wait. so i, a theist, am capable of making empiracle claims? HOMG!
You thought that I thought differently or something?
can you demonstrate that they are?
I'm not going to do so on this thread. The truth of the claims is irrelevant to this thread. We're here to discuss a man who holds these claims to be true and yet engages in behaviour associated with a religion.
also, if two serial killers both murder 50 people and commit terrible desecrations on their bodies, what does it matter if one is a theist and one is an atheist?
It doesn't matter. What might be interesting is to learn the reasons why they killed - which might difficult.
further, do you really think that all atheists come to that conclusion because they logically deduced that there's insufficient evidence for god?
No. Some atheists do not believe that religion is on the whole harmful so they didn't come to that conclusion at all.
do you really think all atheism is a result of non-faith-based-thinking?
No, why on earth do you ask these questions? They seem irrelevant to anything that I am saying or the topic.
i know for a fact several individuals whose atheism is a direct result of negative faith-based-thinking... rather that the god they were exposed to didn't satisfy their ideas of right or faith and so they abandoned it. are these people really theists?
Since when is it that anyone said that one cannot be atheist who engages in faith-based thinking? Of course you can become an atheist for the most inane of reasons, one can be an atheist who believes in fairies or homeopathy or domovoi.
do they not qualify under your superior ideals of atheistic human thought?
I wasn't talking about 'atheistic human thought'. I was talking about rational empiricism. You know, the idea that we can reason but that the reasoning should be confirmed by evidence - that we can use inductive, deductive and abductive reasonings if we do so in a certain way to be confident of certain conclusions - but also that we must remain aware that all of our knowledge is tentative.
Sure - that doesn't involve god, but it isn't the mode of thought that is unique to atheists nor are all atheists wise followers of this mode of thought.
his agenda is to defame people who disagree with him and make himself look smarter and more righteous than he is.
Oh. One hell of an agenda. Actually that's YOUR agenda. No, wait, it's Ray's agenda. Actually I could say it of almost anybody and I'd have the same grounds as you do. He seeks to defame people, not because they disagree with him, but because he does not believe they should have the reputation they do. Take the bishop who blamed local floods on the acceptance of homosexuality. There is a man who shouldn't be looked up to, but he is. Where is the harm in trying to bring a bigot like that down as many notches as possible in social status?
so demonstrate it.
Create a thread, maybe I will.
does it? all of it?
A great deal of existing religion, yes. Not all of it. If you'd read your Dawkins (
obscure reference...sorry) you'd know that, surely.
judaism accepts converts but doesn't seek them. there are some sects of christianity that don't accept converts. there are lots of sects of other religions that refuse converts and extra-group marriage. last time i checked buddhism (even the varieties that are less philosophy and more religion) doesn't seek converts. i don't think pagans advertise for new meat (despite what some christians may believe). how about hindus? i know almost nothing about them. i could go on...
Who said anything about converts? Most religious people have never converted and yet there are billions of them today where there were only millions of them in the not too distant past.
bullshit. we can *think* we've overcome "who we are", but we haven't.
That really depends on what perspective we are attacking this from. For example, if we look at ourselves as purely machines for propagating DNA, then culture has warped that somewhat. We do do things that don't really make a great deal of sense as an action looked at purely for the propagation of DNA.
wrong. all of society belongs to one mob or another. this has little to do with religion.
Of course all society belogns to one mob or another, I was talking about the specific kinds of mob. Mob X (Type A mob) doesn't want to see Type A mobs criticized because they are part of Type A mob. Hopefully that makes the point a little clearer.
i can convince myself that my desire to have sex with my fiance is because i love him. that doesn't change the fact that my ovaries want to rule my life.
No it doesn't change the fact that your ovaries want to rule your life - but that doesn't mean that cultural ideas of romance and propriety might mean you hold off having sex until a certain ritual has been completed. Thus, propagation of culture is at times opposed to propagation of genes. Sometimes culture actually wins.
his idea that it's "cultural" and that there's some distinction between religion and culture sure sounds important, but it isn't.
If culture=religion then Dawkins is religious. However, this just confuses the issue for no real gain in understanding elsewhere.
christmas is a ritual.
No christmas is a time of year which contains many rituals forming an overarching collection of rituals. Are you suggesting that Dawkins engages in a ritual which he himself disapproves of? Which ritual is it that he disapproves of that he himself engages in? It isn't carol singing, he doesn't disapprove of that. He doesn't disapprove of saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes. So what ritual is it?
the music being good is not a reason to participate in a worship ritual.
Yes it is. Your personal preferences in this are simply that.
correction. christianity is paganism. it shares many pagan themes and the only reason it doesn't qualify is two thousand years of vocally "separating" themselves from pagans. they have dualistic spirits, a solar hero, sexual issues, purification rites, earth-based symbolism, polytheistic tendencies... the distinction is artificial.
OK. Change it to '...Christianity is endorsing Germanic polytheism under a Norse pantheon!'
yes, you have. you've declared that you're a higher creature because you're not a slave to "faith-based reasoning".
No I haven't. Actually the contrary. I have stated that I am a fuck up with a tendency towards erroneous reasoning. I know you cannot find the post where I said what you claim I said here so allow me to laugh in your face at your attempts to destroy that strawman. I'll be waiting over here in the trenches if you want to engage.
but. your brain works exactly the same way mine does (with allowances for my neurological disabilities and my statistically superior cognitive capabilities and whatever neurological issues you may have).
Agreed.
your "reasoning" is the same as mine.
Well that depends what you mean by reasoning. But yes, I agree our reasoning is the same - however there may be some philosophical differences for how we start the reasoning and what to compare that reasoning with and how to deal with things if what we compare it with is inconsistent or incongruous with our reasoning. That seemed like a bit of a mouthful so I thought you'd know what I meant when I contrasted different bases of reasoning.
you at least claim to refuse all anecdotal evidence, i don't necessarily.
Refusing anecdotal evidence is madness. It should be handled with appropriate care. If someone knocks on my door to tell me my house is on fire , I won't reject their claim but I will maintain skepticism in case I am becoming a victim of a confidence scam or burglary. I will seek out evidence myself and try and decide if my house is on fire. If so I'll evacuate.
It all depends on the nature of the claim, the claimant, and what evidence can be accrued during what time period.
you refuse all "coincidental" evidence, i do not necessarily.
I don't know what coincidental evidence is exactly. I don't see meaning in the fact that I sat next to a IT recruiter when I was thinking about changing jobs if that's what you mean - but it is certainly evidence of IT recruiters.
which you can't demonstrate.
Well you don't know that do you? You just think I can't demonstrate it. Take it up in a different thread. We can discuss faith-based reasoning in homeopathy or the age of the earth or contraception or disease control or whatever. Obviously the time of year might present time issues, but if you want to discuss it, I'll be around and about.
those "errors" you refer to result in qualitatively and quantitatively harmful things. if you are somehow less prone to making those errors, you are less harmful. but, since you can't demonstrate that atheists are truly less prone to "errors" and the evidence doesn't bare out that religious differences cause conflict and you can't prove that atheists are less likely to be harmful, you have no justification for saying this.
I do have justification for saying it, I just don't think we are in anyway the right thread to discuss any of it.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
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