Atheophobia

I could show you lots of people who ascribe their personal happiness and success to Buddha. Doesn't make them any more correct. I can show you a lot of people who are happy and successful without praying to any gods at all. None of that is evidence of anything except that happiness and success do not depend on one's personal spiritual beliefs.

If you want me to pray to your God, please produce Him.

edited 8th Feb '16 9:49:16 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The plural of anecdote...

I don't think Bense is at any moment wieldin the argument of "to reach happiness only this god will do" or such, only that he is willing to introduce and show people one way.

I don't think thatway achieves anything personally.

This in light of studies that have been done. It is not religion or the belief or spirituality itself that brings the sense of happiness and fulfillment and stuff it is the community that is created with it.

Those variables surge in the same way that the results of the Hawthorne effect came to be known.

edited 8th Feb '16 9:54:10 AM by Aszur

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Exactly.

If you want to make a sincere effort to investigate my faith, I stand fully ready to assist you. This forum is probably not the best place for such an effort, however.

Again, I would say that personal religious experience is the only valid basis for believing in a particular denomination or philosophy, and if you haven't had any such and aren't interested in seeking them at this particular time in your life then I won't blame you for not joining any.

However, deriding those who believe just because they believe serves no constructive purpose either.

Saying "because I don't have the answer no one does or can have it" doesn't work either.

edited 8th Feb '16 9:59:07 AM by Bense

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick

I disagree with this on the basis that you dont need to do drugs to know that drugs are bad, or to know what they will cause. Academic and scientific research as well as study are perfectly valid ways to understand something.

To make a call back to stuff, I personally just dont see how saying "I am an atheist" is derision and I would also contend to this idea in the fact that having an idea challenged is not just an actual way to get something constructive done, it is the only way to get something constructive done.

You don't fix a disease by letting it spread rampant or help a case of sexual abuse by letting it keep going, you don't stop the river's flow by not building a ditch. You act against it and show it. Those are all analogies, my point is that ideologies are not changed by inertia they can be challenged and they can be changed and there is constructive benefits from this...

This is the purpose and definition of a debate...

All I would add to it, is that there are proper places and situations to engage in it. A psychological consultation is the proper place to try and work out some stuff. Your facebook feed is not.

edited 8th Feb '16 9:59:42 AM by Aszur

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Anyway here in Israel certein population get very spooked by atheists, as if its a thing that doesnt exist, and their voting power makes for laws that discriminate against anything out of religion at all.

Mind you im not only talking about the zealot orthodox or insane settlers, but also various """secular""" groups whose grandparents came from certein places...

Oh shit really? I am going to go to Israel and set up a freak show consisting of people doing mundane things and going "Look at this man! He is reading a book! Incospicuous, yes?"

And when people get angry and start demanding for their money back I will theatrically add "What you do not know, ladies and gentlemen..is that htis man...DOES NOT BELIEVE THERE IS A GOD AT ALL! NO ALLAH! NO GOD! NO JESUS!"

And that's when fire flares and thunder rumbles and the freak show would be a huge hit

Yeah. I am going to get rich. Just you wait and see!

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

You can perhaps build a valid case that a particular religious philosophy is harmful. I don't think you can make a valid case that all religion is of necessity harmful just because it is religious in nature.

I'm all for challenging ideas and viewing things with a critical eye.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick

Eeeehhhh sortof...

It is incredibly hard to put a value on certain philosophies, really. I mean. The Bible is pretty explicit on telling you what and how to gut animals and people. But the Pope is hardly a butcher.

The problem with centralization is that since it is considered a group, even its fringe members are still considered part of the group and cast a stain upon it. And religious philosophies are all over the place. Even cultural, societal, economical, health and political reasons are so much easier to study and give metrics to.

Which is why studies on religions just keep pointing out that it was not likely prayer that held the benefits on the surgeries and whatnot, it was the fact that this person had a group of people willing to look after him and worrying about him that helped them go on.

If this group was the pentecost ascendant church of the flying monkey or the catholic church or the local D&D group of unwashed NERDS or all the porn actresses in the world it doesn't matter. So long as the person knows there was someone out there made of flesh and blood who suffered as he did was what helped.

Hey. This jesus fella suddenly sounds relatable.

Anyways my point is that religious stuff hardly ends up pointing at it being harmful or helpful either case. It is just another support group, and whatever extreme fringes come from it are more easily explained by other socioeconomical indicators rather than religious ones.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

There no way to argue shoulds from nothing. But we aren't starting from nothing. Nothing is so rational that number theory will be compelled.

It's possible there some way to make sense out of all of our seemingly contradictory notions of should, but those notions are all we've got to work with.

It isn't rational for a paperclip maximizer to be truly good at the expense of paperclip production. But that's because they aren't at all concerned with moral matters. They're not just working with a strange notion of what's good.

This is different then morality as preference for the same reason the P.C.M.'s calculated utilities aren't the same thing as more paperclips.

Yes. It is hard to put numbers on morality, if not impossible.

But we can, and have desperately tried, to put numbers on behaviors and feelings and thoughts and how they are perpetrated. And that we can study.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Yay! It's supermerlin's paper-clip maximiser!

edited 8th Feb '16 10:25:02 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

Since when did this turn into the general Atheism thread?

Seen in the profile picture: the Gundam Flauros Rebake Full City, piloted by McGillis Itsuka, captain of the Turbines

since arguments, now if you excuse me... *brandishes flamer* WORSHIP THE EMPEROR OR ELSE!

advancing the front into TV Tropes

*bows down* MASTER!

At the end of the day, it all just boils down to people's need to connect with their spirituality, which can be done in a multitude of ways, and which doesn't necessarily require religious beliefs.

Well, you'd have to call 'spirituality' something else, then. If we're following the train of thought religions are a false thing and so are deities, the overwhelming odds would be spirits and souls wouldn't be real either. In that case you are meaning something that still connects with one's inner self, but you can't call that a 'spirit' in anything but a figurative way.

I do mean a figurative way, yes. When we talk about the "human spirit", we can refer to the traditional conception of a "spirit" as a non-corporeal essence, or it can just refer to the nature of humans. I.e "Curiosity is part of the human spirit".

<sneaks up behind Field Marshall Fry and paints a symbol of Necoho on his back>

Since a religious person came in here and played the "atheism is just another religion" card.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I've been accompanying thiss thread since the first page and to level with you, this thread has been wildly off-topic for 90% of the time. It's something of a minor miracle no mod has even raised a finger to observe how Off the Rails the thread it is.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

I enjoyed the participation, but I find that, as we suspected initially, it's going nowhere. I'll close it now.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"