Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

On some level I understand why people would want there to be an afterlife. The problem, though, is that what I believe won't make me any more or less dead when the time comes, so I feel that worrying about it is ultimately futile.

This post. On the scale I'm a 6. I'm sort of aggressive towards people of a 1 or 2 just because they tend to accidentally be assholes about it, I try to get 3s or 4s to move towards the atheist end, I regard 5s and other 6s as allies, and 7s don't exist but were rather put there for symmetry.

And great job at reading The God Delusion. Every human being should read that book. When I debate Christians it feels like I'm haphazardly swinging a knife at a tiny corner of a building (that is, arguments for God) that book already completely destroyed.

edited 27th Sep '15 3:16:24 PM by SmartGirl333

Most ideas of an afterlife start to sound very unappealing to me, when I think about it. Well, mostly the "eternal life in X" types of afterlives. Even if it's a supposedly good place like heaven or something.

It's probably the eternity bit, and the way human minds are not equipped to fathom the concept of infinite time. Or infinite anything, for the most part.

@Best Of: I agree, well said.

@Smart Gilr 333: I haven't read it, nor any of the other "Four Horsemen" texts. So it's that good?

@Kyler Thatch: I suppose if they're positing some eternal afterlife, they can just say your mind would be updated to handle it as well. However, it reminds me of a fantasy novel where a being is sentenced to eternal torture. In time he gets used to it and doesn't mind, as even that can become monotonous. As to more neutral/benevolent eternities I think that could also be insufferably boring after too long, especially when people had the same minds they do now as you said. I find Who Wants to Live Forever? very plausible, and it leads directly into Nothing Left to Do but Die I'd say. Of course it's impossible to know for sure, but my own guess is those would come true.

edited 28th Sep '15 6:37:58 AM by Fireblood

Crossposted from the Religion thread in OTC: The ex-Muslim Britons who are persecuted for being atheists

This has been a concern of mine for a while now. Two things I find a bit troubling and disappointing:

1) The lack of support networks for atheists who leave Islam in European countries.

2) Muslim communities in European countries do not appear to be secularising. Instead, they are becoming more insular and segregated, not less. I accept that this is at least partially due to a siege mentality.

The interesting thing is that everyone likes to talk about Christians being persecuted in the bible belt, or kicked out of their homes for being gay and things like that, but no one talks about people being kicked out of muslim homes, or muslims persecuting their children. It's whitewashing of the issue, methinks. Because the problematic influence of organized religion is a white people problem, apparently.

I think it's more a case of most of the people participating in these conversations coming from a (white) Christian background, or at least a society where that group is prevalent.

Atheists in Muslim-majority countries are often in peril, and they definitely should get more support from wherever it can come. Unfortunately, for the most part conversations about these things tend to focus on things the media and politicians find interesting. That, usually, is the majority religion of the country where the discussion is taking place.

If I could read Indonesian, Urdu, Bengali, or Arabic I'd look for atheist groups in Muslim-majority countries and see, for comparison, whether they talk at all about Christianity. (I suspect that they do, because most prominent atheists have that as their primary frame of reference.)

Also, the only people talking about "Christians being persecuted" (at least in the United States—I'm sure they actually are persecuted elsewhere in the world, and I don't mean to belittle those people) are Christians who don't like being stripped of special privileges and brought down to the same level as everyone else. I hardly think they count. I agree on the other counts, though.

edited 29th Sep '15 8:31:47 AM by SolipSchism

@trashconverters: I think it's because (partly at least) Muslim Americans are such a small percentage of the population here compared with Christians (75% or so).

@Best Of: I've read a bit about the atheists in Muslim-majority countries, and they seem to mostly focus on Islam, or theism generally. This is likely analogous to atheists in Christian-majority countries focusing mostly on Christianity. It's far more dangerous though-atheist bloggers in Bangladesh have been murdered, while one in Egypt was jailed, one in Indonesia as well.

edited 29th Sep '15 4:29:34 PM by Fireblood

@Solip Schism: I remember a meme where an Egyptian Coptic Christian lists actual persecution he experienced, like mobs burning down churches, killing people etc. versus an American Christian listing things such as not being able to discriminate against gay people.

edited 29th Sep '15 4:31:19 PM by Fireblood

@Fireblood I'm not American, actually. I'm Australian, and while the country is still majority Christian or agnostic, there's almost certainly a larger Muslim population than in the US, especially in Victoria (where I live) and NSW. So you'd think there'd be a more even spread of religions discussed in Australian atheist circles. And ultimately, atheists who only talk about Christianity, or Islam, or any other religion are speaking really narrowly...sort of like fundamentalists. Ultimately the most rational argument is one that uses more than one religious comparative.

edited 29th Sep '15 7:12:12 PM by trashconverters

Then again, most atheist arguments use one religion or other myth - and the argument for negating it - as an example of a more general principle. Thus it doesn't really matter what particular belief is used, so long as the audience is sufficiently familiar with it to accept that that belief actually exists.

Suppose I had knowledge of a tribe in some island paradise that almost no one knew of, where the people believed that when their chief says a certain phrase they can each inhale one lungful that will contain the exact same air - as in, the same molecules - that were breathed by the ancient chief whose family settled the island. I could try to use this as an example when I'm making my case against miracle claims.

I could explain why I don't believe that the air they were about to breathe - or that was just about to enter their lungs - will actually transform (happen to be exactly the same). I could say that they've not proposed an actual mechanism by which the air is transformed, or that there's no way the chief drew enough breath - even in his entire life - for it to cover every miraculously replicated breath taken by adherents over the history of the island in that ceremony. And so on.

Chances are, if the audience didn't accept my example in the first place, some of them would refuse to accept my broader point. Even though I was only using that particular myth as an example of how religions make claims that are impossible to verify, or that they refuse to verify even if it is possible - or, actually, even refuse to accept evidence after their claim has been tested and proven false - some in the audience would have stopped paying attention when that example I used overloaded their capacity, at that moment, to accept ridiculous scenarios as examples.

As you might have guessed, that story about the island is something I made up just now, as a parallel to the way some Christian denominations claim that the bread in the Communion actually, literally becomes the body of Christ. The point I'm making is that if I was to use that particular belief and argue against that, my audience would probably be more willing to listen to the end of my argument because they're sufficiently familiar with those beliefs to accept that I didn't make them up just to make a point.

@trashconverters: Well you said the Bible Belt, so I assumed that refers to the US. Does Australia have a Bible Belt? I didn't assume you were American, sorry if it came off that way. As for addressing religion narrowly, it makes sense that atheists would mostly focus on those religions they are most familiar with, and find more dangerous. Christianity and Islam are the largest and second largest religions respectively, thus there will be greater focus on them due to the first reason. The second is also pretty common. It's also hard criticizing religions that one isn't familiar with, and if those aren't also a problem they have less reason to. That said, I don't have a problem with criticizing religion generally, or the ones that don't get as much criticism. It's just that the criticism in general is usually simply "not proven" and or "detrimental to society".

Is there are reason why people, when describing a life sentence, described it as being imprisoned "for the rest of their natural life"? Is it really necessary to say that?

Well, I think it's to specify that they won't be executed during the sentence. °°

Oh. Actually that makes sense.

It's just being Australian and all, where there hasn't been an execution since the 70s, it sounds weird.

Oh my God I just realized what the most horrifying sentence would be

"You are hereby sentenced to imprisonment for a term of no less than 25 years, without parole...

...immediately followed by execution."

I would shit myself in the courtroom

But then you'd have time to make an appeal. Just straight out being executed would be worse.

If we ever achieve immortality, imagine how much worse a life sentence would be. Personally I always thought it was nuts how people can be sentenced to centuries in prison, but there it might actually make sense. Of course, some countries only let you stay in prison for 20 years or so. They might have to push that up a bit in the case of an immortal.

edited 9th Oct '15 12:25:40 AM by Fireblood

Well, the whole "sentencing people to prison sentences that are absurdly long", as I understand it, is more meant to ensure that they really are imprisoned for life. Like, no one expects you to actually be in prison for 300 years, but if we sentence you to prison for 75 years and then you get your sentence reduced by 60 years for good behavior or whatever, suddenly it's only ("only") a 15-year sentence. But if we sentence you for 300 years and your good behavior knocks 60 years off your sentence... well, you're still gonna die in prison.

Similar to suing people for absurd amounts of money. Like, if you sue me, once you go over a certain amount, like, it's all just decorative after that, because, as they say, you can't squeeze blood from a stone. There's only so much you can wring out of a person before there's just nothing left.

@Solip Schism: Yes, but they can do the same thing just by denying them the right to parole.

They have a lot of caps on damages now to prevent that. Usually the very high amounts come from punitive damages, so it's not really to compensate injury but punish the tortfeasor (wrongdoer). It's also basically never seen in systems that don't let juries reward the damages, even when their legal system is otherwise similar (i.e. the US vs. the UK). Some jurisdictions have abolished the punitive damages entirely too. Also they don't usually sue people who can't pay, as that would be pretty pointless. "Deep pockets" is the actual legal term used. After taking law and learning more about the US legal system, I became quite cynical toward it, both civil and criminal.

edited 9th Oct '15 6:00:13 PM by Fireblood

So what you're saying is

Prison sentences that exceed a natural lifespan don't make any sense and there is no conceivable reason to issue them

people who claim they follow a religion but don't follow the parts that look evil in the light of modern morality are hypocrites, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that they aren't assholes. really, claiming to follow an ancient book as your sole moral guide can only end up making you a cherry-picker or an asshole.

edited 13th Oct '15 10:03:01 PM by SmartGirl333

You can be a cherry picker without being religious. More people need to understand that. You can agree with some the religion's principles without following the religion, and cherry-pickers really shouldn't be calling themselves religious anyway.

Speaking of which, the more I think about it, the less I identify as theistic.