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Author | Topic: Are Atheists Mentally Ill | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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There is no other purpose to life. There's the question of what is the purpose of this collection of self-replicating organic material, and then there's the question of what is the purpose of your existence as an individual. He asked the latter and you answered the former.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
It's the same answer. Not at all. Plenty of people's lives have had a purpose that had nothing to do with just reproducing.
The reason religion exists at all, is the egotistical opinion that life has a puropse beyond itself - it doesn't. Our lives can, in fact, have a purpose.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Many people believe that their lives have purpose. So? And you simply believe that they don't, which is equally irrelevant. But what I said was that they do actually have a real purpose, not just that they believe that they do.
If you mean that people can find things to do with their lives that they find worthwhile and satisfying then I agree. That, however, is not purpose. A king has a son so as to have an heir; one purpose of that life is to be the next king. We can also make our own purposes in life.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Right. It's the whole question of, "Why are we here?" I think we'd all really like to know the answer, but given that there's been no answer after thousands of years it seems very unlikely there'd be one on our watch. That's not what I've been talking about, nor is it what I think Jon was asking about. I'm talking about the individual level, and how we can have all sorts of different purposes for our lives. Jon's calling them all the pursuit of happiness, in the there's-no-unselfish-acts sort of way. Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Once you've accepted that life has no Purpose you can find happinesses in cleaning shoes with a purpose. I don't believe that's true, in that accepting life has no Purpose isn't a requirement. Can you make it's case with an argument?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I'm simply saying that it's perfectly possible to lead a happy and contented life having accepted that life is ultimately pointless. Oh. Was I wrong to read "Once X then Y" as saying that X is required for Y? Cause that's what I think that means.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Once I turn left on D Street, I find myself at my house. Does that statement imply that turning left on D is the only way to get to my house? Clearly not. Sure, but its saying to me that if you hadn't turned left on D street, then you wouldn't have found yourself at your house. You might be able to get to your house through another route, but the statement is implying that you're on the one that requires a left turn on D street.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
As you approach the more conservative religions, you approach lower incomes and education.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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As you approach the more conservative religions, you approach lower incomes and education.
The graphic doesn't show this. Sure it does. Look at the religions that we know are the most conservative; They fall on the bottom left side of the graph.
It doesn't even address the issue of which religions are more conservative. It doesn't need to. We already know which ones are the conservative ones.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Look at the religions that we know are the most conservative; They fall on the bottom left side of the graph. Yes. Well there you go, that's the point.
But look at all of theminstead of just the conservative onesand we see a distributional pattern completely divorced from the conservativeness of the belief system. It obviously doesn't work across the board. But if you look at the most conservative religions, they do have the lowest education and income.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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I'd say it doesn't seem to work at all. At all? The Baptists, Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses are the most conservative Christians I can think of, and look how uneducated and poor they are!
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
You're both making the same error. You are selecting for focus only the data points that fit the model as you see it and ignoring the rest. Well whoopty-fucking-do. Perhaps we're just not actually "modeling" what you think we are. Its a simple point, really: the more conservative ones are less educated and poorer. You can see that in the graph with a glance. Like I said, the most conservative groups I'm familiar with are on the bottom left. Its a no-brainer. You're just taking us at a lot more than what we're saying. I don't have any kind of "model" that I'm fitting data to. Again, its just a simple point.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
No, of course not, because the kinds of lives that result from lack of exposure to all the religious malarkey are far better in terms of health and longevity. The point of contention that I have with that, is that the private Catholic grade and high schools that I went to were waaay better than the public alternative. Of course, there was a shit-pile of money pumped into them (in addition the taxes my parents also paid for the public schools, but that's another topic about how that was unfair to them), but that was part of the solution. We's got monies and it works
So are atheists behaving insanely by ignoring all the benefits of religion? Well, I don't like that word "insane", but I do think there's an irrational element to just "write it all off".
The average lives of human beings have steadily improved over time as we better understand reality. It makes perfect sense that the more of reality one ignores the worse one will fare. Sometimes we need a good nudging, but I don't think us Catholics are one for ignoring reality.
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