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That Atheism Quote
"I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, then you will know why I dismiss yours."
~Stephen F. Roberts
Of course, the logical response is...
"A witty saying proves nothing."
~Voltaire
You're welcome to believe in what you want, but that particular quote is junk. All religions believe in the same God, they just disagree about his/her/its/their character. The statement is typical of an Atheist's shallow observation of religion.
~Stephen F. Roberts
Of course, the logical response is...
"A witty saying proves nothing."
~Voltaire
You're welcome to believe in what you want, but that particular quote is junk. All religions believe in the same God, they just disagree about his/her/its/their character. The statement is typical of an Atheist's shallow observation of religion.
Comments
Umm... What about polytheistic religions? What about religions that deny the existence of gods, but believe in other things? What about philosophical religions that don't involve higher beings? Why do you assume that monotheism is correct to the exclusion of all else?
If I were a religous man, I would take great offense to your characterization of my god as being the same as yours.
A statement like "all religions believe in the same god" is very disrespectful of other religions, and, to follow your lead, very typical of a religious person's shallow observation of other religions.
(via Fark)
w00t.
"If I were a religous man, I would take great offense to your characterization of my god as being the same as yours."
If you were a radical muslim terrorist you might throw a paddy, otherwise it would not offend you at all, I don't think. If you like I'll go to a few churches/mosques/synagogues (though we might only have the one synagogue)/hindu temple-things which I can't remember the name of (curiously one of the few on this list that I have already visited) and ask the religious leaders what they think. Hell, I can go to my 6th form on monday and ask the two anglican priests there.
"A statement like 'all religions believe in the same god' is very disrespectful of other religions, and, to follow your lead, very typical of a religious person's shallow observation of other religions."
I'm not a religious person, to clarify. Also I think your attempt to be witty is harming this debate. I don't want anything more than to reveal a little bit more truth.
Now, you specifically said "All religions believe in the same God, they just disagree about his/her/its/their character." If you really meant simply a supernatural force, as you later clarified, why did you use the word "god," and more importantly, why did you capitalize it? The noun god is generic. The name God is not. By using God, you introduced a great number of implications in your statement that would have not been there otherwise.
You imply that there is in fact one god, and that the only debate therein would be its nature. I think that's a very broad leap, considering that the force in question has never been shown to exist in the first place.
Also, your statement flies in the face of naturalistic religions, which speficically deny supernatural forces and, while some believe in "gods," they believe that these beings are bound by the intrinsic laws of the universe just as humans are bound to the laws of physics.
Now, what exactly is the debate? What are we arguing here about?
If it's the quotation I made, then I can say the following:
There is no evidence of any gods. A Christian who believes that "God" exists, but does not believe in Zeus, is guilty of a logical hypocrisy, in the sense that there is equal evidence for the existence of both God and Zeus. To believe in one over the other without evidence is illogical. The quotation was simply a succinct example of this logical mis-step.
If you want a discussion about religion in general, then what are the parameters? What is the point in contention?
http://getvanilla.com/
Take THAT, organised religion!
People look for answers. They look for something to invest themselves in and believe. I feel that these are basic human traits. I think that these two ideas help explain most of human history, why people join movements, why we create gods to believe in. We search for meaning in life, both on our grand scale and within our own lives.
A third aspect is the desire for power, to have control over our own lives. There are those for whom this is their primary motivation, their drug. They manipulate the first two urges, giving people something to believe in that tries to reduce them to being a vassal of a higher will. They create gods who speak to them, prophets for whom they are his direct servants.
For many people, they look to define their lives by one of these urges. Those who seek answers become philosophers or scientists. Those who seek something to invest themselves in join groups, like the priesthood or the military to help them find purpose. These are not definite concepts, but maybe, they might be something like an explanation.
I don't really mention gods before this point here. That is because I believe that gods are defined by people. We define, each and every person, who and what forces we believe in. Those who believe that all gods are one seek to find a common brotherhood through the same goal via a differing path, that there is a common human morality that is given by a single God who reveals himself in many forms. Those who believe in a vengeful God see a world full of things to be afraid of, to hate and fear; including many emotions within themselves. Those who believe in many gods often have their gods seem very human, because they see an imperfect world filled with an imperfect race; how could a perfect creator have wrought this? Atheists or Brights, whatever you choose to be called, see no point in trying to give any cloak of illusions upon their world, they strip it to what is solid and real. Agnostics can see no supernatural forces in this world, can look at every god and find them wanting, but still leave that maybe. Each person defines it themselves, so no attempt to categorize it is perfect, so if I have you pegged wrong, I wasn't talking about you.
Not so much, some people who believe that call themselves agnostics but many agnostics believe god's existence cannot possibly be proved or disproved due to his nature. I just came up with what I think is a pretty good analogy for what most agnostics believe.
Imagine the universe is a computer system, with or without god in it. Our subsection of the universe which is all we can see is within a rootkit. That works so long as I'm right about what a rootkit is. Otherwise, replace rootkit with emulator, virtual machine or whatever.
It's my belief that most deist's eventually became Agnostics or Atheists.
However, when a religion makes a claim on a topic that can be tested or explored through science, then you can argue with that religion. Different sects of Christianity has made this mistake time and time again. "Claiming a 12,000 year old earth, Claiming that their moral system is the most advanced and so on and so on." Once you start making claims that do not hold up to real world tests. You suddenly have a problem on your hands. Of course one can always fall back on "the devil did it/God did it". This works for some people but generally causes you to lose the arguement.
That being said I completely agree with Pilitus above.
"(Bart is playing "Bible Blaster" with the Flanders kids)
Kids: Convert the Heathens, Convert the Heathens!
Bart: Yeah! i got one!
Kids: No, you just nicked him. Now he's Unitarian."
If you are looking for a religious type organization(some place to go on Sunday for some discussion or what not), that actually doesn't believe it has all the answers, relies of Science, looks at different phosophies and asks you to question every aspect of it. You should consider the Unitarians. Even though I'm an Agnostic/Bright (I want/wish there was supernatural stuff, but all signs points to there isn't) I've been attending a Unitarian fellowship on the Sundays for over a Month, and I've found them to be very enjoyable. However, you'll have to put up with alot of Politicial issues of the left (which isn't so much a problem for me generally), Such as this weeks sermon is about the minium wage (last weeks was on being Flexiable, the week before that was brokeback mountain). The difference is however is that you are encouraged to disagree with what they say. After the "cermony/sermon part" is a adult discussion where mainly old people discuss issues like the evolution of speech in the human brain to watching the movie Spike lee's "Do the right thing". Otherwise the whole experience, is a great way to meet people, network and make political connections of all age groups.
The first piece is Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs. If you don't want to read the Wikipedia article, let me summarize. There are five categories of needs for human beings in a particular order starting at the bottom of the pyramid. Physiological (food, water), safety (shelter), love/belonging (wife,family), esteem (recognition,respect), self-actualization (all the rest). The theory behind the pyramid is that humans will do everything they can to fulfull the next need. Say I've already got all the food and water I need, but not enough shelter. I will only spend my time seeking shelter. I wont give two shits about any of the needs higher on the pyramid unless I have shelter. The same goes for any level. If my physiological, safety and love needs are all fulfilled, but esteem is not, then I will spend all my time trying to fulfill my esteem need. Self-actualization wont even come to mind until I have esteem fulfilled.
Think about it. When you are hungry you get up from your video game to eat. Once you eat you return to playing. If you are out in the cold, but also hungry you think about food first. If you are out in the cold and you just ate you think about shelter first. You don't care about your esteem or love at that point, just getting inside. That's how it works.
The rest of the pices are anecdotes I recently encountered which fit very nicely within this pyramid, and they give a nice perspective on a few things. The first anecdote is from a thread on the CGS forums about "why do you read comics?". One very interesting response came from sqroot443556 I will paste it here The second anecdote is from Penn Jillette. I heard him talking about his mother on the podcast version of his radio show. It was about when his mother became atheist and stopped going to the church. She said that she would miss the big meals at the church where everyone got together. And now Cremlian talks about how going to the unitarian get-together in a similar way. Obviously this was filling the belonging need, and now it is lost. Something needs to replace it or the people will feel bad.
It seems that in a society where basic needs are fulfilled people need something to fill the needs which are higher on the pyramid. Religeon is sort of like this easy way to fill the need and move up. Going to a church easily fills the belonging need and the esteem need. Religion is the path of least resistance towards need fulfillment.
The solution to religion is to obviously find a way to fulfill these needs that is even easier than practicing religion. TV seems to work, but that's just as bad. Geekery and sports seem to work, but not so much. Most jobs people have seem to destroy esteem, necessitating religion even more. We just need to make everyone feel really good without having to do very much at all. However, it becomes very difficult to do this in a way that does not bring harm to the self and others. Religion, drugs, television, fascism all fit the bill but are obviously not optimal choices. If only everyone was a geek...
The alternative is to just give everyone the bad medicine they need. They might fight back, and it might taste bad, but it's better for them in the end. I'm going to try to make bad medicine relevant in as many threads as possible, that is my new goal.
"The solution to religion..."
Bwah?
I'll let Rym talk about the heirarchy of needs. I'm not saying it is a definitive description of how the human mind works or anything like that. But it is a very useful model that describes many observed behaviors.
Religion is a problem. While a solution may or may not exist, possible solutions may still be discussed.
You know, I think that post you cite explains why many people can look at us geeks weirdly sometimes. Some of us fill our "god-need" with comics, using the ideas and stories of the comic to build our morality code, looking to those moral tales that exist inside comic-dom.
Religion, in so far as a codified set of beliefs, generally faith-based, that discusses various generally unexplainable and "sticky" societal issues in some fashion, is fine. Your personal belief is yours to have, or not have, as you see fit.
Indeed, religion is a powerful tool of human thought, because it is a catalyst towards breaking out of conventional patterns of thought. Occasionally, one needs to ponder things about which one can bring no real evidence; the actual ponderence of religion and all its implications is an important thought process because it involves discussions about things that may or may not be real, but in whose discussion we achieve greater understanding of the workings of the world in general.
Religion, as I see it, is an intellectual exercise, just another branch of philosophy. It attempts to explain why certain unexplainable things are, and advises people as to how they should conduct themselves.
Religion is not the same thing as Church, and this is where most of the actual problem lies today. The religion of Islam is not protesting some stupid cartoon of Mohammed; the ORGANIZATION thereof is. I generally see churches and the like to be more destructive of the principles of a religion than they are nuturing; a lot of church is rooted so much in superstitious ritual that it simply loses all higher meaning and simply exists as a form of behavior modification.
The larger organizations of most religions tend to play more toward their own perpetuance more than they do the spreading of the religion itself, and these same organizations tend to breed people that don't think about their religion, which, as I've already said, is counter to the intellectual nature of religion.
So, no, the beliefs themselves are fine. Religions are about faith, and faith is one of the most powerful tools of the human mind. However, the organizations around religions are based on the MANIPULATION of faith, and the detriment thereof. I'd love to see the various organizations abolished as the monolithic entities that they are and have things reduced to the way it should've been:
In the New Testament, at one point, Jesus tells St. Peter that he is, and I'm paraphrasing, "the rock upon which I will build my church." Literally, he wasn't telling Peter that he'd be in the foundation of a building; rather, the structure of a religion is rooted in the common man, and when the structure stops being about the common man, and starts paying attention to the structure itself, problems arise.
Church bad, religion OK, so long as you don't force your beliefs onto other people.
I believe in freedom. That means that anyone is free to believe in whatever they want. Be it a flying spaghetti monster or cthulhu, you can have at it. That means it is also ok for me to hold any beliefs as well. My beliefs just happen to be based on evidence and experience rather than fantasy and false hope. And it is my belief that a world without religious belief would be far more pleasant than the one in which we live today. Imagine there's no religion and all that.
I just realized someone is going to make an argument about the nice religious person who doesn't bother anybody or cause any harm. I agree that many such people exist. However, I do not view them as completely harmless. They are harming themselves by believing in lies. I treat them as I would a smoker giving themselves cancer or an obese person eating at McDonald's. Because I am so moral, yet completely absent of religion, it pains me to stand by and allow people to harm themselves.
If you read the beginning of this essay. This guy pretty much says what you've been trying to say Pete/Scott. (it is a big wordy and I can't vouch for anything after the summary being pretty interesting...
For those of you who want to get to the point... here is a peice of it.
"... he would conclude at last that the age-long despotism of priestcraft in European history has been the most blighting calamity that ever afflicted assumedly civilized humanity. Gulled by the natural influences of pietism and sanctity traditionally flaunted before the mass mind by religionists, he would never have sensed the diabolical character of religious tyranny, had not science demonstrated what the free mind could accomplish, once it had thrown off the trammels and shackles of churchly prohibition. Fifty years of freedom — and science has advanced the human race in vital knowledge farther than it had ever progressed in all previous time! It took this astounding development of modern achievement to tear the veil of pious blindness and submissiveness from off the common man's eyes, and to reveal to his unobstructed vision the ugliness and falsity of two thousand years of futile religious hallucination for his world of the West. The Dark Ages indeed! And science, crushed to earth for long generations, is seen rising at last to lift the pall of superstitious pietism from off the mind of Western man, to let it prove its immortal divine genius."
You can, if you wish, lump the actual belief portion of a religion in with the organizations of religion (lump together Faith and Church, to put it another way), but doing so is wrong and part of the problem. The Catholic Church in particular - I pick on Catholicism because it's the biggest and most well-known example - will often make decrees that go contrary to the actual teachings of the Bible itself. An organization of religion is one that takes the core teaching and interprets them in a particular fashion; these interpretations are not intrinsic to the beliefs themselves, which is why many sects of various religions exist. The problem, again, is when one interpretive body thinks its interpretation is superior to all others.
Also, your argument at the end is somewhat contradictory and very slightly arrogant. If your'e a freedom advocate, as am I, then people should ALSO be free to hurt themselves. Period. Your argument is slightly arrogant in that it implies the people engaging in the harmful behavior don't think it's actually harmful and need to be told such; this is occasionally true in some instances (bad religion is often such a case), but in most it is not. The vast majority of people that eat at McDonald's KNOW it's bad for them, and don't particularly give a shit about it. Of course, obese people tend to drive up medical premiums and what have you, but that's a separate argument based on circumstance. The point is, if you live in a free society, people should be allowed to hurt themselves whether or not you like it. When I see someone I care about engaging in a harmful behavior, I ask them if they're aware of the ramifications before I launch into a lecture. Some people don't want to be lectured, quite frankly, and if they don't want to hear it, they can learn the hard way.
One final point, I would like to add, is that you can't actually say that a religion is lies. People can lie to you about certain things in pursuit of a religion, true, but that doesn't mean the religion itself consists of lies. Saying that it's a lie means inherently that their is an answer that is correct, and the religion is not that answer; however, that would mean that you KNOW the answer definitely, and have some evidence to back it up. You cannot bring evidence to bear on a religion one way or another; it can neither be proved nor disproved, so you cannot actually say that it's a lie, because there's no way to say that it's true or untrue. You can simply say that it is supported by evidence or not.
Yes, it is difficult to counter the hypocrisy of being for freedom in general, yet also being against freedom to harm one's self. But being for freedom doesn't mean being for complete freedom. I stand that there are certain rights that every human has. Some of those rights can not be given up. The freedom I aspire to is where everyone does whatever they wish, as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of anybody, including themselves. You have the right not to be taken into slavery, so you can not sell yourself into slavery either. You have the right not to be harmed in certain ways, therefore you may not harm yourself in those ways.
I also stand that it is extremely difficult to think of a case in which someone may harm themselves without simultaneously bringing harm to society. Therefore, in the interest of protecting people's rights we should seek to prevent individuals from bringing harm to themselves. Infringing upon the rights of anyone infringes upon the rights of everyone.
Moving on, there are currently a few mathematical problems for which you will be awarded millions of dollars if you find a solution. We do not at present know what the solution is. We may never know, as some problems are unsolvable. For some problems we are still trying to discover whether they have a solution or not. However, we have a very well known process for determining if any particular solution is indeed correct. So saying that you must know the correct solution to a problem in order to disprove other solutions is logically false in every way. No human knows the mystery of the universe. But when presented with possible answers we are very capable of telling which ones have more potential for being correct than others. I submit that any answer containing a supernatural explanation has the absolute lowest potential of being the correct answer. Solutions with no supporting evidence whatsoever are for all intents and purposes treated as false answers.
Lastly, I have been called arrogant quite a few times as of late. That's fine, as most of the time I can see it, but I care not. I just point out that the attitude of an individual has no relation to the truth of the words they speak. The most humble of hermits may speak as many truths, and also as many lies, as the most swashbuckling vivacious pirate. Although I probably wouldn't trust the pirate myself, we all know he just wants to steal booty.
Philosophically, I believe in the immortality of my own conciousness. This idea is nothing more than a logical construct derived from my experiences as a solipsistic being: I have experienced nothing except through my conciousness and thus cannot envision an existence without it.
I do not, however, actually believe this. I have no evidence other than my own internal experiences. I could not in good conscience declare the existence of something for which I can provide no evidence.
I have no problem with people believing in philosophical ideals. The problem lies in one's actual belief in something that has never in all recorded history been shown to exist.
The fact that an otherwise rational, sentient human being would truly and honestly believe in a force, being, or event for which there is zero evidence is frightening. It's an affront to all that reason and science have accomplished. One can philosophically believe in the existence of a god (deism). One can search and study and seek evidence for such a god. But the moment one believes in that god despite the lack of evidence, the moment one begins making decisions as though it existed: they've committed intellectual suicide.
So yes, I see "religion" as perhaps the greatest threat mankind has ever faced. People who will accept something as truth without evidence are dangerous to themselves and others. They either do not consider the world around them in a logical manner, or else hypocritically accept some logic while denying other, equally valid logic.
Now freedom is an important thing, and I contend that people should be allowed to hold whatever crazy or unfounded beliefs they desire. This is not to say that these beliefs should be encouraged. In fact, ridiculous beliefs should be ridiculed for what they are. By choosing to hold to an unproven belief, you are also choosing to accept the logical criticisms of others, regardless of whether you agree with them.
You're free to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I'm free to loudly point out the silliness of said belief. The government is not only free, but obligated to keep your belief out of its schools and structures (barring evidence to the contrary).
I hope for a day when such unfounded beliefs are as socially unacceptable as smoking around children or answering a phone in the movie theatre. Certainly not illegal, but certainly not accecpted by others.
"X sucks!"
"No, X really sucks!"
"I'm telling you, X is terrible!"
^_~
"One final point, I would like to add, is that you can't actually say that a religion is lies. People can lie to you about certain things in pursuit of a religion, true, but that doesn't mean the religion itself consists of lies. Saying that it's a lie means inherently that their is an answer that is correct, and the religion is not that answer; however, that would mean that you KNOW the answer definitely, and have some evidence to back it up. You cannot bring evidence to bear on a religion one way or another; it can neither be proved nor disproved, so you cannot actually say that it's a lie, because there's no way to say that it's true or untrue. You can simply say that it is supported by evidence or not."
Thank you, I feel slightly less crazy for feeling that way now.
Rym
"By choosing to hold to an unproven belief..."
You act very much like you can *prove* there is no God.
Just to point out, there are religious institutions that encourage questioning and discussion.. they are just really rare...
I can't prove that there's no god, in the sense that you cannot prove a negative in an untestable claim. You can't prove I'm not god, nor can you prove that the pink elephant I worship isn't real, or that I'm not in fact the secret king of pirates.
As there is no evidence whatsoever, my claim that I am god is equally valid to someone else's claim that a god exists. These claims are on equal footing. If my claim that I am god seems foolish, then the claim that a god exists is equally so.
I can't prove that there is no god. I don't need to. There is no evidence of a god. Anyone who believes that there in fact is one has made an enormous leap of logic.