaac Newton had just called gravity "God"

-Bob Marley

They keep inviting me to an atheist meetup group, which I just don't get. We have nothing inherently in common aside from a lack of belief, why do we need to hang out? What do we discuss, how shitty religion is?

Ha, I knew a couple of guys in a group like this in Regina. I always wondered the same thing. Once you agree that you don't believe in God, what is there to discuss? I think they mostly played video games.

as it is every year someone does something in the name of these texts, and a large part of society excuses anti-social behavior on account of these texts. best to learn what it says and the history behind it imo.

new atheists could do a lot of public good by creating a real and historical context for this stuff rather than preaching to the converted. people get away w shitty behavior i think largely because most people don't give these texts a lot of thought.

I don't think its up to atheists, new, old or otherwise to educate religious people as to the context of their religious texts. The "large part of society" that excuses the anti-social behavior generally shares the same beliefs as the person committing the anti-social behavior. That ain't my goddamned fault.

Like yes, I'm sure that millions of evangelicals are just WAITING to be told by the new atheists, "I know your Congressman and your preacher and the nice lady at Vacation Bible School say that the Bible says X, but ACTUALLY . . . ."

its up to everyone to educate themselves about anything though. isn't that one of the main points of atheism?

one of the main points of atheism = referring to a Spaghetti Monster and laughing ironically

if atheism wants to be taken seriously as a movement it needs to engage w the entire public not just atheists

But what exactly is "the experience of the transcendent or one's relation to the infinite, etc."? That seems spread thinner than deism.

― Evan, Thursday, November 5, 2015 10:34 PM (4 minutes ago)

there probably is no definition that could be put in terms that a nu-atheist would not ridicule, but fwiw einstein -- who did not believe in a personal god -- talked a lot about this and considered it central to his own worldview:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Cosmic_spirituality

Before the 20th century these would just be standard theological debates. The questions of how evil can exist w a good God and how to reconcile the contradictions in the Bible are questions asked by religious scholars for millennium. The difference now is you repeat the words "Objective truth" and "Based on evidence" and you are a brave new thinker.

otm. saw a dawkins video once where he was sneering in panto incredulity at abraham+isaac, because how could the willingness to make the sacrifice be held up as virtue etc etc, and it was like, boy, if only someone had looked into this problem earlier.

lol Bruneau you are so ridiculous. There are atheists out there who engage with the entire public, usually when fighting in court against establishment cause violations or other encroaching minor theocracies. For your own edification, check out what happens to them pretty much every time.

cool i agree w you. maybe you misread something i said. why am i ridiculous?

Part of the challenge of discussing this stuff is that the transcendent or mystical experience can't be fully described. Whatever you say it is, it isn't, etc. To me, it's related to, for instance, that moment my daughter was born when for a moment I just couldn't process the reality of her existence in the world, the "miracle of childbirth." Basically a "holy shit" moment at the deepest level.

It seemed to me like you were limiting what atheists do to what Dawkins does in the same way that people limit what Christians do to what Mike Huckabee does.

now I'm amusing myself by imaging Dawkins reading Fear and Trembling.

Yeah. I was talking about a specific kind of that extreme Dawkins-style atheist.

Still it would be cool to have an anti-Huckabee spouting conflicting Biblical language at the Kim Davises of the world.

but as I said before, the anti-Huckabee would never "win" the "argument"! I hear what you're saying wrt a sort of "know your enemy" viewpoint on it, but I'm with Phil here. Most people do not come to their religious beliefs via reason, and so throwing reason at them to get them to change their beliefs won't work on many of them (not coincidentally, these are the ones who try to push religion into everything). Just have to wait until (and pray for) religion's slow death to be complete.

Just think. If it was a better book, we might not have as many problems as we do!

Still it would be cool to have an anti-Huckabee spouting conflicting Biblical language at the Kim Davises of the world.

The Kim Davises of the world need what they already get - a reminder that they can believe all the heinous crazy shit they want to believe but don't get to impose it on other people.

C.S. Lewis and Richard Dawkins are having a friendly but heated debate over port and cigars that when Dawkins finally relents.
"Okay, Lewis, I tell you what. If Axl Rose ever releases Chinese Democracy, then and only then, shall I believe in God."
Both men retire satisfied, thinking the other the fool.
A few years later, Chinese Democracy is released, and Lewis calls Dawkins to gloat, and is surprised to find that Dawkins is still an atheist.
"Dawkins, you welcher! Explain yourself!"
"Well, you see, upon the miracle of Axl finishing Chinese Democracy, I did briefly believe in God. But then I listened to the album..."

At this point he sounded identical to a religious fundamentalist.

Anytime you go too far in either direction, you start sounding like a weirdo. I think we're all closer to being "centrists" than either far end would like one to believe.

This was an entertaining revive. I laughed.

Difference to me is that religious weirdos are believing in ridiculous nonsense, whereas atheist weirdos are apoplectic that vast majority of humans believe in ridic nonsense.

that vast majority of humans believe in ridic nonsense

I guess it depends on which beliefs you think are worthy of ridicule and which are merely nonsensical, but harmless.

POLL

the vast majority of humans believe in ridiculous nonsense, including atheists

Genuine question: what if I don't care either way? Is that what agnostic means?

atheists believe in one less bit of ridic nonsense

AUDIT

there's just this conflation of scientific truth, which is about best-proven theories and a sketch of what we know, and spiritual truth which often approaches from the other end, that there's something beyond human knowledge that embodies all knowledge

the idea that science is more "right" when its objective truths are those we can show to be true through process is what Dawkins & friends are just so into bludgeoning people with. I mean, I'd pick "here's what makes sense based on evidence" any day of the week over the alternative, but when your base position is scientific, your main truth is that you don't know anything other than what can be proven through the scientific process! if you can't couple that with humility, you really betray your position is more about ego.

so basically atheist weirdos who are vocal, to me, betray the fact they think they're "right" where, if they're into waving science around like many are, they're really just admitting they are into what is Not Wrong

when your base position is scientific, your main truth is that you don't know anything other than what can be proven through the scientific process!

so if your base position isn't scientific, then you can know stuff that can't be proven thru scientific process?

Lots of things that are true can't be proven thru scientific process. This is so trivial it's not worth even mentioning.

that is how religious knowledge is defined, yes? it's passed from somewhere that is supposed to be outside human knowledge, to people, who pass it to others.

I'm more of a "if you meet the buddha on your path" kind of guy

There doesn't seem to be any argument against atheism or scientism on ILX other than "certain people who promote it rub me the wrong way" and "I can trump the perceived dogmatism/imperiousness of rationalists by being nominally open to other viewpoints" and "isn't the universe/consciousness crazy?! science can't explain it, prob ever".

uh lots of things we accept as personal truths that aren't scientific but whether they're truths or conventions are yet to be seen

are you kidding me, that was the argument, the entire point of big-A atheism and those who vocally denounce religion as a whole as dumb are basically saying they refuse to relate to other humans based on what we can't objectively, scientifically prove

Dawkins isn't saying "let's make our society based only on what we can mutually agree is scientifically true and social conventions we agree upon," he's saying that regardless of how benign religion is, it's bad

well, when he's not claiming to be "culturally Christian" and acting out on racial bias and misogyny

you can say that some religious beliefs are harmful to a society and we should not accept them as convention, but people can't say that without trumpeting on about how dumb religion is

I don't know who you're responding to and why you're talking about Dawkins. But I don't think that is what big A or Dawkins are "basically saying". C'est la vie.

cause it is just so unbelievably dumb and yet so many people believe in it, it drives many non-believers crazy! it's very twilight zone-y.

have you seen what that fellow says on twitter

you say "your position is more about ego", yes prob, but believers getting all butthurt when their beliefs are called dumb is "more about ego" too, no?

xps There doesn't seem to be any argument against atheism or scientism

How would anyone "win" that argument either? And why is it important to argue for or against it? It's not as if the best argument will establish what we all ought to believe. Atheism is simply the absence of a belief in a god or gods, not the apotheosis of science. Scientism is just kind of lol, but mostly sad.

Well, yes, but also about the fact many religions believe in unconditional devotion to God, and the dogma defines disrespect of their God as a sin or even a punishable offense. If that's what someone believes, then it becomes an issue of responsibility to interact with others in a certain way. That part, yeah, it's not conducive to dialogue.

xp

they refuse to relate to other humans based on what we can't objectively, scientifically prove

It's a reactive position, the big Atheism. You're reading it as a proactive one. I don't think they're saying all people should have only hold objectively true beliefs/opinions at all times or they aren't worthy of relating to. Just y'know, don't tell me you not only are certain there's a creator of the universe but also you know its thoughts and desires on just about every conceivable topic.

have you met any proselytizing atheists lately, I run into a few occasionally

Aimless, think you're missing my point. Default "safe" position of ilxors seems to be to play this middle ground of "I'm not all that religious, but who am I to say what is or isn't possible or factual??" and also take jabs at rationalism. I'm pondering why this is the case.

because rationalists tend toward being pedantic jerks and ignorance is a decent default position imo

Just y'know, don't tell me you not only are certain there's a creator of the universe but also you know its thoughts and desires on just about every conceivable topic.

I am an atheist in the simplest sense of a lack of belief in a god or gods. I don't know for certain there's creator of the universe, in the sense of a conscious controlling agent, or that such a creator would have anything resembling thoughts as I know them. But if I were to tell you I knew such things with certainty, why would you bother to get upset about it? My certainty is my internal affair. If I make it a boast, just dismiss me as a blowhard. If I offer it humbly, then take it as a simple confession of faith and move on.

(xp, but the above has application anyway)

do you really not know why, in this world, someone might "bother to get upset" about such a thing? 1 person on the street telling you this, fine whatever. 99.9% of everyone elected to public office telling you this, yeah that's a different thing.

to public office in US

reality is a pedantic jerk

99.9% of everyone elected to public office telling you this, yeah that's a different thing.

I'd place more emphasis on their actions as public officials than on anything they say about their version of god and what it wants. I think you'd find that the 99.9% of public officials who say they believe in god actually differ enormously when it comes to what they do in office, even when those actions are supposedly based on their religious beliefs. Still not worth getting into a sweat over.

Besides, 100% adoption of scientism by elected officials is not going to resolve very many public policy issues by merely applying some magical science fairy dust to them. I predict the wrangling would look remarkably similar to what we see today.

the entire point of big-A atheism and those who vocally denounce religion as a whole as dumb are basically saying they refuse to relate to other humans based on what we can't objectively, scientifically prove

I'm not sure about an entire point but I'd see atheism essentially as a reaction against claims of authority, both in the sense of establishing a secular space for morality & politics (which seems inarguably a good thing), and in the more abstract sense of how you perceive yourself & humanity as a whole. if you were keen to dig out a tacit positive thesis your best bet might be to say that there is an insistence on the virtues of pluralism and scepticism, and perhaps faith in the possibility of human progress of some kind in this world

Default "safe" position of ilxors seems to be to play this middle ground of "I'm not all that religious, but who am I to say what is or isn't possible or factual??" and also take jabs at rationalism. I'm pondering why this is the case.

Because the default position of ilxors is generally a liberalism or progressivism that places a high value on personal dignity and autonomy - including the dignity to believe some shit I don't believe as long as you're not forcing it on me.

There's an angst element as well - the proselytizing atheists or new atheists or whatever you want to call them have an anxiety about being a small, put-upon group dealing with the big bad world of irrational people yada yada yada. In my experience it's often born of conversion. Raised in the church, found it was bullshit, angrier at the church as a result. Feel like atheists are treated unfairly because grandma and grandpa aren't cool with their new lack of belief.

ILXORs are politically angry a lot, but by and large have seemingly always been godless heathens and so not believing in god is just the way things go, why be all bothered or bothersome about it. (Plus what mh said about so-called rationalists being pedantic assholes.)

re: atheist meetup groups, a different friend who went to one said she wouldn't make a point of going but did enjoy the safe space aspect. She worries about coworkers or randoms taking offense if she says something 'offensive' to believers. I couldn't relate on that front because it's never been a concern to me. If someone's offended, fuck 'em.

I don't believe in God, but when I do I imagine him rolling his eyes a lot.

wow my previous posts to this thread are just great

anyway I remember watching a christian v. atheist friendly debate between two underclassmen back at UTK in the late 90s and thinking the atheist, who I agreed with otherwise, just came off like a cock. probably because his spiel amounted to a lot of "mansplaining," before we had that term, but also because growing up in the Bible Belt made me more allergic to any kind of proselytizing, and any kind of condescending rationalization of your position is basically proselytizing, to me anyway, and the worst sort. You can evangelize without being condescending, and you can even evangelize atheism or agnosticism without being condescending, but for the most part, people don't, and since it's not my job, I don't feel like putting the energy into it.

If I run into other people who seem interested in understanding my philosophy, I will gladly explain how I combine Zeno's Paradox and Sturgeon's Law to arrive at an existential viewpoint that has no need of a creator or a higher power to drive my daily existence. But I'm not going to try and sell it on anybody. Arguing the superiority of my viewpoint would be asinine. The part of my job that involves teaching people how to live is being a supervisor in a professional setting. I absolutely will not tell people how to be outside of that context. It's not worth my time, for one thing. For another thing, I'm not their parents.

I'm kinda happy that there are those atheists who do a bit of proselytizing. Part of not believing, to me, is to not be unduly reverent of people's unprovable beliefs.

I don't believe in God, but when I do I imagine him rolling his eyes a lot.

― MONKEY had been BUMMED by the GHOST of the late prancing paedophile (darraghmac), Thursday, November 5, 2015 7:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i enjoyed this post.

the vocal atheists i've encountered obviously still crave the rigidity of a religious framework. they tend to shove a range of experience as wide as any other vista of human experience you can think of into a room and fix their "religion" sign on the door. as an ideology atheism tends to promote a simple worldview with received compartments, very much like the evangelical religious formations it's so opposed to.

atheists are just like evangelicals, you don't say, what a new and interesting take on things

Aimless sorry man you're forever on a tangential point no one is arguing for or against

"it's cool, just a lil stoning of rapevictims/gays/unbelievers, nothing to get bothered by. besides, people will always find ways to be heinous to one another" is just not an attitude I can get down with.

That's a mighty fine strawman you got there.

Thanks. Aimless is asking why get bothered by anyone's religious beliefs. If they remained beliefs and never manifested into vile actions, I would be much less "bothered" by them.

In another thread he would not admit that he would view crazy batshit "beliefs" like "my cat is the emperor of Spain" any differently than any other beliefs. It's just a front, look how non-judgmental I can be.

Because the default position of ilxors is generally a liberalism or progressivism that places a high value on personal dignity and autonomy - including the dignity to believe some shit I don't believe as long as you're not forcing it on me.

These are noble and needed values to have and champion; I consider myself a liberal too. But I think in places like ILX and in the liberalosphere as a whole there is a sort of competition to out-liberal one another, which leads to giving credence/validity to any belief/ideology under the sun. To ideological paralysis. Tolerance is good...so therefore EXTREME tolerance must be extremely good! Same thing manifested itself in the whole anti-rockism thing; there's a tendency when attempting to swing the pendulum the other way to fly past the neutral point and become a reactionary caricature.

Thanks. Aimless is asking why get bothered by anyone's religious beliefs. If they remained beliefs and never manifested into vile actions, I would be much less "bothered" by them.

otm. But pinning past stuff solely on religious belief is lazy. For one thing it lets the bad actor off the hook by validating their excuse. For another it lets the atheist off the hook because they don't have to actually engage w that messy history or own any part of it at all -- it's a religious problem. "nothing to get bothered by" for the atheist.

Actions are really all that matters.

Why should you care about what anyone else believes? There is no way to really know what another person believes. They have to tell you. And that is even if they know what they believe. Many people are confused on that part.

do idiots like danny grainger think that religion is something that can be "eradicated" or whatever?

well he's hardly going going to concede that it's eternal

excuse excuse me. turning into this into an excuse to complain about people you've argued with about cosmology understates the issue when there have been more high profile mob murders of atheists in bangladesh in the last few weeks, it's obviously nonsense to say the victims were craving the ridigity of a religious framework

the really weird thing i find about a lot of the New Atheists is that they are super open to persecuting Muslims. one of the big reasons i became an atheist in the first place is because i was sick of religious people persecuting other people on behalf of their religion or lack thereof, but i guess that's not an issue for a lot of folks.

I think their motivation to persecute comes from the frustration with the sexism or violence that results from religious belief.

But personally, I'm an atheist because I don't see any evidence that supports (and I see evidence that disproves) the belief in spirits or a cosmic force that is anthropomorphic or has intention. Arguing about specific passages in religious text doesn't really get to the core point for me.

"people will always find ways to be heinous to one another"

You can see violence everywhere, though, can’t you?

It is everywhere. It is everywhere. The world is hell. My vision, basically, in religious terms — though I’m atheist, of course — is some kind of Protestant view of the fallen world. It’s all one big horror. I despise Leftists who think, you know, violence is just an effect of social alienation, blah, blah, blah; once we will get communism, people will live in harmony. No, human nature is absolutely evil and maybe with a better organization of society we could control it a little bit.

Religious children are more selfish than atheist children, say US neuroscientists

imo once we have economic and social equality then we can be dicks to each other with more even footing

would 'secular children' maybe have been a more accurate category to use for that headline?

No, human nature is absolutely evil and maybe with a better organization of society we could control it a little bit.

I don't recognize where Mordy's quoting from, but that quote is deeply reactionary.

oh really the sentiment "human nature is absolutely evil" is not a good one?

assume it's zizek cuz you know, blah blah blah

I think if you start with the foundation "human nature is evil" then pls just stay away from me, I don't want to have anything to do with your worldview as it sounds like you are just pre-making excuses for whatever horrible stuff you want to do.

i don't believe in original sin so even tho i'm very sympathetic to what zizek is saying i'm not sure "human nature is evil" is the way to go - and it's obv not coming from a reactionary place in that interview but from a defeated, cynical leftist place. otoh there's a lot of evidence for that statement. when has the world ever been organized in such a way that didn't involve one human (or many humans) dominating another?

But is that evil? Or why are we talking evil at all in regards to that atheist statement? Isn't evil a religious term?

I assumed atheists believe that some things are evil.

human nature is good, too. there are a variety of completely normal human acts and emotions and reactions and putting people on equal footing isn't going to change the way people act overnight.

it's not as if yr communist paradise is going to magically have no one trying to exploit others, or give everyone immaculate scruples

that's why most countries' prison populations represent a perfect sample of the whole economic spread of the population

Atheists totally believe in evil. What the hell, Bruneau?

One time a chick told me that atheist marriages are loveless marriages because God is love.

would the prisons be empty if we had perfect liberal paradise? makes u think

xp sometimes you have to make some God, then, right?

Isn't the existence of an absolute evil dependent on some grand moral fabric underpinning the universe?

I can understand calling anti-social behavior evil, like maybe a good atheist definition of evil is being anti-life, but in that case, the human race is clearly not evil as it is still alive and surviving. War has not won out over procreation.

Adam, you can believe in morality and evil and reject the existence of a god.

who said absolute evil

don't see how not believing in god is necessarily a barrier to believing in absolutes

imo "absolute evil" is a scapegoat for the fact many people are capable of both great and terrible things, and neither make you more or less human

i am talking in the context of an atheist saying "human nature is inherently evil" a la that post above.

Also

No, human nature is absolutely evil and maybe with a better organization of society we could control it a little bit.

this is some James Bond villain style ideology.

not inherently, "absolutely" as in human nature tends toward things we deem societally wrong

I read "absolutely" as in "for sure" and not "in totality"

it's zizek, he likes he superlatives

*his

oh ok. i read absolutely as "in totality". in context of the rest of that phrase (which also asserts that we are in Hell) that extreme reading made sense to me.

this is some James Bond villain style ideology.

i don't get this at all. is what he's saying so different from this adage in pirkai avos:

"Rabbi Chanina the deputy [High] Priest said: Pray for the welfare of the government, for if not for its fear, a person would swallow his fellow live."

he's saying that the structures we have put into place in civilization - government, religion, education, etc - are designed to reign in the violence + evil that man is naturally given to perform

i think we need more functionalist accounts of religion (niklas luhmann, marcel gauchet, even weber) that place it in something other than a moral, scientific, or ontological context. what does "religious communication" accomplish within society? and what can it NOT accomplish? what does it allow or not allow you to communicate and why would you use that mode of communication over others? the baseline assumption needs to be that there is no mode of communication or social system that can dictate the essential reality of things to all the others. we have, as weber puts it, "conflicting value spheres," and i think we have to start to think religion in this context rather than as something that people get "wrong" or "right" or whether some other modes are somehow inherently superior or able to provide what you might call a "god's eye view." modernity has already happened and cannot be undone. fundamentalism is inherently modern because it is a position taken in full knowledge that other possibilities exist and could also be taken. science, too, is modern, and for this reason alone it cannot claim to represent the whole.

But then he says:

So people are just evil? Is that —

Not evil. What is evil? It wouldn’t fit. You know this American constitutional formula, right? Pursuit of happiness.

Sure.

I think of the great theorist of social paradoxes, Paul Watzlawick. He wrote a book called “Pursuit of Unhappiness.” I literally believe in this. I think that we humans are masters in how to sabotage our happiness. We want to be maybe almost happy, but not really happy. We don’t really want what we desire. That’s the basic lesson of psychoanalysis.

So he seems to want to take back this term 'evil' and say instead something about humans being absolutely irrational.

love the zizek quote (i love pessimism) but it's also a symptom of his inability to let go of some master theoretical discourse (hence his love for apocalyptic religious rhetoric).

i felt for a while like zizek was just repeating certain academic leftist platitudes by rote (it felt for a few years now that judith butler was in the room w/ him nodding approvingly) and so it makes me happy to see him to return to something that feels personally authentic and real. better zizek's pessimism and disappointment than lofty ideas about the radical transformation of society that he can no longer convince himself to believe.

yep

he is best when he waves his hands around and dismisses really high-minded ideas as bullshit for sure

that Paul Watzlawick book he mentions look awesome. im gonna read it.

Let's assume your task is to create a social organization, aka government, and you believe human nature is absolutely evil and must be restrained by the fear of government. Then, because an absolute evil cannot be mixed with any small amount of goodness, the pertinent question is: what is the countervailing interest that is served by limiting the repression of an absolute evil? There can be none. This is a recipe for creating the Stasi, or worse.

The difference between this and the adage in pirkai avos is the introduction of absolutes into the moral equation.

he's saying that the structures we have put into place in civilization - government, religion, education, etc - are designed to reign in the violence + evil that man is naturally given to perform

Ok but again it loses me at the end. How is man naturally evil? Have we seen man in his "natural" state? What is this natural state? If it is in the woods w animals that he must fight to survive then the violence is in the name of self-preservation, perhaps not so evil. If the natural state is in a social hierarchy then most people in society are not violent or evil. Evil exists and good exists but pessimism makes one appear wise.

So people are just evil? Is that —

Not evil.

Oh, great. Does this man ever stop to choose his words before he opens his mouth?

no

maybe it's more like nature is naturally evil. this is hitler's idea - that a darwinistic view of animals is dominate or be dominated, exploit or be exploited, and it was only the introduction of religion + morality that corrupted humanity from its natural state.

Can't violence and evil in part be a result or social symptom of those structures?

my new atheist contact brought up this book repeatedly:

http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431

nature is violence; civilization is about mediating that violence, cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

there are societies in the animal kingdom. maybe it is the social structures creating the violence.

i'm not sure that the structures that we use to organize our societies are similar in kind to the natural organizations found in the animal kingdom

people could have formed societies for all types of reasons

isnt that the basis behind pointing to the animal kingdom for evidence of mankind's natural predispositions?

agree w you there but once we start pointing to animals for evidence of a natural inclination towards violence we are inviting those comparisons.

xpost

but if you're making the argument that man is naturally predisposed towards violence and it is our institutions that keep him in check, and your counter-proposal is that animals have social institutions too and it doesn't stop them from being violent so maybe it's the social institutions that are the problem, then if we're not talking about like + like that would undermine the counter-proposal no?

otoh "[There] is irrefutable evidence that the threat of lethal violence has exerted a strong evolutionary force on chimpanzee nature, and its effects are visible on a minute-to-minute basis in chimpanzee society. It is the origin of the very unusual social bonding among male chimpanzees — they must hang together to protect against extra-group murderers." -https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-naked-ape/201104/is-lethal-violence-integral-part-chimpanzee-society so maybe social institutions keep us and chimps from releasing our unbridled murder inclinations

im not entirely sold on seeing a chimp as the natural form of a human

i'm pretty sure non-humans don't have social institutions

...

what do you call an ant colony

or really any species with tribal hierarchies

what do you call an ant colony

― Οὖτις

an ant colony

do ants ever transgress the unwritten rules of their societies?

*werner herzog voice*
can an ant go crazy?

im not entirely sold on seeing a chimp as the natural form of a human

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, November 6, 2015 2:19 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How about early Homo sapiens? Because they helped shuffle the Neanderthals off to an early extinction.

i'm pretty sure non-humans don't have social institutions

― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Friday, November 6, 2015 2:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ludicrous.

The Ant Who Would Be Queen

do ants ever transgress the unwritten rules of their societies?

idk if yr joking but ants can definitely be manipulated to behave against the interests of the colony, using p much the same tools that are used to keep ants acting within the interests of a colony

zizek’s obv hyperbolic there
but in significant respect otm
(i think) all he’s saying is,
he rejects idea of perfectibility of human nature (specifically via politics), an end to history overcoming human alienation etc etc
in some respects an old conservative-skeptical idea (e.g. skeptical of certain promises of “revolution”, cf skepticism of someone like montaigne)
but it’s not necessarily conservative nor right-wing— it's skeptical of so to speak an absolute leftism, or certain absolute demands of leftism, a utopian leftism (which obv has justified certain historical horrors in the past)
obv expressed out of pessimism here, but imo not necessarily pessimistic (absolutely) either
it’s strain of salutary humility, sense of the limits of politics with respect to human nature (nb don’t mean ‘nature’ here in essentialist sense), which is good for the left imo

how would you ever know the interest of an ant colony if you've never even spoken to an ant. assuming you haven't

Ant colonies are governed by pheromones, which (in combination with genetically predetermined roles) guide the behavior of the colony as a whole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jtU9BbReQk

http://antark.net/ant-life/ant-communication/pheromones/

there is definitely a social structure at work here, and institutionalized roles, etc. and ants are hardly unique there are plenty of other species that do this kind of thing, all across the evolutionary spectrum.

xp

social institutions should be able to be held to a higher standard than "possibility of manipulation" and "repeated observable behavior" or something idk

yr being vague

(makes a note: it's a boy! is not on the BF Skinner bandwagon. files it.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjxyW6Er95o

Ant colonies are governed by pheromones, which (in combination with genetically predetermined roles) guide the behavior of the colony as a whole

me irl

I guess we need to get semantic here (always an ILX favorite pastime) but imo any time you have social tools (language, pheromones, threats of violence, rewards of procreation, etc.) being used to guide the behavior of subgroups within a species, that's a social structure. I guess you could argue that calling something an "institution" would require that structure to span generations, but that clearly happens with animals as well. I mean even just the fact that every ant colony has a queen guiding behavior is evidence of that, i.e. the whole concept of "queen" is an institution.

xp

there are some fundamental structures of human society like family / community but a lot of the more complex organizations economically + politically seem different from eg eusocial living partially bc they feel more optional? like there are human societies throughout the world where govt has entirely broken down and they live in ungoverned [violent] chaos (but the family identity as a base organizing structure doesn't dissipate). i'd think of the family as more comparable as an institution to hive eusocial organization, but democracy or communism or feudalism as new human things that are malleable and not really comparable. does that make any sense? idk.

^ cry of FREEDOM to change our social structures for the better or the worse

no freedom for ants crushed under the iron heel of an t instinct destiny

I like how Wikipedia uses the standard war template for the infobox for Gombe Chimpanzee War.

see i consider "ungoverned chaos" to be failures of governance rather than the lack of governance. imo Lord of the Flies shows the failure of state power rather than the failure of anarchy.

in timothy snyder's new book he argues that hitler was only able to commit the most extensive + comprehensive liquidations in places that had fallen outside of the state apparatus so even in germany most jews were sent to poland before being killed bc germany was still under a certain level of rule of law. you had to go to ukraine + poland to do the really serious killing. idk a lot of ppl have argued that he's eliding over some of the history to make this argument but i do think there's something to the idea that the most dangerous part of the world is the one where the state is completely gone.

for the purposes of the argument of whether man is inherently evil/violent at the foundation level -- beneath religion, civilization, society, anything that defines him as human -- it is important to draw a distinction between a purely stateless place (which may not even exist outside of fantasy for us state-embedded beings) and a post-govt power vacuum (which tends to be manipulated and formed by state power). the power vacuum is often violent due to being in part a reaction to the violent states that formed it. even if there is no "law" per se, it is still shaped by state power.

i'll let snyder speak for himself but i think the idea is that the presence state power and the presence of a state apparatus are two different phenomena:

Citizenship is the name of a reciprocal relationship between an individual and a sheltering polity. When there was no state, no one was a citizen, and human life could be treated carelessly. Nowhere in occupied Europe were non-Jews treated as badly as Jews. But in places where the state was destroyed, no one was a citizen and no one enjoyed any predictable form of state protection. This meant that the other major German mass crimes, the starvation of prisoners of war and the murder of civilians—mostly Belarusians and Poles and Gypsies—also took place almost entirely within zones of statelessness. These policies together killed about as many people as the Holocaust, and they were implemented, and could only be implemented, in the same places. Where the state was not destroyed such extremes were impossible.

In states allied with Germany or states under more traditional occupation regimes, where the major political institutions remained intact, non-Jews who protected Jews were rarely punished for doing so. Non-Jews who were citizens of states could not simply be killed if they aided Jews. In the General Government and in the occupied western Soviet Union, however, the punishment for aiding Jews was death. More Poles were executed for aiding Jews in individual districts of the General Government than in entire west European countries. This is not because Poles were particularly inclined to rescue Jews, which they were not. It is because they were, in fact, sometimes executed for doing so, which rarely happened in western Europe. Indeed, in some places in German-occupied western Europe it was not even a punishable criminal offense to hide a Jew.

fuck u jeses lovrs

the structures we have put into place in civilization - government, religion, education, etc - are designed to reign in the violence + evil that man is naturally given to perform

I don't think this is their primary goal, all these institutions have their own objectives which they will organize people to attain. peace and stability is often a part of that, but obviously these structures have facilitated violence of a type and on a scale that would never have been possible without them.

evil is an idea which has come up within these structures. you can go back and retrospectively deemy the carthaginians evil for sacrificing babies, but it doesn't explain anything about why they did it or what it meant. sophisticated human groups&ideas (civilization if you like) allows you to develop and refine moral, legal and political ideas, but to take these judgments and sensibilities and to project them backwards is nonsense. I am unimpressed by any attempt to look at chimpanzee morality, or really the counter example of bonobo behaviour. do you really think it makes sense to say that chimpanzee hearts are full of wickedness? or is it just us distinguishing ourselves away from perceived moral dirt and disorder

I don't think there's any fundamental social unit, families tend to be very practical but they vary enormously in how they function and there are places in the world where the family unit has broken down completely, such as parts of the DRC.