Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

Likewise.

This thread's been quite inactive for a moment. I'm linking to Razorrozar7:s comment. I haven't read Dawkins myself, but sounds like I could agree with him (Razorrozar 7, I mean).

Yeah... uh... as someone who's seen the deadly effects of belief firsthand—not just religion but belief in anything that can't be proved—as someone who's tried to slide knives between my ribs because of religion—I agree with Dawkins wholeheartedly. I believe in myself, and in my crush, in the scientific industry, because I can see that, I can see the results of that, I can touch that, I can prove that. But superstitious belief, belief in things that can't be proved, never leads anywhere good. To paraphrase Dawkins, religion isn't harmful in and of itself, but it's a meme, and when memes spread, they mutate. And every so often, you get an extremely, extremely deleterious mutation. Like cancer. I mean, Mormonism.

Kind of a slippery slope. Depending on the situation, belief can actually be good, for example, if everyone acted on the "Love your neighbour as you love yourself" thing because of belief in Christianity, then I'd say the world would be a good place. Even if not the one we'd want.

See, but why do people have to have Christianity to do that? If you need religion to be a good person—if without it you wouldn't love your neighbour—are you really a good person? It's a slippery slope whether you try to defend it or criticize it, subjectively, but the atheist who is kind to people for kindness' sake is objectively better than the religious man who only acts charitably because he wants a divine reward or is afraid of hellish punishment.

I may read some book of new atheism viewpoint at some point. There are some other atheistic ones, though, that I have in mind at the moment. In case anyone is interested in what I have in mind or happens to own a copy and wants to talk about it, here are some links to them.

As for Mormonism, are you, Aphid, referring to something like these practices? (Warning! The material in the link is potentially triggering. Cautious proceeding advised!)

That's a very good point.

edited 22nd Aug '17 2:05:26 PM by MerryMikael

I do agree with your point there. Just saying that not all belief produces bad consequences.

For what it's worth, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of religious kindness as well. I'm homeless, and every group that provides food for me is religiously motivated. When someone is making the difference between me going to bed hungry or full, I don't much care that they believe in God.

It helps that I live in an area that has extremely liberal Christians. Our Pride parade is this weekend and there will be like nine or ten churches with floats in the parade.

It's not fair to judge someone based solely on what they believe, and that's what a lot of atheists seem to do.

If bits and pieces of religion can be cherry-picked to conform to a person's personal beliefs, which is one of the things that Dawkins suggests, then that leads me to wonder if we're being unfair to religion by piling so much of the blame for related hate-mongering and violence on to it. Would taking religion out of the world create less violence, or would violent people simply latch on to a different reason for hurting other people? There are an inexhaustible number of ways that people can be divided between each other.

In short, how much of a person's behavior (or that of a group of people) is the result of religion, and how much of it is simply their personality and disposition?

Another point I keeping back to in my observations is the cherry-picking. They only follow certain passages; only certain tenets of the religion. Which suggests that without their religion, they'd still be exactly the same way—except, again, without the superstition. A liberal Christian, in an alternate universe where they never read the Bible, would still be a kind, charitable person, but they wouldn't go around telling atheists and Muslims they believe in the wrong things. Less liberal religious folks wouldn't resist interplanetary exploration because they believe Jesus is only coming to Earth or whatever, bigots wouldn't be able to justify their actions by saying "God told me to do this, hit her, kill him", etc, etc. What religion does isn't so much replace a person's ego sum as it does distort it with a fantasy that poses as truth.

I think the problem is the "unproven beliefs" idea. Can we prove that being kind to others would be right, for instance? Depends on what "proof" means to start with, no? I have gotten to a more nuance view of religion in time, precisely because issues such as this seem far more complicated than what Dawkins and co. seem to acknowledge. For instance the claim that science is the arbiter of truth, to differing degrees. Many things, though, are not scientific issues. I don't think "being kind to others is good" counts, despite what Sam Harris claims, as an example. So philosophy comes in, and proof is far less obvious there. Don't get me wrong, nothing that I've said here means religion can't or shouldn't be criticized. That is not unique to religion however. It is also not the only source of evil, and so I don't think our problems would all be solved without this. Personally as well, I am not a missionary and have no interest in converting anyone.

edited 23rd Aug '17 7:04:30 AM by Fireblood

I just discovered Bruce Lee was an atheist. I didn't know that.

Interesting. I did not either. I didn't know he was born in the US either. I thought it was Hong Kong.

I honestly never had any faith in the first place despite being raised in a Christian family. I have read many stories in my life and religious stories are just that to me. To me I don't believe a benevolent god exists in any context.

Another thing that did my faith in was Ichneumonidae. Those wasps, man. They'll getcha every time.

As in "Why didn't God stop that?" ?

Imo bad things happening to you is a stupid reason to stop believing. How strong was your faith to begin with if one traumatic incident is all it takes to do it in? For me it was just logic . First I figured all religions, not just Christianity, were equivalent and Christianity had no real grounds to claim it was the one true way. But then I thought about how incompatible all religions are- they can't all be right . I came to the conclusion that all religions were human creations , but since they're so ingrained into peoples cultures they should be respected to a fault

Lots of things, from sexism and racism to conspiracy theories, are ingrained in culture. Being ingrained in culture is no reason whatsoever to be respected. Much less to a fault.

I will respect other people's beliefs.

Sometimes, I respect their beliefs too much to let a particularly stupid or harmful notion remain among them.

"TO A FAULT"

Often, I find people don't really want you to respect their beliefs. They want you to humour them. Which isn't the same thing.

My own first experience with - and eventual loss of - religion was pretty painless.

Early childhood: "This sounds weird, but you're older than me so it's probably true."

A decade later: "Oh, so there wasn't actually any proof for any of that? Well now I feel silly."

And then I had this period where I decided to give the whole "faith" thing a try for real, jumping between various beliefs - including a few really depressing ones - with mixed results. Eventually clawed my way out of it, but had to rebuild my perception of reality and core moral system from scratch, which was a bit of a hassle.

I still haven't completely left spirituality behind - as much as I dislike admitting that - but if the gods want a say in how I do things these days, they should get down here and run for office or something.

"Imo bad things happening to you is a stupid reason to stop believing. How strong was your faith to begin with if one traumatic incident is all it takes to do it in?"

Xopher, I agree this shows they had a weak faith, but on the other hand the problem of evil is a compelling reason for thinking God doesn't exist I'd say. Even many theists agree this is the best argument against it.

The problem of evil is a problem only if the deity of your choice is defined as all-knowing, all-powerful, and good. If your deity doesn't have those features, you can allow for the existence of evil. (Of course, many mainstream monotheistic religions do maintain that their deity is all of those things, so they come up with responses to this argument - ones that, IMO, seem to rather miss the point, more often than not.)

Unrelated to the above: a recent survey shows that a bit over half of the population of the UK identify as having no religion. (Here's the BBC reporting on it.) Among people under 25, it's over 70%. In the 25-to-34 age range, it was still well over 50%. Of people who were born to a religious family, about 40% are no longer religious - so there's a lot of "deconversion" happening, not just people who were never exposed to religion in their formative years.

This follows a fairly general trend in the West, with people becoming less religious (on average) as society becomes more open and people become wealthier and/or more educated. I must say I'm surprised to see it crossing the 50% share this soon in the UK. It's been there in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands and so on for a while, but I would've expected the UK to lag back a bit more than it does.

edited 8th Sep '17 3:52:04 PM by BestOf

In relation to the Nancy Spungen thing I was talking about in another thread...this bitch thinks she can use astrology to solve a decades old murder case

Best Of: Yes, of course, but it's very common as a definition so the argument remains.

trashconverters: That page has disappeared apparently.