The Atheism Thread - Part 5

[KalMart]

Can't see it in that link, but are you referring to the scientology one?

 

[Snow Queen]

Really late to this topic so I just want to touch on one point from a while back now:

To those saying that God and science are equally provable or that you can't believe in one without believing in the other, I recommend jumping out a window to test gravity. Then I recommend praying to Joe Pesci (I love George Carlin) and seeing if anything changes from when praying to your God.

And, since I believe people need to have a reason for believing in what they do, I'll provide my own reasoning. I was born into a Catholic family and currently go to a Catholic school. The beliefs, quite simply, come off to me as the first recorded use of Marijuana. If I said that there was an interdimensional, invisible, wish granting, unicorn named Dave in my bedroom who likes to party with dead people in his sky palace and wrote it in a book, I'd be considered crazy. But if that unicorn is a guy and his name is God, then it's religion. But then people say "Well, it's faith". Yeah, and if I have faith in an interdimensional, invisible wish granting unicorn named Dave it doesn't make it a logical belief, just like with God. That and the oppression in the name of religion throughout history and today is disgusting. I mean, even when I was younger, I never really believed any of it. It sounded like they were reading Grimm's Fairy Tales and telling us they were historical events to me. But, I still considered myself Catholic. A bad Catholic, but a Catholic. But then I reached age 11 and realized just how truly ridiculous the Bible is and how absolutely appalling church is and decided to be atheist. And, another reason is that the church has a problem with me because of who I am. Why be a Catholic when they call you an abomination?

And, to those who may ask 'what would you do if God showed himself?' or questions of that nature, I offer this: treat him like every evil man ever to exist. The fact that this God would allow suffering, famine, poverty, torture, rape, murder, molestation of children, dictators, terrorism and countless other horrible acts makes him equally as horrible. George Carlin sums it up well in my opinion:

Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of **** you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say "this guy", because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man. No woman could or would ever **** things up like this. So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a ****. Doesn't give a ****, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.

 

[TheDevilIsMe]

I'm not into stirring up much, I haven't read the thread entirely.

I do seem to be of the Atheist type, if I must declare myself as something in particular. I'm also anti-religious, I should say - as I do assert that religion is the most dangerous thing human kind has ever come up with.

I don't love my lack of belief nor do I dislike it. I'm neutral about it and fine with it.

I would argue that everyone is an atheist - religious people just believe that every other God does not exist and that there is only one that does so in opposition...I simply disbelieve in one more God than most deists/theists.

And no, my username is not religious or anti-religions, it's just a title of a KISS song off their new album. Don't think I'm a Satanist for my username!

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

I understand where you're coming from with that but such statements greatly misunderstand the effects of chronic homelessness. Entire groups of people may have less wealth than our homeless but they also have cultural adaptations in place, knowledge of how to gain resources, family structures and the like that aid in their survival. The homeless in the first world often lack even the resource of basic community and interaction. Access to food may be more available here, but when people are surviving off food from gas stations their nutrition can be even worse than the extremely poor in other parts of the world. Add in the many maladies that lead people to be homeless to begin with and a fuller picture comes through.

No, I think you missed the general overall point.

Basically the population is still a collection of rich and poor. Type your income into a population survey, just by virtue of having access to a computer you're probably in the top 5-1%. So you still have "nobles" and "peasants"; and the "nobles" are still more prone to atheism, just as they always have been.

Most of us really do live in a bubble. There's not much in the way of point of comparison for us. So I mean in the end technology sort of blankets the haves to an extent. The nobles have always had access to the best of what's available, including knowledge, that much has not changed.

So in my opinion, back to religion. It can serve a function; the function is not going to be very apparent to the non-religious.

 

[KalMart]

No, I think you missed the general overall point.

Basically the population is still a collection of rich and poor. Type your income into a population survey, just by virtue of having access to a computer you're probably in the top 5-1%. So you still have "nobles" and "peasants"; and the "nobles" are still more prone to atheism, just as they always have been.

Most of us really do live in a bubble. There's not much in the way of point of comparison for us. So I mean in the end technology sort of blankets the haves to an extent. The nobles have always had access to the best of what's available, including knowledge, that much has not changed.

So in my opinion, back to religion. It can serve a function; the function is not going to be very apparent to the non-religious.

But understand that it is and always has been a function...a human construct for the sake of functionality (historically useful in just the way and time you're describing above) and not based on some actual, provable, tangible or rational existence of some all-powerful designing presence. It's important for the religious to understand that it is utility rather than reality or truth where religion ultimately stems from. It's not really 'meaning' that's being sought, but the perception of it and taking some sort of comfort in not finding any real rational answers.

 

[Doctor Evo]

So you still have "nobles" and "peasants"; and the "nobles" are still more prone to atheism, just as they always have been.

According to...?

It's important for the religious to understand that it is utility rather than reality or truth where religion ultimately stems from. It's not really 'meaning' that's being sought, but the perception of it and taking some sort of comfort in not finding any real rational answers.

If they understood that, the utility would be lost.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

But understand that it is and always has been a function...a human construct for the sake of functionality (historically useful in just the way and time you're describing above) and not based on some actual, provable, tangible or rational existence of some all-powerful designing presence. It's important for the religious to understand that it is utility rather than reality or truth where religion ultimately stems from. It's not really 'meaning' that's being sought, but the perception of it and taking some sort of comfort in not finding any real rational answers.

It's important for, us, or at least many of us in this thread and many others to understand it's a function, but it may be such that this, in and of itself, is a construct of religion.

There has never been, to my knowledge, a society devoid of some atheistic presence, unless it was very small and self contained, like an Amish compound.

The problem is if religion is a utility, unless it's a utility to you it's not a utility. Like breathing underwater, generally speaking, is not much of a utility to us because we live on land. So for me, math is a utility strictly as far as my career is concerned. Science is too. Yet for me music really isn't. My tastes are probably based on all sorts of mental shortcuts and I couldn't give you solid reasons why this song is better than that song to me, because for the most part I probably just go on social cues to determine my taste based on my environment (there's probably not too many Eric Clapton fans in sub-Saharan Africa). Yet to a religious person perhaps doing all that math and science really, in fact, impedes their survival. The amount of time they'd have to waste, even grasping the concept you're talking about is a waste of time, and science knowledge really offers nothing for them personally. As much as we'd like to believe it does, I'm not sure I could articulate it being that way, especially since they won't have to use it to get through day-to-day existence.

That's a fairly substantial hurdle.

We like to think stopping and pondering existence and the answer to things are of universal utility, but if "stopping and thinking" runs counter to "moving and doing" in the case of an individual, it's probably much more advantageous to use a mental shortcut.

All in all atheism always seems to favor a similar crowd. They tend to be well educated and have a lot of free time on their hands and or have a job that requires them to encounter those types of questions on a day-to-day basis; scientists being a great example of that.

Outside of wholesale brainwashing or having some method of beaming information directly into someone's brain (hey, it could and probably will be invented), I just don't see religiosity going away. As much as atheism has made strides, so has Islam and several other new religions. They may topple Christianity, but honestly I struggle to see how getting rid of religion would be tenable or may even be undesirable. There may even be a function of stupidity to maintain intelligence among the few that have it. Even many of our inventions are responses to buffer us from the stupidity of other people.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

According to...?

Just pick up a f***ing history book

Sorry, but if you look at the overall economic make-up of the world, it's patently obvious that while the population has grown meaning there is more of any given group, the overall make-up of society hasn't changed that much, if at all. The world is still largely made up of starving, illiterate people.

In fact even most of the moral quandaries are still the same. We've addressed the same things in the past they've just reared their heads again, had similar and recurring forms of Government, and even though technology is better it's still confined to a small and wealthy elite (which we are all part of btw).

 

[Doctor Evo]

Just pick up a f***ing history book

Sorry, but if you look at the overall economic make-up of the world, it's patently obvious that while the population has grown meaning there is more of any given group, the overall make-up of society hasn't changed that much, if at all. The world is still largely made up of starving, illiterate people.

In fact even most of the moral quandaries are still the same. We've addressed the same things in the past they've just reared their heads again, had similar and recurring forms of Government, and even though technology is better it's still confined to a small and wealthy elite (which we are all part of btw).

Right, but how does this support the notion that the wealthy elite are more prone to atheism, and have been historically? I'm not questioning the concept of persistent socioeconomic stratification. That wasn't the point of my question.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Right, but how does this support the notion that the wealthy elite are more prone to atheism, and have been historically? I'm not questioning the concept of persistent socioeconomic stratification. That wasn't the point of my question.

Like I said, more free time, more access to that kind of information. I mean, hell, it takes a while to sit down and read a book, or watch a movie for that matter. You need to be able to afford that time.

I also think humans are a little more prone to religiosity, less prone for, well, whatever we would consider an alternative for that. That's more or less a casual observation based on the sheer amount of religions that have and do exist.

 

[Doctor Evo]

Like I said, more free time, more access to that kind of information. I mean, hell, it takes a while to sit down and read a book, or watch a movie for that matter. You need to be able to afford that time.

I also think humans are a little more prone to religiosity, less prone for, well, whatever we would consider an alternative for that. That's more or less a casual observation based on the sheer amount of religions that have and do exist.

So the assertion was based upon speculation. That's all I was wondering.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

So the assertion was based upon speculation. That's all I was wondering.

Pretty hard for me to make assertions about the far future without speculating.

What's not speculation though, is amongst our Founders, most of them had the same opinions about God as you might hear from someone in the National Academy of Science today, yet they had those opinions without the aid of technology or a theory of Evolution.

Also, even casual self evaluation such as thinking about what it was like to you before you were born ought to open up very serious holes in religion. In my opinion it did. In fact I'm not sure death is even that hard of a concept to grasp, honestly. The mere fact that someone like Mark Twain could exist, and be as popular as he was, in a time when atheism was considered in fact, very fashionable, and it still didn't simply close the book on religion makes me think there's probably a evolutionary basis for both forms of thought and they'll never truly go away or really change their overall demographic make-up.

Hell, even people who study ages that existed thousands of years ago still find evidence of atheism having a fairly significant number of "believers".

 

[redhawk23]

Religion as part of culture has often been an important adaptation for subsistence and survival. Religions are often quite good at perpetuating themselves. Problems arise when the behavioral patterns enshrined in religious dogma are no longer congruent with the needs of survival.

So many religions are intensely focused on maintaining the social structures required by mono-ethnic agrarian societies. That isn't to say many of the teachings are not still valid, but the messages often make little sense in say, a post industrial society of 308 million people who come from a variety of backgrounds and who at least pretend to value self representation, democratic processes and equal rights.

Wooden wheels served a specific purpose in a specific time and did it well but you wouldn't put them on a Mustang. That isn't to say that many of the principles that go into the construction of wooden wheels are not still useful and need to be understood, but new tools are needed for the job.

 

[grout]

I gotta say this all blows my mind.. I always thought we came from storks.

 

[KalMart]

Religion as part of culture has often been an important adaptation for subsistence and survival. Religions are often quite good at perpetuating themselves. Problems arise when the behavioral patterns enshrined in religious dogma are no longer congruent with the needs of survival.

So many religions are intensely focused on maintaining the social structures required by mono-ethnic agrarian societies. That isn't to say many of the teachings are not still valid, but the messages often make little sense in say, a post industrial society of 308 million people who come from a variety of backgrounds and who at least pretend to value self representation, democratic processes and equal rights.

Wooden wheels served a specific purpose in a specific time and did it well but you wouldn't put them on a Mustang. That isn't to say that many of the principles that go into the construction of wooden wheels are not still useful and need to be understood, but new tools are needed for the job.

I think that religion needs to evolve as we continue to evolve as people and societies. Part of that is understanding that ideas of it centering on real supernatural beings and occurrences is antiquated and needs to be left behind...as a whole we just know better now, and we shouldn't be embarrassed to embrace that.

 

[KalMart]

It's important for, us, or at least many of us in this thread and many others to understand it's a function, but it may be such that this, in and of itself, is a construct of religion.

There has never been, to my knowledge, a society devoid of some atheistic presence, unless it was very small and self contained, like an Amish compound.

The problem is if religion is a utility, unless it's a utility to you it's not a utility. Like breathing underwater, generally speaking, is not much of a utility to us because we live on land. So for me, math is a utility strictly as far as my career is concerned. Science is too. Yet for me music really isn't. My tastes are probably based on all sorts of mental shortcuts and I couldn't give you solid reasons why this song is better than that song to me, because for the most part I probably just go on social cues to determine my taste based on my environment (there's probably not too many Eric Clapton fans in sub-Saharan Africa). Yet to a religious person perhaps doing all that math and science really, in fact, impedes their survival. The amount of time they'd have to waste, even grasping the concept you're talking about is a waste of time, and science knowledge really offers nothing for them personally. As much as we'd like to believe it does, I'm not sure I could articulate it being that way, especially since they won't have to use it to get through day-to-day existence.

That's a fairly substantial hurdle.

We like to think stopping and pondering existence and the answer to things are of universal utility, but if "stopping and thinking" runs counter to "moving and doing" in the case of an individual, it's probably much more advantageous to use a mental shortcut.

All in all atheism always seems to favor a similar crowd. They tend to be well educated and have a lot of free time on their hands and or have a job that requires them to encounter those types of questions on a day-to-day basis; scientists being a great example of that.

Outside of wholesale brainwashing or having some method of beaming information directly into someone's brain (hey, it could and probably will be invented), I just don't see religiosity going away. As much as atheism has made strides, so has Islam and several other new religions. They may topple Christianity, but honestly I struggle to see how getting rid of religion would be tenable or may even be undesirable. There may even be a function of stupidity to maintain intelligence among the few that have it. Even many of our inventions are responses to buffer us from the stupidity of other people.

We don't have to get rid of religion...many agree that there are good things to be found communally etc. in its practice. But as a whole, in order to improve as a society moving forward, we need to accept the truth more universally that there is no God or anything of its sort. Can religion (or whatever one may want to still call it) still survive knowing that? That's the challenge that lies ahead, and one that we'll be better for undertaking.

 

[KalMart]

For those who haven't seen this on HBO...


https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/mea-maxima-culpa/index.html


...it's important that you do.

Playing again tonight at 8 EST on HBO2.


[YT]OjX5TrTRWZk[/YT]

 

[Schlosser85]

The only thing more baffling to me about why so many people still take the Bible literally is why

A) the Catholic Church still acts as if it has a sliver of moral authority, and

B) anyone cares

I have nothing against individual Catholic people, but the organization itself, at least the hierarchy, up to and including the Vatican and Pope Benedict himself, is scum.

 

[Snow Queen]

I think that religion needs to evolve as we continue to evolve as people and societies. Part of that is understanding that ideas of it centering on real supernatural beings and occurrences is antiquated and needs to be left behind...as a whole we just know better now, and we shouldn't be embarrassed to embrace that.

Problem is, at least from my perspective, Scientology is what happens when religion tries to keep up with modern science.

 

[redhawk23]

Not really. What exactly about scientology actually applies reason or scientific methods?

 

[Snow Queen]

Not really. What exactly about scientology actually applies reason or scientific methods?

No, it doesn't apply to reason or scientific methods. Religion doesn't in general. I mean that when religion tries to evolve to meet our understanding of science, I see it being something like Scientology (belief wise): science fiction.

 

[KalMart]

Problem is, at least from my perspective, Scientology is what happens when religion tries to keep up with modern science.

That's more like a cult 'gone public'. 'Intelligent Design' is more like that, and just as laughable.

THis is pretty hysterical as well....

http://creationmuseum.org/

...until you realize that they're serious about it, at which point it becomes rather tragic.

 

[redhawk23]

No, it doesn't apply to reason or scientific methods. Religion doesn't in general. I mean that when religion tries to evolve to meet our understanding of science, I see it being something like Scientology (belief wise): science fiction.

Buddhism, at least certain branches, are very open towards free inquiry and empirical study as part of a range of methods for understanding the self and the world.

 

[Snow Queen]

Buddhism, at least certain branches, are very open towards free inquiry and empirical study as part of a range of methods for understanding the self and the world.

I'm going to assume I misinterpreted the quote I was responding too. I took it as religion (I should have stated that this is mostly for the religions that believe in a God of some kind) updating their beliefs to match up with modern science, not allowing their religion to be studied and analyzed (as you said, Buddhism is open to it).

 

[redhawk23]

I'm going to assume I misinterpreted the quote I was responding too. I took it as religion (I should have stated that this is mostly for the religions that believe in a God of some kind) updating their beliefs to match up with modern science, not allowing their religion to be studied and analyzed (as you said, Buddhism is open to it).

Its not even so much a matter of the religion it self being analyzed so much as a general approach to observing the world.