My Religious Intolerance

that's my opinion.

I think you and share pretty much the same views towards religion, Ed, I just try to avoid viewing others as "stupid" b/c they are religious.

If only religious folx could be so tolerant of others. . .

But my problem with fundies transcends religion to politics and philosophy and cultural tastes. Randroids, hardcore unshaven Marxists, Christian fundies, hyperradical animal rights people, et al. make my skin crawl.
(xpost)

Atheism isn't a belief-set because there's only one fundamental belief - no god or gods. You can be a secular humanist atheist or an Objectivist atheist, or whatever you want. It's kind of like calling theism of any form one beliefset because one belief is shared.

xpost/gareth

"Our technology and our spirituality are increasingly one and the same if either has any meaning. The ultimate materialization of spirit* is indistinquishable from the ultimate spiritualization of matter. By this last I mean (among other things) the increasing subjection of all things material to conscious purpose and control. The material is gradually subsumed by conscious intent, by spirit if you will. Nanotech is a very deep and important step in the progression."
*I would have precised "The materialization of the material mind into another support"

"I think we need more love and understanding, story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship, not religious mysticism.
I think we do need some things often seen in the best of relgion and
mysticism. We need a unified, uplifting and compelling vision and a deep ethics/morality in the way we deal with one another and acheive that vision. To date I have not seen anything along these lines as unitive or compelling as the best religion/mysticism has to offer. It would surprise me if religious/mystical memes were entirely absent from such a unitive Vision. I don't think the memes will be sufficiently viable without such."

BTW, I would recommend "The Age of Spiritual Machines" and Moravec's "Robot -
Mere Machines to Transcendent Mind".

Having religion is a lot like having a big dick. It's comforting to you but nobody else wants it shoved down their throat.

sorry. . .derailment.

That's a fucked-up thing to say. Your saying that everyone who has faith in God (Mother Teresa, CS Lewis and Desmond Tutu) are deluded. One thing I'll concede is that we don't know... but alot of very intellingent folks have spent a lifetime immersed in this faith and has given them courage and strength in very trying times.

religion is that it inshrines the notion of the inferiority and subservience of people

Just because of a belief in God? What if I believe God is just the collective unconscious or some hippie shit like that? Or Eastern religions that are nearly atheist? Religion can be important in terms of community and ritual, etc. Haven't found a religion I'd like to be a part of, still, but different strokes sink ships.

Like I said: Ed is painting with a broad brush, and not very accurately or carefully. Who wouldn't have a low opinion of religion, given how he describes it? It isn't a galactic leap from that to the realization that he doesn't describe it the way millennia of theists and other religious folks would.

That's a fucked-up thing to say. Your saying that everyone who has faith in God (Mother Teresa, CS Lewis and Desmond Tutu) are deluded.

Well there might well be a God, but I am suspicious of anyone who is that convinced. I have seen these people and they have a glaze in their eyes. I've known others that were very religious that I was quite fond of, but usually they had or have a healthy skepticism.

Oh and don't get me started on Mother Theresa.

I'm not especially religious, but I believe passionately in religious tolerance, from those with and without specific beliefs. I believe 'Atheism' is a precise theological standpoint - to use a political analogy, it's specifically saying "I vote for none of the above" - a spoilt ballot paper as opposed to merely neglecting to use your vote.

I suspect that the engrained distrust of religion among many people in Britain and the US alike is through having a strongly religious (and often conservative) establishment feeding, or attempting to feed, its values through to us since birth.

Oh, and Anthony to thread please.

people get sick, die, forget, trip and fall down stairs. They are by nature very faulted.

Question:
If we were immortal, would we need religion?

Yes. We'd need it to help us understand why we don't die when everything else in nature does. We'd have religious 'killing ceremonies' for our loved ones when they became so diseased they couldn't exist except in a state of advanced suffering. We'd have myths of 'the fall' when God cursed man with immortality, thus making parents forever a burden on their children.

well presumably it would be nudist ye

I dunno, can it not be one or the other? I mean sure, atheism becomes an irritating badge of honour for a lot of people but surely plenty of people just aren't exposed to religion much and never believe in God because they've felt they had any reason to?

Latest research indicates there is a 67% chance God exists:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,1164892,00.html

I just looked around and nothing was there except The Craft on TV (slitting yr wrists is punk rock). Don't tell me there is a God and i won't tell you there isn't one. x-post

; )

If there were, he would have locked this thread bu now.

Otm. Some people would argue that the likelihood of humans working together to build a perfect world is as remote as the likelihood of an omnipotent being overseeing our every move. There're certainly alot of religious parallels with strong political beliefs, nowadays.

some corkers here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/8401685.stm

I'm wondering if the term 'atheist' is mostly in relation to refusing to believe in an omnipresence with personality/human traits. Could one be an atheist and believe in an omnipresence that was not defined as such? I suppose I may be asking if one can be into mysticism and considered and atheist but perhaps not...

Because certainly atheists believe in something, so I'm trying to find where that line is.

Obviously the word in popular usage tends to mean "does not believe in any kind of God" but I'd argue you could use it in the sense of "doesn't believe in theism", which would still allow for some kind of deism, or atheism could allow for other kinds of metaphysical belief similar to Taoism or the non-religious strands of Buddhism or a general belief that there is a pattern or synergy to the universe whilst being opposed to theism.

But the line, really, is in how an individual chooses to use the word, albeit constrained by what it's most popularly considered to mean.

"Because certainly atheists believe in something"

SCIENCE!
http://z.hubpages.com/u/54038_f260.jpg

I'd like to think it is possible to be an athiest and not particuarly into science either, thoug I'm not sure what kind of person that'd be.

Multiple possibilities: could be into gnostic/hermetic type stuff whilst believing there's no God; could have no belief in the supernatural but no great understanding/belief in science either and just accept the phenomenal world at more or less face value; could be a Scientologist.

Bill Maher? xp

an interesting perspective on the matter

I do believe in God and I know he's always there for me too.
Let me ask a question. If you are in the worse pain in your life from an accident or a person you love is in critical condition, who do you call out for? I'll let you in on a very true story. For the past seven years, I have had a VERY bad back, from a couple of good falls. I was told by my doctors that I had arthritis and was put on anti- inflamatory pills & pain killers. I couldn't even ride in a car and when I had to, the pain was unbearable. Imagine, I suffered 7years with this! I asked God to take the pain away about three weeks ago and I thank him every day. I haven't had a pill for my back in 2 weeks now. I don't plan to take anymore either... Don't tell me there is no God cos I know better. Look around you.

Let me let you in on a very true story...derpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpaderpa

I'm an atheist and I believe in nothing whatsoever! I am one of those cranks that would have a problem with a court mandate to do AA because I simply can't fathom a 'higher power,' much less communing with one. OTOH I know most people find this view dreadfully snide & consequently keep quiet about it unless there's an obvious context.

I have met people who are atheists and are also into some or another supernatural or spiritual thing, ie astrology or 'fate' or 'the universe.' ('The universe' meaning like "I'll just send out my hope to the universe," a 'higher power' of some sort.)

Look around you.

*looks around*

Hmmm.

See Him yet? Over there!

No I checked, that's a gingerbread cutter.

re: the original thread topic:

As an atheist I consider religious belief to be pretty ridiculous, but I don't think it's the cause of wars, oppression etc. so much as a convenient justification. People are naturally tribal, territorial, and distrustful of the unknown, and I think that's got a lot more to do with it. There seems to be one school of thought that if religion was removed, human beings would start being wonderful to each other, and I think that's a pretty risible stance. I mean, religious fanaticism certainly doesn't help matters, but it tends to stem from far more tangible grievances.

The weird thing abt Gales story is, why did she put up with 7 years of back pain before asking god to be a sporting chap and fix it for her? Seems a bit silly imo!

hey god works in interesting, inexplicable ways

he prob had a reason for making her wait 7 years. like he thought she deserved to suffer hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

As an atheist I consider religious belief to be pretty ridiculous, but I don't think it's the cause of wars, oppression etc. so much as a convenient justification. People are naturally tribal, territorial, and distrustful of the unknown, and I think that's got a lot more to do with it. There seems to be one school of thought that if religion was removed, human beings would start being wonderful to each other, and I think that's a pretty risible stance. I mean, religious fanaticism certainly doesn't help matters, but it tends to stem from far more tangible grievances.

― Communi-Bear Silo State (chap), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 12:42 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

otfm

http://sonnietrotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/god.gif

AHHHHHHhttp://www.cs.hmc.edu/icons/hands/finger.point.gif

^^^I tried to post this a few times after the looking-around bit upthread but too many xposts ruined it :(

sheesh, God needs a haircut

that's not him

Like a good materialist I tend to agree with chap but when you look at for example the early history of the Christian church and some of the vicious fights that took place to establish orthodoxy it's very difficult to always see an underlying material cause and I've come to the conclusion that sometimes battles took place mainly over ideas rather than more tangible grievances.

This doesn't mean to say that the "religion causes wars" thing is much of an argument tho. Personally I see religious belief as having some use value at certain points within human societies but tending to become increasingly negative as societies become pluralist/democratic.

The ideas are stand-ins for more tangible grievances, ie. wanting the Other's asset and rationalizing all sorts of faith-based reasons it should be yours, or at least not theirs.

I think a lot of it just plain comes down to not liking the other guys.

I'm tempermentally opposed to being reductive.

Or thinking another way: were the causes of Mods vs. Rockers wholly material grievances?

Yeah, that was slightly facetious of me. But I think there's a genuine point in there.

xpost - ha, nice way of putting it

But yeah, in your example that's a clash of culture and values. The Saracens versus the Christians, say, could be seen as that too, and religion was an extreme manifestation of each respective sides' culture and values. Plus they didn't like each other, and wanted some of the same land and many other factors as well. Religion was an integral part of a matrix of driving factors, but take away the religion and there would have still been cause for conflict.

I wasn't having a dig. It's a late night ramble on ILX, not History Today.

It's not that there are no material grievances involved, or the possibility of hidden material grievances, but I think there are plenty of historic examples of people at least believing that they were acting to defend (or promulgate) an idea.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think we're basically on the same page here. Don't worry, no dig was inferred!

And like I said, none of that makes religion the single cause of all war that some people attempt to paint it as. And I don't wanna defend religion at all really except as an historical training wheel that's long needed discarding, but I think enemy ideas need at least fair consideration if one's going to dismiss them properly.

why did she put up with 7 years of back pain before asking god to be a sporting chap and fix it for her?

God could have healed her before that, but if you wait until a 7 or 40-year time interval, he supercharges and really kicks ass

http://images.paraorkut.com/img/pics/images/d/dragonball_z-6721.jpg

chap OH TEE EM

...but ditch the bit about "tangible grievances". it's a red herring.

the truth is that people will fight over basically anything. they will invent reasons to fight even where no tangible benefit can be seen.

the greater their investment of belief/importance in the thing they're fighting over, the more seriously people will fight. that's true, and religion does invite a deep investment. but religion's just a tool. but people can and will invest their faith in whatever's at hand: tribe, history, religion, race, nation, creed, morals, etc, what have you.

acknowledging that, it seems to me, is much more important in the context of this discussion than identifying the ostensible cause of any given conflict.

it's arguable that religion feeds extremism, intolerance and fanaticism, so that when conflicts do arise, they are heightened by the degree of religious faith involved. but i suspect that absent religion, people would simply be extremists about other things - see the stakes and fanaticism of the mid-century cold war.

I am a Christian and I believe in science! Just wanted to throw that out there. No problems in that. (Believing in "valid knowledge" and "truth" as an anthropologist is a little harder to explain though.)

an interesting perspective on the matter

― unified theory of objectionable thoughts (latebloomer), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 12:30 AM (1 hour ago)

LOL

I guess I'd probably categorize myself as an big-time agnostic, close to atheist. I always figured if there was a god it's almost certainly a deistic one - an indifferent god who doesn't intervene. Or even leaning toward a hostile one.

When deism was covered for about 2 minutes in my world religions class back in school, most people just kind of smirked at it and laughed, but I always thought it was the most plausible explanation. I think this is because I was playing a LOT of SimCity and Civiliation II at the time. With those games fresh in my mind, I could easily sympathize with a God who is REALLY into his creation for a while, then gets bored and moves on to something else while New Zachatonia gets stomped by Godzilla while angry citizens riot over extreme taxation, or Alexandria is sacked by the French. It's really easy for me imagine a G-dawg that roots for you like I rooted hard for some team in the 2003 NHL playoffs...which team was that again?... - oh look, sunbeams through the window making funny shapes on the wall!

*walks off*

exactly!

Civ II and SimCity also taught me everything I know about friendship, perseverance, women, the history of breakdancing and the difference b/w kw and kwh

we didnt have civilization but we had age of empires and you could type "hoyahoya" and the priest would suddenly be able to do *anything*, including kill people. he was very powerful. it taught me that religious authorities are only in it for the power. you could also get an even more powerful gigantic baby on a tricycle or a black car that could blow up your enemy's granary.

mmmhhmm, that reminds me of god mode in Doom and how it taught me that cocaine is a helluva drug

dali, I haven't read the rest of this thread but I would like to say I definitely identify with the sentiment you're expressing up top, of course I grew up in fundamentalist evangelical household so for me hating religion was probably just part of the natural grieving process of realizing "wow, everything I based my adolescent life upon is total BS." Anyhow, IMHO there is certainly something to said for hating stupidity / irrational blind faith and whatnot, but lately I've come around to opening my mind up to at least try to understand WHY people believe these things

the book "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James has been very interesting in this regard for me because it talks about the fact that many's people stupid attitudes and prejudices that seem religious in nature are really just cultural / the result of conditioning OR just feeble, fearful minds lashing out... also, the way I look at it now, the "religious impulse" still exists in this "secular age" and many of my atheist / agnostic friends engage in all kinds of silly magical thinking, the fact is that humans have a desire for some type of religion-type structure to provide comfort / meaning / community, and if Christianity or whatever dominant set of symbols hadn't risen to the top, it would have been another thing anyway

which isn't to say I don't still resent a lot of religious viewpoints obvs

but I have christian friends and I have to admit that some of them are by far more moral than I am

oh, wow I didn't read that this thread was started in 2004

haha I am adressing a 5 year old conversation

oh well

Ed's still around, he may very well chime in.

xp Z S:
The heterodox Christianities of the East (Mandaeism, Valentinian gnosticsim, Manichaeism) all handled the problem of natural evil well by positing an evil/flawed creator, with Jesus being an emissary/messenger from a superior, more spiritual god. There a lot of Zoroastrian dualism (along with Hellenistic philosophy) embedded in the gnostic view. Kabbalistic Judaism also does a neat trick to explain what a rotten place the world is, by having YHWH being shattered into numerous shards of divinity. Having a broken god is a good explanation for a broken world.

What doesn't at all make sense to anyone with eyes is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity as became orthodoxy once Christianity became a support and justification for the political status quo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prfRH01iG1U

Old fashioned guy OTM

I've wanted to read James for years, but haven't gotten around to it. Sounds fascinating.

Honestly, I think the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God is baffling as well, but I think mystery is a large part of how we have to relate to God, and also that religious and moral practice is more important than doctrinal correctness or certainty.

that's interesting. if Christianity had been presented to me as a youth in a manner more similar to the Gnostic view (flawed creator, etc) than I may have been willing to hang around a little longer to try and see if being a Christian was feasible for me

I think the position that God is either NOT omnipotent OR NOT omnibenevolent is much more tenable because it's actually acknowledges the fucked-up nature of life instead of creating a black hole paradox of a super-duper father in the sky who is both willing & able to bail you out of pain, but for some mysterious reason doesn't do so. the answer "god works in mysterious ways" or "his ways are just way higher than ours, man" is ok for complacent beard-stroking & considering finer points of theology but simply ain't sufficient in a moment of loss / pain etc

x post

Maria are you a christian? just curious

woah is "Old Fashioned Guy" Thomas Lennon from Reno 9/11 ?

sorry off topic

Yep. Or, from my perspective, Thomas Lennon is the dude from The State who's in Reno 911 :)

the fact is that humans have a desire for some type of religion-type structure to provide comfort / meaning / community, and if Christianity or whatever dominant set of symbols hadn't risen to the top, it would have been another thing anyway

― lukevalentine, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 2:47 AM (34 minutes ago)

I agree with this but what's to say we can't evolve beyond this kind of need

Just a gentle reminder to not mess with the YHWH:

(Elisha) went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, ‘Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!’ When he turned round and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

What doesn't at all make sense to anyone with eyes is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity as became orthodoxy once Christianity became a support and justification for the political status quo.

― Biodegradable (Derelict), Tuesday, December 8, 2009 7:04 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

this view has always bothered me (no offense, derelict).

it bothers me because it humanizes and pretends to understand god. that is, this view imagines a god, imagines the world, and finds the two things incompatible (substitute the phrase "observes the world" if that seems more satisfactory to you - it doesn't to me).

but as maria said, mystery may be an essential component of spiritual knowing. i.e., to spiritually comprehend is to know without fully understanding, while knowing that full understanding is, in fact, impossible.

we use phrases like "omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent" as though we really, fully know what that might mean, what it might be like. and we don't. we insist that such a being would not countenance AIDS, and nazis and pedophiles and slavery, would not countenance the endless cycle of consumption, horror and death that life so often seems to be. but i don't see how that follows. i don't pretend to know god or the world that well. (if god exists, in whatever form...)

and it seems to me that Jesus' teachings from the very beginning DO at least imply that god is a being of limitless knowledge, power and compassion. so i think it's a little hyperbolic to describe the invention of such a being being as the product of the accommodation of the church to the political status quo.

Luke, yes, I'm Christian. (And by mystery I don't mean "God works in mysterious ways" as an explanation, btw, I mean that I have a lot of doubts about philosophical definitions of the attributes of God at all.)

xpost - yes, OTM.

the answer "god works in mysterious ways" or "his ways are just way higher than ours, man" is ok for complacent beard-stroking & considering finer points of theology but simply ain't sufficient in a moment of loss / pain etc

x post

― lukevalentine, Tuesday, December 8, 2009 7:16 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

but i don't think those are the answers offered. the answer offered = "it is not ours to understand". kinda the same thing, but a slightly different spin.

and nothing is ever gonna be sufficient in our moments of loss & pain. that's why they hurt so much. not inclined to blame god, though. the world is vast, life is long when it isn't short, and i know almost nothing.

I agree with this but what's to say we can't evolve beyond this kind of need

Thus spoke Zarathustra!

I agree Dan S, and I think this is one of the most interesting questions of our age

in a way I think the idea that humanity can evolve into a more rational species in implicit in the writings of the New Atheists. Richard Dawkins, especially

Derelict my seminary teacher in high school, who was bald, shared that story to implore us not to mock his baldness.

thus sock Zarathustra

Dawkins' book "The Greatest Show On Earth" looks interesting.

(And by mystery I don't mean "God works in mysterious ways" as an explanation, btw, I mean that I have a lot of doubts about philosophical definitions of the attributes of God at all.)

yeah, that makes sense, I don't think I had even read your post before making my statement about being frustrated with answers such as "God works in mysterious ways." I want to clarify that I'm not trying to bash Christians at all, just critiquing the particular branch of fundamentalist evangelical religion that was presented to me which had more to do with defending Des Cartes & enlightenment thought than any serious engagement with "spirituality."

In this context, the "mysterious ways" answer was always the wild card cop-out answer that could squelch any actual questioning about the nature of things

I am inclined to sort of believe in God these days, but I would say I also don't really know how to define such a thing or whatever "God" is

I am inclined to sort of believe in God these days, but I would say I also don't really know how to define such a thing or whatever "God" is

― lukevalentine, Tuesday, December 8, 2009 7:51 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark

i'm sort of the same, except that i can't define "believe" either. just going on intuition...

oh, i didn't think you were bashing. and yeah, i think it must be hard to teach kids about religion in a way that is intellectually honest about not having all the answers but still finding some new understanding. most of the people i know who were raised in religious households (i wasn't) all gave up on the idea of god at around the same age because they were getting canned answers that were unsatisfying and not supportive of their thinking for themselves.

defending Des Cartes & enlightenment thought

wtf, that should be Descartes, one word

...

i'm pretty much still down with sam mcpheeters on this one:

There was this friend of mine, needed something we couldn't give convenient
answers and a cheap way out killed himself without actually dying, took a
blunt lie and gouged out his mind And I can't xcept that he's found the
answers to those questions I'll be trying to solve until I die And I can't
accept that he's somehow "better off" because the answers aren't that simple
we always assumed he wasn't either and I want his beautiful religion to burn
because Steve's dead... I wasn't offered the chance to say goodbye

I guess I can define myself a Christian - of the Catholic kind no less.
Still I always found baffling the idea that embracing religion should be an easy way to get an answer for every question. Many believers are content to share this point of view and happily live with it, but at least for me believing in God should be a little more dangerous.
It should be more about what Flannery O'Connor wrote, the ability to stomach the naked truth of facts, people, history, and not looking away.

Well said...I don't get a lot of answers out of religion, I think it somehow makes the world harder to wrestle with (in terms of ideas AND behaviors - not only do we not have all the answers, we have to deal with a lot of paradoxes, and we are told to "be perfect"!). But I also think that the structure religious practice gives to uncertainty is equally important - dealing with it as part of a community, and through prayer and ritual, is a very active and supporting matter.

(ps i hope i am not driving you guys crazy by hijackin the anti-religion thread, apologies if i am. i am a little religious-discussion-starved since i'm not really settled into my new place and church community yet.)

It's cool, I'm curious about how smart people reflect on their faith, having never had any myself.

What I can't get my head round is how people admit their belief in God has a social/evolutionary/psychological basis and yet still keep a strong core belief - aren't there some basic contradictions there? I'm honestly not trying to start a row by asking that, I just find it a real head-scratcher. My ultra-rationalist way of trying to understand the universe can't really cope with it.

its a leap of faith, not a rational decision!

Yeah, I guess that's something I'm unlikely to ever experience, so I'm interested in it. And like everything I'm interested in I try and parse it logically, which kind of defeats the purpose!

chap- ever any exposure to religion when you were younger, or were you god-neutral

I'd like to think it is possible to be an athiest and not particuarly into science either, thoug I'm not sure what kind of person that'd be.

― millivanillimillenary (Trayce), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 1:23 AM (16 hours ago)

Nietzsche was both (something like) an atheist and quite "anti-science"; cf. On the Genealogy of Morality, Book III, Sections 23-25.

chap- ever any exposure to religion when you were younger, or were you god-neutral

Minimal - mum was an agnostic, dad's an atheist. Basic re in school's about as far it goes. Don't think I've ever even been to a church service that wasn't a wedding.

easier to approach 'religion' with interest from that point of view, i think- i was raised catholic in rural ierland, and i'm still running in the other direction without looking back.

It would be the worst kind of person ever xp - basically completely anti-knowledge. Such a person could believe anything. If that's an accurate description of Nietzsche, no wonder the nazis adopted him as house philosopher.

oy

dude

xpost - I'm not sure I see the problem, chap - I just don't think it's too hard to say that society/psychology/evolution are part of a world created by God!

But I also think the kind of religious belief popular evolutionary biologists set up as the standard picture is a simplified caricature that doesn't recognize how important doubt and mysticism are, so it's easy to reject. It frustrates me when, say, Dennett admits that there are less cartoonish versions of faith but they're not really distinguishable from atheism at a philosophical level so people should just work up the courage to drop the label - Christianity is not something I live with at a philosophical level divorced from practice, and where the hell does HE get the authority to tell me I'm faking it? (This is something that happens in conversations with atheist family and friends a lot, they rant about this version of Christianity that is fundamentalist, homophobic, certain of everything - i.e. very different than the one I follow - and when I say "yes, I also disagree with that idea" they say things like "yeah but that's what REAL Christians believe." Argh.)

also, the way I look at it now, the "religious impulse" still exists in this "secular age" and many of my atheist / agnostic friends engage in all kinds of silly magical thinking,

thank you for bringing this up...humans of all stripes of beliefs and "non-beliefs" are irrational creatures, without exception. it sometimes annoys me when people attempt to put down religious belief systems by saying "it's just not RATIONAL!" sure, this may be true, but really the bulk of human endeavor is based on irrational mindstuff. and even the staunchest self-proclaimed atheists will pursue a faith in some wacked-out system based on the speculations of economic theorists or what have you. other than stuff like the science of building bridges or something, how much human activity is really based on rational thinking?...and then, even the most hard-nosed science-based stuff is forever being colored by irrational motivations-- witness attendant drama in academic circles, etc.

i've kinda got a problem with that, tbh. trying to work a system based on theories of economics/science isn't really equivalent to the religious belief attitude.

and saying - "lots of stuff is irrational" doesn't really invalidate someone pointing it out about religion, which is, for the most part....well, silly.

well, i was sloppy in trying to make my point, but i just resent people acting as though rationalism is this grand thing which presents this superior alternative to having faith in religious ideas...it's disingenuous and pretends as though human beings go through their days or are meant to go through their days doing everything based on rational thinking

it's not the worst thing to aspire to, all we need to do is dispose of those who refuse to or are incapable.

It's a given that people act with no logic all the time. However, when I'm trying to get to some kind of truth about how the universe fits together (which is a fairly ludicrous aim, granted) I think along rational lines, because that's how I perceive such things. It's all parlour games, really.

omg dell!

I certainly don't live my life sensibly and rationally, much as I might like to sometimes. In fact a belief structure might help me with that!

xpost to self

don't take g's name in vain, lj!

om-!

omga

haven't bothered to read all this thread but i'm an atheist who isn't anti-religion and who doesn't care about rationalism.

"and saying - "lots of stuff is irrational" doesn't really invalidate someone pointing it out about religion, which is, for the most part....well, silly"

Religions are obviously and mostly historical products - and I say this including my own. Through the centuries they incorporated previous social and political beliefs, toyed with them, shaped and created cultures and ideas (sometimes very bad ideas). The results have been great, tragic, inspiring, disturbing, in some cases merely laughable: I dont know if we can really dismiss them just as silly. :)

Meanwhile, back to religious intolerance!

ASHEVILLE — North Carolina's constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office.

Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.

Voters elected the writer and builder to the council last month.

“I'm not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he's an atheist, he's not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,” said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.

Article 6, section 8 of the state constitution says: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

Rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution trump the restriction in the state constitution, said Bob Orr, executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law.

“I think there's any number of federal cases that would view this as an imposition of a religious qualification and violate separation of church and state,” said Orr, a former state Supreme Court justice.

In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Maryland's requirement for officials to declare belief in God violated the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Additionally, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Bothwell's campaign treasurer, Jake Quinn, said everyone should be entitled to their own beliefs.

“The test occurred on (Nov. 3),” Quinn said. “It was called an election.”

Nietzsche's views on science are complex but one thing he seems to have meant is that scientists have a tendency to misrepresent their work as having been established from a "god's eye view" rather than from a human perspective. If science is done from the former perspective then it's right to talk about coming to know "facts" about the world; but that's to overestimate our abilities. Instead, we can only come to know the world / do science from individual human perspectives. So N's view is quite humble in this regard. [A caricature of N's view would be that "science is just another type of faith", but that's not terribly off the mark.]

N also thought we could learn to take on a variety of different individual perspectives. By gaining power over the person that we are, we can change our own identities, and thus come to see the world differently. A quite powerful person, able to take on many different perspectives, would know the world in a better way, because they could see the world in a variety of different ways---the "truth", such as it is, is something like the sum of what is seen from all human perspectives.[/lecture]

A quite powerful person, able to take on many different perspectives, would know the world in a better way, because they could see the world in a variety of different ways---the "truth", such as it is, is something like the sum of what is seen from all human perspectives.

amen yo

er, maybe not ALL human perspectives though IMO, but the ones worth weighing

yeah, I don't run a sock here, but I've been tempted just for the practice in role playing it would enable.

you mean like, playing devil's advocate against yourself ?

I'm usually paralyzed by the ability to see both sides of issues IRL

nah the truth exists outside of perspective innit

The results have been great, tragic, inspiring, disturbing, in some cases merely laughable: I dont know if we can really dismiss them just as silly. :)

woah woah- i never meant to convey that silliness isn't worthwhile, imo it's a straight up necessity sometimes.

To be honest, that North Carolina thing is perfectly silly silly stupid.

“I'm not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he's an atheist, he's not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,” said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.

Ha ha, but that's exactly what he's saying -- he's saying he's a no good atheist who doesn't deserve to hold office. re: eliminating religion wouldn't uplift humanity -- maybe not, but it would be more refreshing to see the H.K. Edgertons of the world robbed of having their pettiness sanctified. That's worth it, right?

you mean like, playing devil's advocate against yourself ?

Nietszche was always doing that, that's pretty much the essence of his idea of 'self-overcoming' as far as I understood it.

To swing the Nietzsche nonsense I've been spinning back toward religious intolerance, you could say that N took tolerance to its extreme. The best person will learn to be religious and to be unreligious, each in various ways.

It is interesting how many writers are jumping on that thread in the Sam Harris book that stepped back and looked at how ethical non-theist societies were compared to theist ones. Just this year:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419fvttiTkL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpghttp://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0061670111/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-linkhttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515CNJ06ZHL._SL500_AA240_.jpghttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SLeuL4D6L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

There's enough persuasive evidencefrom around the world to indicate that religious belief, if it has any correlation with ethical behavior, is quite likely to be a negative one. People are ethical not because of any mythic narratives, but because they were raised in families with a concern for others, and raised in societies wealthy enough that there was little penalty for ethical behavior.

Oh, and the latest amusing tidbit from the world of MRI studies of religion:

The final study involved functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural activity of test subjects as they reasoned about their own beliefs versus those of God or another person. The data demonstrated that reasoning about God's beliefs activated many of the same regions that become active when people reasoned about their own beliefs.

The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God's standards. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing," they conclude. "This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."

religion in being affected by social context and not having perfect followers SHOCKER!

Its not that, its that it really has no influence. Ethical people remain so, whether they were raised to believe in Mithra, Dionysus, Yeshua ben Yosef the Nazarene (all of whom share a birthday in a few weeks) or only the evidence of their senses.

Its one thing to say that religion is a comfort, and that it is a convenient way to find company. It quite another thing to suggest that religious people are ethically superior, as I have heard repeatedly my entire life, when that conclusion is patently false.

whether they were raised to believe in Mithra, Dionysus,

wish I believed in Dionysus, man, what a badass

anyone interested in nietzsche and religion should look into kierkegaard, who played around with a lot of the same ideas as nietzsche but specifically w/r/t to christianity, religion & faith

I wasn't necessarily having a pop at Nietzsche up there, incidentally. I don't know a great deal about him, but gather that his adoption by nazis was something of a corruption of his ideas. Certainly I find it hard to believe that a learned philosopher could be anti-learning for anything other than making a point.

On reflection, I'd nominate conspiracy theorists as the type of people most representative of the anti-religion/anti-science interface.

you should hear what nietzsche has to say about scholars and philosophers!

A quite powerful person, able to take on many different perspectives, would know the world in a better way, because they could see the world in a variety of different ways---the "truth", such as it is, is something like the sum of what is seen from all human perspectives.

OTM!

If you believe something is omni/omni/omni how can you seriously say 'It's named this and not named this'? It's every name at once and no names at all because it is INFINITE. Otherwise you may as well be talking action figures or something.

"Otherwise you may as well be talking action figures or something."
I always wondered why Skeletor was so buff when he was supposed to be a skeleton.

It's utterly and endlessly disappointing to have been born and be forced to live in an age when my poor misguided stupid species still hasn't outgrown all this ridiculous medieval religious bullshit. Some day we will grow up and leave it all behind, I hope.

I just don't understand how you "hopefully the human race will evolve beyond this medieval bullshit" fellows have such an unyielding faith in progress. Who's to say science itself won't hit some kind of brick wall in the next few hundred years (if indeed the human race survives so long)?

given the fact that the days of unlimited cheap energy use are behind us, and frightening climate destabilization / possible nuclear wars are ahead of us, I would wager that

A) scientific progress will slow considerably

B) it is much more likely that America gets even more religious in the near future than less

and that's not even considering the rapid growth of Islam

Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al are converting some to non-belief it's true, however I would guess most of these converts are already on the fence to begin with, or had previously only been culturally Christian in the most limited sense and perhaps were encouraged such writings to drop the facade and just go by "agnostic" etc

but overall, if religious myths are "outdated" couldn't it be said that such bold beliefs in human progress rooted in enlightenment thought (such as the idea that it is within the realm of possibility that humans could create some kind of totally rational, secular pseudo-utopian society) are also outdated?

i thought this whole singularity hype was the opposite: about how science will speed up unbearably and instead of piercings and tattoos people will get weird organ grafts from exotic fish.

Bill Maher, Dawkins & their ilk seem to talk as if former Jihad Islamists & former crazy Zionists are lay down their swords and shields down by the riverside & the lions will lie down with the lambs "when the revolution comes" and everyone is finally reasonable

Actually, according to a certain view, simply being an outspoken atheist and making fun of religion at every opportunity is doing one's one part to "win the culture war" which seems very passive & actually reminds me of hippies ("the longhairs are everywhere now, we're taking over man...")

Who's to say science itself won't hit some kind of brick wall in the next few hundred years

fwiw science has already hit a brick wall, physics hasn't really advanced at all since the middle of the 20th century, for ex.

also Dawkins is a deluded, irritable jerk he's not converting anybody as far as I can tell

damn cant believe a whole 50 years have gone by without our understanding of the universe changing, thats never happened before

physics has not advanced *at all*?!

i'm telling caek

magic back cures notwithstanding, science still on rapid pace to cure all sorts of heinous diseases and make cel phones small as a thumbnail. maybe cut science some slack on cosmology?

yeah I was being a little flippant but to hear Lee Smolin discuss his generation's failure to reconcile quantum mechanics and the laws of gravity he makes it sound like there is something seriously, structurall wrong with how science is being performed in the current era. The usual complaints about over-specialization and the politics of funding aside, he also has some good points about the fundamental limits of science (i.e., the scientific methods reliance on falsifiable experiments observed by the human organism. Our senses are limited, and its looking more and more like the universe is bigger than what our senses can observe)

x-post

which, when you think about it, basically puts modern science back to the era of Descartes

Feh! descartes had to use cel phone size of a whale. and forget GPS, cause ... he didn't invent it yet.

I just feel its necessary to continually challenge this belief (yes BELIEF) that science can provide a rational explanation for everything, when historically science moves its goalposts on a regular basis (first the atom is the smallest unit, no wait then its protons/neutrons/electrons, no wait then its even smaller, harder to detect particles, then its theoretical particles we can't prove the existence of etc etc down the rabbit hole we gooooooo). Science can't even explain basic things like, oh, how vision works. Or how memory works. Or why the physical universe we observe works one way, but when we get down to the atomic/subatomic level it works another way. The current cosmological explanation for the big bang sounds suspiciously like the explanation given at the beginning of the Bible (first there was nothing, then there was a lot of light and heat, and then there was the universe!). And on and on. Historically, at any given period in time, the vast majority of accepted scientific knowledge has been disproven by subsequent generations. The idea that we're progressing towards some sort of ultimate rational understanding is kinda laughable on the face of it.

This is not to say I am anti-science. I am completely down with the scientific method, I accept evolution, I am excited about CERN, I find theoretical physics fascinating, I read books about the history of science, blah blah blah. But beyond the basic stuff like engineering and whatnot I don't really look to it to provide answers to the major questions that are raised by philosophy and theology. Its methods are not designed to address that stuff, and pretending like they are just seems counterproductive to me.

x-posts

Whatever deficits to the scientific approach, theology is even less equipped to answer whatever questions it poses. Wouldn't you agree it's less of a belief than a tautology that whatever rational explanation can be offered for anything would be arrived at scientifically? We're gonna figure out vision and memory soon, just wait a bit!

well, rationality and science are not necessarily the same thing imho. when I think of science I specifically think of the method involved - falsifiable experimental data, etc. whereas what constitutes rationality is a much more slippery question. fwiw I don't think theology is well equipped to address things like how did the universe begin, or how does gravity work, or where do humans come from, etc. I do think its better equipped than science to address things like "what is the meaning of life" or "how should I treat my fellow man", deeper ethical and psychological sorta stuff. You know, David Bohm speaks to certain issues, and Alan Watts speaks to others - I don't see any need for the two to compete. Its when you get dogmatic idiots (on either side of the divide) that problems arise.

Yeah, but "things like "what is the meaning of life" or "how should I treat my fellow man", deeper ethical and psychological sorta stuff" aren't theology, they're philosophy.

I love science and believe in evolution, of course. I would also describe myself as anti-dogma (religious or otherwise). However, based on my understanding, the scientific worldview assumes that what is not already known about the universe CAN be known and most likely WILL be known sometime in the future, right?

So if I were to ask a leading scientist a difficult question about which there was no consensus in the scientific community or very little data or he just didn't fucking know the answer, he would answer that he doesn't currently know, but science will address the question in the future.

But in my skeptical mind, I am asking "How do you know that it will?" I have a very rudimentary understanding of science admittedly, but from a layperson's perspective, the answer "Science hasn't gotten to that yet," sounds kinda similar to "God's ways are higher than ours." Of course, science very well MIGHT someday explain the very things that are mysterious to me at this time, but in a rhetorical argument, this "science will eventually prevail" is the ultimate trump card.

Now, I'm not saying this is a fault of science at all. That's just the nature of science as a system and worldview, and a good scientist should obviously believe very strongly in the scientific method. But in someone like Richard Dawkin's mind, any question about the origin of life or any other mystery can be deflected by saying "science hasn't got to that yet" which I just find frustrating. My real question is, how we do we know what the scientific method has the power to address? Are there limits to its usefulness?

This is the point at which religious fundamentalists say, "See, scientists have faith too, nyah it's all relative..." and descend into whatever superstition. But of course science actually has actual logic, reason, and actual progress on its side. I'm still left wondering though, how much human beings CAN know, though.

(BTW I know that a lot of atheists don't care for Dawkins, I don't know why I keep using him as an example)

There are some philosophical proofs of the limits of knowability, but it wasn't theology that brought these gifts to us, but MATH, science's ugly but brainy sister who knows all the cool bands.

(talkin bout Goedel and incompleteness and whatnot)

I kind of think the science/religion duality or whatever is a little overblown, I don't really care about science or god and i get along just fine. seems like neither of them is particularly well suited to say anything to me about my life

xp

Back to a something I said earlier, is it possible that science will be slowed by an upcoming energy crisis? I just keep hearing about we're about to enter some kind of dark age & I'm imagining that there won't be much time or money to spend on new questions because of a lack of funding and the precedence of climate problems which will require the attention of the great minds

who's saying this? I've heard pretty much the opposite.

as it becomes more profitable to find alternatives to oil it'll get done somehow, is basically what i'm gonna assume on that topic.

darraghmceghh otm. i don't see a real global dark age coming. i see a long period of disgruntled alt-energy research and conversion that will take place only when it absolutely has to.

also wanted to comment on this:

the scientific worldview assumes that what is not already known about the universe CAN be known and most likely WILL be known sometime in the future, right?

― lukevalentine, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 5:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

well, kinda. i'd say that the scientific worldview assumes that what is not known almost certainly can be known (somehow or other), and that it is reasonable to think that a lot more will eventually be known to/through science.

this is in part based on faith-like core assumptions about the nature of reality (that a unitary external reality exists and is fundamentally rule-bound, for instance), but also on the form and function of science as a practice.

science is a mechanism that investigates & attempts to explain. if it were to encounter that which it could not explain, it would not stop trying. it cannot stop trying and still be science. but this is not a fault or deficit - it's simply the nature of the beast.

i dunno, i would say it can stop trying when, say, the funding dries up for studying a particular area it cannot explain, or oppressive governments quash inquiry in some area, or other areas become more prestigious or interesting...science isn't a self-motivated actor, it's a practice of human institutions that are subject to external pressures. i'm not saying it doesn't produce valid knowledge about the external world, just that it's dependent on and limited by its practitioners. (like organized religion. or democracy. these ideals do not exist in social vacuums.)

very narrow definition of science, there. slowly or otherwise, as a result of corporate/governmental sponsorship or otherwise, the trend for science is to increase human knowledge of the universe in a non-reversable manner. i'm not sure where that becomes politicised/conspiracy theory or even where such occurrences are all that relevant tbh.

i wasn't trying to define it, nor did i say anything about conspiracy theories. it's just a pet peeve of mine when people talk about science like it's something that happens without human intervention.

science is a mechanism that investigates & attempts to explain. if it were to encounter that which it could not explain, it would not stop trying. it cannot stop trying and still be science. but this is not a fault or deficit

I agree with this

i don't see a real global dark age coming.

Phew!

So, what am I going to do with all this bottled water and SPAM I've stockpiled?

target practice for the 2000 rounds you bought

check out "i love cooking" for mormon casserole recipes

xxxp Shakey Mo Collier, re: cosmology.

may I recommend one of these talks by physicist Lawrence Krause:

At the Origins seminar
The same lecture (+ numurous anti-theists asides) at the AAI

What these have indicated to me is that the new theology will be created by people familiar with Feynman's QED.

"This is not to say I am anti-science. I am completely down with the scientific method, I accept evolution, I am excited about CERN, I find theoretical physics fascinating, I read books about the history of science, blah blah blah. But beyond the basic stuff like engineering and whatnot I don't really look to it to provide answers to the major questions that are raised by philosophy and theology. Its methods are not designed to address that stuff, and pretending like they are just seems counterproductive to me"

Totally agreed. Put it very roughly, science is about quantity, measures and falsifiable propositions; science doesn't own any criteria of truth claiming to understand reality in an endlessly growing way. On the other side, theology is very much just a literary genre: with all the good and bad things this can imply.
That's why there should be no real science/religion duality and Dawkins sounds less like a scientist and more like a fundamentalist priest of some new religion.

"Its one thing to say that religion is a comfort, and that it is a convenient way to find company. It quite another thing to suggest that religious people are ethically superior, as I have heard repeatedly my entire life, when that conclusion is patently false"

Maybe we should define what we mean by "ethics": obviously religious people are not ethically superio r, but maybe religions are (if not superior) certainly ethically "different".
Concerning about other people can have somehow different consequences if you think to them as "brothers and sisters", as "worshippers of the same god" or merely as "members of the same species".
It is difficult for me to shake off the idea that in many ways utilitarianism can be the only possible ethical form in a strictly atheist worldview. Again, with some rather interesting political and social results.

"It is difficult for me to shake off the idea that in many ways utilitarianism can be the only possible ethical form in a strictly atheist worldview"

i think most people act in a broadly utilitarian manner, if you take conscience/your own personal code of ethics into account.

anyway, the threat of eternity in hell for not obeying the rules is basically a utilitarian stricture to control behaviour under the guise of religious ethics

"i think most people act in a broadly utilitarian manner, if you take conscience/your own personal code of ethics into account"

definitely! that's why probably religions exist.

"anyway, the threat of eternity in hell for not obeying the rules is basically a utilitarian stricture to control behaviour under the guise of religious ethics"

I wouldn't really call it utilitarian, at least not in the philosophical sense of the word. The various pagan Hells, Hades, the endless cycle of reincarnations, the Christian Inferno made of fire and brimstone are not means of social control (even if very often they've been used this way): they are poetic and religious ways to come to terms with our responsabilities as members of a certain society.

huge number of xposts, but I'm glad Maria mentioned Daniel Dennett.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren.html

The various pagan Hells, Hades, the endless cycle of reincarnations, the Christian Inferno made of fire and brimstone are not means of social control (even if very often they've been used this way): they are poetic and religious ways to come to terms with our responsabilities as members of a certain society.

that's a pretty good in-a-nutshell description of 'social control', though? bearing in mind that very few individuals decide for themselves how to define their own responsibilities as members of society (most of it hard-coded from youth, often (mostly?) heavily influenced by religious doctrine?

It is difficult for me to shake off the idea that in many ways utilitarianism can be the only possible ethical form in a strictly atheist worldview. Again, with some rather interesting political and social results.

― Marco Damiani, Thursday, December 10, 2009 3:10 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

see, the thing is, i'm an atheist of sorts. an atheist who denies nothing. but i don't actively believe in anything, either - not in the rigorous way that most organized religions seem to demand. and i wouldn't describe my own ethics as wholly or even ultimately "utilitarian". it's not as though mystery, subtlety and complexity are the sole property of true believers.

i know what's right and wrong, both for myself and in a general sense. i understand that this ethical knowledge can probably be accurately described as a product of the interaction of what i've been taught by society, my biological construction, the choices i've made, and the circumstances of my life. and though that's an unfathomably complex equation, it can easily be described by its product: ethics.

but what of it? my ability to describe my beliefs as a mechanical product doesn't make them less real or meaningful within my life. and my rational (or irrational) ability to challenge and even change them depending on new circumstances doesn't reduce them to a simple tool. it seems to me that in the relationship between thinking, feeling and knowing, there's a way to sense things that are (or could be) larger then my own utilitarian needs. and that verges on spirituality, though my atheist credentials are still plenty solid.

i guess i'm saying that there's no way to really know the whole of the truth, either scientifically, morally or spiritually. when it comes to the big questions, i don't believe there are any easy answers, no matter what book you're cribbing from. and on that level, there's little difference between the atheist and the believer, the rationalist and the mystic.

all the answers are easy, we just don't know them.

but yeah, otm!

i used "then" for "than" - the only unforgivable sin - may i burn for all eternity

contenderizer pretty hugely otm, except for labelling himself as atheist, which I would not go so far as.

Not because the word is undescriptive of what I believe, mind you, but because the baggage outweighs my willingness to carry it.

what baggage?

i guess i'm saying that there's no way to really know the whole of the truth, either scientifically, morally or spiritually

speaking as an intolerant atheist i don't have the first clue what spirituality is and am reluctant to grant it any useful meaning.

getting high

xxxpost Maybe because "atheism" it is somewhat undescriptive of what I believe. I do not reject all belief in any deities unequivocally, but it really depends on what you think a deity is. Do I believe in a God with an ego and an agenda who metes out reward and punishment? Certainly not. Do I believe that there are parts of the universe and our understanding of it that will always have gaps? I do. Do I believe that this is even truer in our human existences, on our own scale? I do. Do I believe that there is a structure and a meaning to life? Sure. Do I know what it is? I'd almost be disappointed if someone explained it to me, honestly.

what baggage?

You don't think the word "atheist" comes with baggage?

well, i'm definitely not an atheist of the ledge sort. and truth be told i'm starting to lean more towards kenan's view wr2 the baggage that comes with the label, esp in the age of dawkins et al.

Dawkins spoiling atheism for the rest of us, innit

o no not the 'new' atheist canard

Is that something to bellyache about, or did you make it up and bellyache about it in one gesture?

Do I believe in a God with an ego and an agenda who metes out reward and punishment? Certainly not. Do I believe that there are parts of the universe and our understanding of it that will always have gaps? I do. Do I believe that this is even truer in our human existences, on our own scale? I do. Do I believe that there is a structure and a meaning to life? Sure. Do I know what it is? I'd almost be disappointed if someone explained it to me, honestly.

i think you're an atheist, which is a different thing to being a militant nosey parker who hates religious people

xp oh it's all over the religiosoblogosphere if you care about that crap.

as i clearly do.

I'm certainly an atheist by any religious person's definition.

Maybe, but who doesn't think Dawkins is a dickhead these days? (xp)

you'd almost wish a vengeful god on dawkins. i'm toying with the idea of personal hells for people, and dawkin's could well be heaven

Most people, at least in the Western world, who describe themselves as religious believe in some version of an invisible man in the sky. I cannot and will not believe in that. It's absurd and childish. But I don't want that fact to change my relationship to the unknown, unknowable, and transcendent.

an atheist...is a different thing to being a militant nosey parker who hates religious people

Truth Bible

xp I think believing in a God with an ego, with wishes and mood, only reinforces the idea that God is a lot like you, and this is a dangerous idea of God. God is a system, a Something Much Much Larger, and we're all part of it, and it links us all and makes us all equally significant. I believe in believing that there is something larger than yourself, and that the something is not a person like you only more cool and with a bunch of extra rules. It's truly beyond you, beyond anyone. To be Buddhist for a moment, contemplating God should not lead to shouting, it should lead to silence.

i know there's something bigger and more important than myself, it's caller er indoors

Sometimes I wonder what I'd tell kids (if I have them) about the whole god thing - when I was a kid I was told there was a big beardy invisible man in the sky who built the world and was watching me all the time to see if I was being naughty, and this doesn't seem a particularly satisfactory thing to tell kids, especially since I don't believe it

but "some people believe in that guy, but he probably doesn't exist, but you'll be told about him a lot at school and you've gotta just smile and nod and don't bother trying to tell anyone he's not real, and they're not really stupid for thinking he exists it's just this thing, oh and you can believe in him if you like, why not eh" is not really going to appease a kid or teach them not to be the mini-dawkins of the classroom either

sorry if this is a derailment

It's not at all. Right to the point, really.

Kids can work it out for themselves. They aren't as dumb as people like to think.

I don't like to think they're dumb

But, yes, I somehow decided that God didn't exist when I was... I don't know... 7 or 8? With no prompting from adults.

I was about the same age, it was a logical progression from finding out Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy didn't exist.

xxp Well, there are such things as dumb kids. :)

But in general, I think that kids intuitively grasp and even embrace the idea of mystery and "beyond" and whatnot, in a way adults have been conditioned away from.

I think had the opposite of a religious experience - an irreligious experience I suppose

xp That's what I love about really good kids movies, that sense of the strange and other. Things like Coraline, or Miyazaki movies, things that a lot of people would deem "too scary" for their kids, but only because they've forgotten how utterly, utterly WEIRD the world is when you're a kid.

Ok, see, this is off topic.

pretty sure that the jesus/god figure i had in my head until i was 14 came straight from the animated beegee that was ulysses 3000 or whatever that funky ass cartoon was.

BUT HE DIDN'T EXIST EITHER JUST SAYIN

You would never have assumed he did, unless you were told so over and over (and over).

big xpost - i have trouble enough even talking to other adults about it because they often refuse to accept that it's not just a matter of conscious choice between belief in a set of propositions or atheism. i think it'd be just as hard to talk about to a kid, if not harder. "well when we talk about god the father, we don't really mean he's a man, or even like a man at all. in fact it's kind of impossible to really talk about what god IS, all our ideas fall short, so i can't really help you with that. but hey, that's what's great about christianity! jesus literally embodies the paradoxes of the faith! oh, you're eight years old and don't know what a paradox is....?"

i think i'd just have to be encouraging of doubt and remind them that it's not all philosophical, practice and community are integral parts rather than side effects of faith. from my own experience (undefined belief in god as a kid, total atheism ages ~11-18, agnosticism ~18-20), i really think that a period of strong doubt and questioning is necessary to grow out of a childish idea of a big man in the sky and into something more complex.

also, i was thinking about this thread while brushing my teeth this morning and feel like science vs. religion is ridiculous, at least both of those believe in a) universal truth and b) the progress of knowledge about the external world! that's HUGE common ground! really they should both be ganging up on social science & humanities, where people make fun of the idea of "valid knowledge"!

How about when I was three, and suggesting that my Grandma's cat would be stroked by Jesus.

At which point the vicar spat out "Phh! Cats do not have Immortal Souls!!"

So, swiftly I figured that he had no way of knowing for sure. And if he didn't know THAT, chances are all the things he was talking about was supposition anyway.

practice and community are integral parts rather than side effects of faith

This is really key, I think.

I was brought up agnostic but go back a generation or two and there are Catholics, Lutherans, JWs, Christian Scientists and Anglicans. My grandparents were not churchgoing, my parents were married in an Episcopal church but never joined us up afterwards, and I was only baptised because of superstition brought on by childhood cancer diagnosis. The thing that put me off religion happened when I was 11 - crazy grandmother's funeral was hijacked by JWs and I sat there and fumed at the gall of it. I've always rejected the idea of God as a Who and I resent fundamentalists who act like their deity is their concierge/hit man. Further and distinct rejection of God as a What indicates the atheist, which tends to kick in the second any clever person discovers existentialism as a teenager.

crazy grandmother's funeral was hijacked by JWs and I sat there and fumed at the gall of it

A side issue, I know, but as someone who had nominally JW parents until the age of 10 and still have many JW relatives, I'm curious what this involved.

practice and community are integral parts rather than side effects of faith

This is really key, I think.

― Cronenberg sleazy (kenan), 10 December 2009 13:36 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but in no way exclusive to it, which is so often the subtext (not on this thread, mind you)

I resent fundamentalists who act like their deity is their concierge/hit man

also- sports stars who think god loves them more than the opposition. yet to see a footballer point at the sky in rage and betrayal after missing a sitter.

xp Sure, you can have practice and community centered around D+D if that's your bag, but the purpose of religion (or, IMO, should be) is to orient yourself and your life in *relation* to that which is beyond you. To never forget what it means to be part of something cosmically bigger than you.

I also think Maria is completely OTM in saying that doubt and questioning is as essential to spiritual maturity as it is to intellectual maturity, and the strong-arm, borderline brainwashing tactics of so many religions to discourage any outside thinking is the thing that's responsible for so much awful immaturity in organized religion now.

Kenan, my main thought at funeral was 'this is supposed to be a funeral, not a live Watchtower infomercial'.

ugh. Evangelism is never pretty, I don't guess.

People who will knock on your door on a Saturday morning at 9am clearly have no fucking shame whatsoever.

"that's a pretty good in-a-nutshell description of 'social control', though?"

Hopefully this is a (not necessarily good) description of culture: and cultures need social control, but they cannot reduced to it.

"bearing in mind that very few individuals decide for themselves how to define their own responsibilities as members of society (most of it hard-coded from youth, often (mostly?) heavily influenced by religious doctrine?"

Again, I'm not really convinced. Religion is the way personal spirituality organizes itself, crystallizes and tries to survive through history continously creating and destroying its own book of rules, rituals and narrations. Personal (and popular) contributions may be not welcome but are inevitable and this also explain the endless chain of heresies and turmoil that mark religious history.
So, while there's no doubt that many believers are hard-coded and find comfort in a pretty narrow vision of the world, I don't think it is correct to imagine religious systems only as something necessarily frozen forever or built to control people.

Religion is the way personal spirituality organizes itself,

I disagree here- personal spirituality doesn't organise itself nor does it need to, and it's more the case that organised religion (well, catholicism at least) attempts to monopolise it

I don't think it is correct to imagine religious systems only as something necessarily frozen forever or built to control people

and if you are building a system to control people, then it must, of necessity, avoid 'freezing'. by nature it changes in time, and these changes may be led by society but only as a survival mechanism for that religion.

xp You'll be relieved to know that this is in no way limited to Catholicism.

i don't think 'relieved' is the word.

The very bottom of Martin Luther's note originally said "P.S. Don't be a dick about it" but that was washed off in a light rain.

"i guess i'm saying that there's no way to really know the whole of the truth, either scientifically, morally or spiritually. when it comes to the big questions, i don't believe there are any easy answers, no matter what book you're cribbing from. and on that level, there's little difference between the atheist and the believer, the rationalist and the mystic"

Again, I agree completely. Maybe I should have been more clear about what I meant with "strictly atheist": a position where, just like Ledge wrote, there's absolutely no room for any idea of spirituality.

And, for what's worth, I can say that I never thought that God is Catholic and I'm perfectly aware that I'm a Catholic mostly by accident (because I'm Italian, because my mother took me to church, because I'm a bit pervert - and perversion is definitely one of the Catholicism best/worst features).

"I disagree here- personal spirituality doesn't organise itself nor does it need to, and it's more the case that organised religion (well, catholicism at least) attempts to monopolise it"

Sorry, but you took only a part of what I wrote: "Religion is the way personal spirituality organizes itself, crystallizes and tries to survive through history etc etc". I just wanted to say that organised religion (almost a tautology) always start from personal spirituality.

well, yes, but once it becomes organised with a 'god' figure, rituals, etc it's usually abandoned all pretence of that.

Its possible: but becoming an institution is probably the only way for spirituality to "enter" history (I hope this makes sense in English language). Also rituals and liturgies (not always religious) are apparently a human need.

strong-arm, borderline brainwashing tactics of so many religions to discourage any outside thinking

It may not be this way at all, but from what I've read it seems like institutional science can promote some groupthink as well, through selective distribution of grant money, acceptance into peer review journals, government oversight, etc.

I can say that I never thought that God is Catholic

No, that's the Antichrist you're thinking of

If we had all memory/knowledge of religion up until know wiped from our minds in the morning, would we find God again, or would we even look?

now, not know, sorry.

"No, that's the Antichrist you're thinking of"

I met my share of aspiring antichrists in the past and at least a couple of them were devout Catholics.

Isn't the Pope the Antichrist?

Is the Pope the Antichrist? Do bears shit in the woods? etc...

i think the next pope is due to be the antichrist, according to malachi.

I suppose they're working their way up to it by having a Nazi

he's doing a nice line in 'Whussat? Child abuse in Ireland? No, I never heard anything!' at the moment. dude's trying, tbf.

Okay.

I suppose they're working their way up to it by having a Nazi

― Sonny Uplands (Tom D.), Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:31 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

That's not fair, everyone else was doing it!

j/k

Rowan giving him a good run for his money. "You want to marry gays? Get out of my communion! You want to kill gays? ehhhh what can y'do"

I feel like Guy Fawkes.

I'm never sure with Williams if he's that homophobic so much as desperately trying to stop his church splintering to fuck. I always thought he was supposed to be on the liberal wing, but maybe that's just cos of the beard.

He is desperately trying to stop his church splintering to fuck

Also, isn't it only Africans who want to be Anglicans these days? Most of whom are not exactly metrosexual?

He is desperately trying to stop his church splintering to fuck

... by cosying up tothe gay killers instead of the gay marriers.

The African churches are the ones bringing the most pressure to bring the homophobia, as I understand. This is in no way a defence of Williams behaviour, but clearly he doesn't want a breakaway from the only bit of his communion with rising numbers. Politicians do political shit, surprise.

sorry marco, this isn't anti-religious so much as current affairs atm.

Belongs in the Crisis In Anglicanism thread... there is one, isn't there?

xpost
Dont worry Louis, I will accept martyrdom with a big saintly smile on my face! :)

Politicians do political shit, surprise.

Most politicians have to be elected, though. And they pay state and federal taxes.

Popes are elected... dunno about Archbishops of Canterburys

Er, that's not really relevant to what I was saying about Williams.

I have no time for tax breaks for religious groups but in the UK at least a lot of religious communities do stuff that wd get them charitable status anyway, and tho I tend to think their reasons for doing charitable stuff are slightly despicable I could argue the same about lots of arreligious charitable organisations so hey ho

There Is No Place For Homosexuals in the Anglican Church

if people wanna continue

Popes are elected

Oh yeah? What were the returns from South America like on the last one?

my burning white-hot hatred for religion would make the prince of darkness himself blush, but whoever upthread said we're tribal/ territorial by nature was otm. i don't think you could put much stock in the eradication of all religion being the answer to all our ills.

that being said, i really think it's time to revoke 501(c)(3) status for churches. i realize it's kind of extreme, as there are many decent churches and churchgoers doing good work. but tax exemption has for far too long afforded hatemongers and charlatans cover for their political interests. Fuck these guys. Tax them NOW.

Yep.

YES

the 'tax the churches' revolution starts here!

I think we'd sooner see Republicans all for a public option than any politician in the US even suggest 'taxing churches'. Political suicide.

By all means tax them but like I said what would prevent any church redefining itself as a charity and still being eligible for the 501(c)(3)?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XgZVVzrYN_w/RdCpHEcByQI/AAAAAAAAAII/SAtqaGhkR4I/s320/mob_pitchforks_small.jpg

heheh massive GOVT REGULATORY AGENCIES.

yr right though; political suicide :-/

xpost

"i guess i'm saying that there's no way to really know the whole of the truth, either scientifically, morally or spiritually. when it comes to the big questions, i don't believe there are any easy answers, no matter what book you're cribbing from. and on that level, there's little difference between the atheist and the believer, the rationalist and the mystic"

A lot of big questions that were previously answered by theology got answered much better by science, and this process of theology ceding ground to science is still going on. Basically, in spite of insaneness re: global warming and such, the long-term trend is science is winning! There is definitely a difference between rationalist and mystic when confronted with conundrums impervious to scientific inquiry -- the rationalist must accept its impervious nature, while the mystic is free to offer a BS answer. But really, how many people are really bothered that science can't cope with the cave problem?

the long-term trend is science is winning

Oooh goodie. Do all of us who are on the correct side get a big shiny medal?

But really, how many people are really bothered that science can't cope with the cave problem?

me!

Oooh goodie. Do all of us who are on the correct side get a big shiny medal?

nah just nuclear bombs and global warming

I read an article about a lady who had gotten cave-problem paranoid after watching the matrix of all things, but she got better with therapy and medication so once again, thank you science!

"Do all of us who are on the correct side get a big shiny medal?"
man, they can't just hand out nobels to everyone!

I blame science for enabling the creation of the abortion of a movie that is the Matrix

xp I think they could if they really wanted to.

Why not blame Plato/Keanu?

Why blame anyone for anything? Especially something completely theoretical?

Here's a cave problem for you: we're all going to die. Figure that sonuvabitch out.

ok as substanceless and theoretical keanu may seem, he's a real dude!

"Here's a cave problem for you: we're all going to die. Figure that sonuvabitch out."

not all of us apparently (link to kurzweil)

ugh kurzweil

haha you think he's insufferable now, wait till he's uploaded his brain into an anime character.

Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

The wisest verses of the bible.

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

-James Baldwin

A lot of big questions that were previously answered by theology got answered much better by science, and this process of theology ceding ground to science is still going on. Basically, in spite of insaneness re: global warming and such, the long-term trend is science is winning! There is definitely a difference between rationalist and mystic when confronted with conundrums impervious to scientific inquiry -- the rationalist must accept its impervious nature, while the mystic is free to offer a BS answer. But really, how many people are really bothered that science can't cope with the cave problem?

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, December 10, 2009 11:31 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

at one time we knew less than we know now, and we'll almost certainly continue to learn more as we move forward. and, as you suggest, spirituality & religion aren't comparable to science & technology in that sense. they seem to describe a fundamental relationship with something, or a way of orienting oneself in the world, rather than a growing body of knowledge. therefore, religion puts itself at a disadvantage to the degree that it imagines itself in some sort of contest with science. but i don't see spirituality or even religion as being necessarily opposed to science - those conflicts are the products of archaic orthodoxies, dying worldviews. these orthodoxies are enshrined in religion, but are not the fundamental essence of spirituality.

i see the world as an infinite oscillating field of nested unknowables, over which there exists a bright skin of what we can and do know. and in the depth and mystery that lies beneath the skin of the world, anything becomes possible and everything interconnects. that doesn't answer the cave problem or even point towards a cause for traditional "faith" exactly, but it makes it very hard for me to call mysticism bullshit.

The trouble, carried to its illogical conclusion, it's hard to call anything bullshit. I do draw a line at, say, astrology.

the trouble IS, etc

at one time we knew less than we know now

True, but how many of us could kill a wild animal & prepare it to feed our family? Or, barring that, how to gather food that won't make you poisonous? Or how to grow your own food? Or navigate across territory with the stars? Predict the weather by looking at the natural world? How to find a source of water in the wilderness? Start a fire without matches/a lighter? etc. etc.

http://www.nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/timetravelers-cheatsheet.jpg

there was this fun essay on BS that delineated/defined BS not as statements that were necessarily false, but as assertions offered without regard to their actually being true, and a mysticism that claims an unseen and untestable interconnectedness and infinity surely falls into that category.

I don't think rejecting this kind of mysticism precludes you from indulging in the ideas of infinite possibilities and interconnects. There's all sorts of neat and exotic theories resting on the fringes of science on the subject that actually have the possibility of being testable some day!

Check this out -- total craziness but compatible with science:
http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/03/25/diy-universe/

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7929.html

What is truly unknowable is a lot smaller category than others here surmise. We can't see objects from the first 100,000 years of the universe's existence, older than 13.74 billion years, before the plasma became transparent. We can't see what transpires within the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole, the sphere where escape velocity is the speed of light. Some surmise that the smallest distance at which observations of events is meaningful is the Planck length of 1.616252(81)×10−35 meters. Everything else is available.

If God still remains hidden, He does not want to be found.

Then how long is the coast of Scotland?

xp That is silly. Asking questions about how close to the first moment of the universe we can get is a way of avoiding asking another kind of question entirely. Where did it come from? Why is there anything? Can something come out of nothing, despite everything we know about all the somethings that we know about?

11,803 km at the high water mark, and more if we're measuring around grains of sand.

kenan: Absolutely something can come from nothing. This is at the root of quantum electrodynamics, the most successful (in terms of precision of predictions) scientific theory to date.

The net energy of the universe is zero. Therefore, it can quite naturally occur as a quantum fluctuation.

What is the "cave problem"? My googling was unsuccessful.

xp So the theory is that everything is already nothing? Interesting.

sounds kinda zen

i actually think god exists but that he is a 3rd grader from another universe who got a "you can make your own cosmos" kit as a birthday present from grandma and is really pissed that he didn't get a hoverbike so he's taking it out on us by subjecting us to metaphysical discussions on ilx.

any ideas on how we should go about worshipping this 3rd grader

xp Truly, you have stared straight into the first moment of time and understood its true implications.

Kenan, watch one of the following two videos of lectures by cosmologist Laurence Krause, if you are curious about the measurements made in the last decade that indicate that the universe as zero net energy:

At the Origins seminar
The same lecture (+ more humor, and anti-theist asides) at the AAI

Basically, not only do we not need a watchmaker, we don't need a unmoved mover, either.

any ideas on how we should go about worshipping this 3rd grader

Be amusing. I mean, right? Who has a better idea?

get the little fucker his hoverbike

let's sacrifice Derelict to him

Thanks Derelict! I am watching some Alan Watts videos currently this will go nice afterward...

THERE ARE NO HOVERBIKES

omg those youtube comments

(thx for the post btw Derelict, I was previously unfamiliar with Krause - will watch in full later)

http://hight3ch.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/HoverBike.jpg

Oh you just have an answer for everything, don't you.

But more to the point, quantum electro dynamics is weird. No, not weird like you heard about (wave vs. particle, interference patterns, schrodinger's dead-live cat). I'm talking really weird. Matter spontaneously appears, interacts, and disappears. If several interactions can occur, they all do (until we nail it down to one with an observation). I'm just amazingly humbled by how little of it my biochemist/computer scientist brain can wrap around.

And it turns out its more or less at the root of our universe. Richard Feynman sounds like as much a kook as any mystic, and yet, his theory works out to 13 decimal places.

anyway that Krause thing is 50 minutes, a brief summary might be helpful in the meantime... does he suggest that the universe has simply always existed, presumably in some form of this zero net energy state? I'm assuming some variation of the big bang is covered, how is that addressed...?

x-posts

(I totally dig what I've read of Feynman btw)

'What is the "cave problem"?'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes_demon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix

did you really have to throw the Matrix in with Plato

It was mentioned upthread, in the same context

er, wait did Descartes literally believe in a demon?

Shakey, the summary is that we discovered how much dark matter there is, how much mass/energy of empty space, and it exactly balances negative net energy from gravity, so when everything is added up, the universe has no net energy.

Things and events with no net energy don't violate physical law, and pop up spontaneously all the time in empty space, between the quarks of a hadron etc. They're just part of the quantum froth our particles swim through. And its is both plausible, and in fact inevitable, that a universe with no net energy can appear as a random fluctuation.

In the last 10 minutes, Krause goes on about how difficult cosmology will become for civilizations that follow us by 100s of billions of years. We're living in a brief window in which both the stuff of life has been created by supernovae, and in which intelligent life can know the shape and fate of their universe. It won't always be true.

er, wait did Descartes literally believe in a demon?

That wiki article would almost have you think so, wouldn't it. Fucking wiki. No, it's a rhetorical construction. You know, like the "self".

Descartes is crazy fun, he really is. He's the philosophy equivalent of that waterslide that's just a 10-story drop straight down, and all you can do is keep your arms and legs crossed.

there was this fun essay on BS that delineated/defined BS not as statements that were necessarily false, but as assertions offered without regard to their actually being true, and a mysticism that claims an unseen and untestable interconnectedness and infinity surely falls into that category.

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, December 10, 2009 2:12 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's too reductive (though yeah "on bullshit" is great). i don't put much stock in "truths" that are offered to me without corollary support, but do reserve the right to be as mystical as i wanna be in my own relationship to the great totality. our non-verbal inner lives (emotional, spiritual, sensual) don't exist in the testable & provable world of bullshit/not bullshit, and we have to navigate that space in a more intuitive manner.

Descartes often motivated Enlightenment thought out of sheer exasperation with what foolish things he said. For example Descartes was convinced that all animals were simple "Skinnerian" meat-machines with no internal live and no capacity for feeling or thought. That's enraged more than a few animal lovers all the way back to his own day.

And do we need to go back to his idea that the pineal gland was the seat of the soul...

But those are just his silly answers. His questions are WAY better.

What is truly unknowable is a lot smaller category than others here surmise. We can't see objects from the first 100,000 years of the universe's existence...[etc.] Everything else is available.

If God still remains hidden, He does not want to be found.

― Biodegradable (Derelict), Thursday, December 10, 2009 2:18 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, that consideration limits itself to what we currently know and can observe. the assumption that what we perceive as the outer limit of the knowable is just that, an assumption. i'm inclined to suspect that what we don't know and currently can't even imagine eclipses that which we do know, but of course it's impossible to say for certain.

wait dark matter has been detected/proven? I thought its existence was still hypothetical (its always struck me as one of those really convenient scientific constructs a la "what, my calculations don't work out? oh that must be because there must be something I cannot observe at work. Let's call it dark matter. TA-DA!")

"In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is hypothetical matter that is undetectable by its emitted radiation, but whose presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter."

let's just call dark matter God and be done with eh

(j/k)

No you're right. Dark matter doesn't exist as far as we know. It's not a thing, it's a missing puzzle piece that we need to make all the math work out.

Though admittedly, I understand even less of the math than a lot of people on this thread even. But that's what I have gleaned.

the phrase "dark matter" reminds me of a cafeteria

"dark matter of white matter?"

whatever, just give me a muffin

"our non-verbal inner lives (emotional, spiritual, sensual) don't exist in the testable & provable world of bullshit/not bullshit"

with MRI/brain-scanning tech getting better, this is becoming less and less true. We've sort of had to rely on people with crazy brain lesions to overthrow conventional assumptions on the nature of consciousness, but now, the floodgates are kind of open. they've even found evidence for a physical mechanism responsible for those mystical near-death experiences -- it's really pretty neat!

Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

This is Ecclesiastes IIRC ?

I read hat book recently, it blew me away. It's one of the most clear-eyed and absolutely honest pieces of literature I have ever read re: the "meaning of life," I mean it doesn't flinch whatsoever. I couldn't believe it was in the Bible, it seemed so incredibly relevant to existentialism / modernity

anyway, I'm actually learning things from reading this thread! Hearing y'all talking about quantum electro dynamics & whatnot is making me want to learn more about what is currently known about the universe instead of just being of a lazy complacent agnostic

By the way, what is the deal with this Kurzweil immortality stuff? someone mentioned him upthread & I googled his name just for yuks, and then I found out he seems to have a legitimate resumee

is this fellow a kook or not?

Kurzweil is a legendary synthesizer/software/hardware designer who is also a total kook who hates his body/being human and can't wait to be turned into a robot so he can achieve "immortality", an event he foresees coinciding with a forthcoming "singularity" during which time consciousness will become disconnected from the human organism and be capable of existing in a purely digital form.

I hate him.

some nice synths though

he's a kook, to the max. something you should read.

i can't wait to be a robot either

basically his theory is that computer processing and science are advancing at exponential rates and thus at some point in the near future technology will become SO COOL and ALL POWERFUL that people's consciousnesses will be capable of existing as living information and we will be immortal gods blah blah blah

with shakey mo on the dark matter thing. afak, it hasn't been detected/proven, only hypothesized to explain gaps and inconsistencies in other theories (problems w cosmological constant etc).

people who think computers are more marvelous feats of engineering than the human brain or even something as simple as a tree or an ant are retarded imho

x-posts

i wonder if he likes daft punk

people laughed at New Coke, too

our non-verbal inner lives (emotional, spiritual, sensual) don't exist in the testable & provable world of bullshit/not bullshit, and we have to navigate that space in a more intuitive manner.

Er, yeah, what Phillip Nunez said. fMRI scans are making this less and less true. And just recently I read this book, which has a chapter on free will and which reveals that current studies show that your brain decides to do things long before* "you" -- that is, the conscious you -- are aware of deciding to it. eg, they conducted experiments in which people might be asked to do something with their finger -- push a button, say -- and also to note the time when they decided to do so. But their brains were actually preparing to undergo the movement well before the people were consciously aware of making a decision.

*"Long before" on the scale of nerve impulses, anyway.

My favorite of Kurzweil's theories involve 'foglets', swarms of nanorobots that will be programmed to form into whatever you want, creating virtual environments that actually exist in a 3D space.

with MRI/brain-scanning tech getting better, this is becoming less and less true. We've sort of had to rely on people with crazy brain lesions to overthrow conventional assumptions on the nature of consciousness, but now, the floodgates are kind of open. they've even found evidence for a physical mechanism responsible for those mystical near-death experiences -- it's really pretty neat!

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, December 10, 2009 3:07 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

not saying that the human brain and even consciousness are not the product of observable & perhaps controllable phenomena, just that the subjective experience of being conscious (especially the non-verbal aspect of that consciousness) is very hard to effectively evaluate using a simplistic "bullshit vs. not bullshit" scale. at this stage in the game, anyway...

lolz at the wonders of fMRI scans and contemporary neurology. scientific/medical community doesn't have a clue how the brain works, imho. anyone who's ever dealt with a neurological condition will tell you this.

x-posts

contemporary neurobiology basically amounts to "don't tug on that, you don't know what it might be attached to" lolz

Also is the physical mechanism creating a mystical experience or the other way around?

The fact that we don't know how everything works doesn't mean that we don't know how anything works. This isn't an either/or thing.

Kurzweil thinks that once computers can simulate the same number of operations per second that the brain's neural network can, that it will be possible to download a personality onto one. This ignores a lot of things, but on the science side, its that actually recording any given state of this dynamic network (the synaptic network and its strengths and adaptation through time, its modulation by neurotransmitters, memory stored as chemicals rather than synaptic weights etc) would essentially require observation of every synapse in the brain at close range for months or years. We're talking a massive feat of nanotechnology and microcopic observation communication and recording that is several orders of magnitude greater than simply creating a serial or parallel digital computer than could simulate each neuron in real time.

I worked in AI a couple a years, and unless Kurzweil has a lair funded aging billionaires somewhere, no one is doing anything like fundamental work required here. People do bits and pieces on the fringe, training small rat cell nets to run robots, or making larger, more efficient neural nets for stock trading, but the exigencies of scientific careers mean tha

Then the philosophical matters are a whole kettle of fish as well. When Kirk and Spock are beamed down, destructively reducing their original bodies to the element bank, are the new Kirk and Spock the same people? The same issues apply to the original brain and its simulation. Is there continuity of consciousness? Dennett (and also Hume, in his day) go into detail about these concerns.

To me, transhumanism just strikes me as wishful thinking, of a sort that isn't going to make any of the participants more content with their actual fate.

What if it worked? Perhaps, with the GDP of a small nation, we could allow a single individual's consciousness to be simulated after their physical death. If you were that small nation, would you be happy with this idea? Or would you reach for the off switch?

Er, yeah, what Phillip Nunez said. fMRI scans are making this less and less true. And just recently I read this book, which has a chapter on free will and which reveals that current studies show that your brain decides to do things long before* "you" -- that is, the conscious you -- are aware of deciding to it.

― james cameron gargameled my boner for life (Pancakes Hackman), Thursday, December 10, 2009 3:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

well, i've always believed that consciousness, the self, is reactive (rather than directive) wr2 what people do. it's a little "person" that sits in the brain and merely pretends to orchestrate the doings of the mind and body. pull the strings! but that's neither here nor there...

my point is that this understanding is unlikely to unseat the self (you & i as you & i perceive ourselves) as the author of human life - as the self perceives it. and a good deal of the experience of that self is subjective: emotional, spiritual, sensual. in integrating subjective experience with conscious thought, there's a lot of room for play, and the line between between bullshit and not-bullshit can become very blurry.

this has nothing to do with whether or not science can offer a good explanation for love or faith or consciousness or whatever.

'contemporary neurobiology basically amounts to "don't tug on that, you don't know what it might be attached to" lolz'

dude, a couple decades ago we were handing out awards for scooping out brains through eyesockets. progress, yo!

Obv got carried away. Was going to say something in the second paragraph that the exigencies of scientific careers mean that everyone has to tackle tiny problems that will likely yield results within a few years. No one seems to try to tackle the top down huge projects except professors emeritus and sometimes DARPA.

there was a really fascinating article in Discover recently about some AI/neurobiology researcher who was hypothesizing about why, given that the brain's neurons misfire on such a regular basis (compared to computers that are required by design to make no errors at all), the brain can still process so much more information, more accurately, than computer chips can. Blanking on the dude's name but I found his whole approach really appealling... does this ring a bell with anybody?

anyway yeah Derelict OTM re: Kurzweil pipe dream

x-posts

dude, a couple decades ago we were handing out awards for scooping out brains through eyesockets. progress, yo!

haha yeah I know, won't argue that. It's just that I've had to deal with real life neurologists trying to figure out what's wrong with a given brain and every one seems like they're basically shooting in the dark and are basically guessing about whether procedures/medication will have the desired effect, etc.

derelict otm on the naivete of transhumanism

we're still laughably far from being able to simultaneously observe and model all the activity going on in a given brain at a given time. much less precisely replicate all that data AND its constant fluctuation digitally so that ongoing consciousness might result. even if your research were a massive top-down superproject with unlimited funding, you could throw trillions of dollars over decades at this "problem" and not necessarily come much closer to solving it. not saying that transhumanism is a ridiculous fantasy, but the "i will live forever in a new computer brain" thing has very little to do with here-and-now reality.

Thanks for the info on Kurzweil. Based on the way he was mentioned earlier I was expecting a conspiracy theorist, but when I looked him up & I saw Forbes calling him "the new Edison" and pictures of him speaking at conferences at Stanford I was like, holy shit, this guy is serious?

But based on what Derelict said, he sounds less like a kook and more like an intelligent man who is getting ahead of himself or is really idealistic about how quickly exponential scientific change can occur? In other words, preserving consciousness digitally is theoretically not *total* science fiction?

what about his claim than he has only aged two biological years in sixteen literal years due to taking supplements that replenish phosphatidylcholine in his cell membranes?

These things are over my head & I realize I'm getting off topic

super x post

Sebastian to thread!!

maybe we should start a transhumanism thread

pretty sure there's a Kurzweil thread already.

The self-loathing evident in his thinking is kinda startling - he hates his body with the passionate fury of a medievel Christian

preserving consciousness digitally is theoretically not *total* science fiction?

I think it IS total science fiction because the more we learn about the brain the more its clear that it is not constructed like a computer chip, i.e. its not structured like a serial or parallel digital computer

i hate my body too.

here's a whip, get crackin

in the coming transhumanist utopia you fleshies won't be having such a good time

me and my man ray will be floating on digital unicorns made of awesome and you'll be shoveling shit

what about his claim than he has only aged two biological years in sixteen literal years due to taking supplements that replenish phosphatidylcholine in his cell membranes?

― lukevalentine, Thursday, December 10, 2009 3:48 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

that part makes his body-hate (and transhumanism in general) seem more the manifestation of a terrible fear of death than anything else. and kinda poignant besides.

I think if you believe the human entity is 100% material and there is no mystical unseen 'bullshit' reality that makes a person an individual, then the idea of Kurzweil's transhumanism should be wholly appealing and eventual, shouldn't it?

Kurzweil has other longetivity theories that seem much more plausible. Cell-repairing nanorobots, freshly grown replacement organs, etc. I don't think he hates his body as much as he hates the idea of it decaying and dying one day.

I have to be honest, if science leads mankind into a warren ellis comic, I'm gonna blame warren ellis.

i'm not afraid to die! heaven exists.

it was a network created by a previous race of transhumans!

they were from the planet Mypos.

it was a network created by a previous race of transhumans!

does it look like geocities

You mean, not there? Yeah, pretty much.

This is some high geek priesthood being vied for here.

no it looks like this

http://mrtopsyturvy.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/800x600.jpg

if humans ever gain the ability to download an immortality app, we should at least get the luxury of deciding who's gonna be in the proverbial Admirals Club of eternal life

I mean, I don't really want Dane Cooke around, for instance

anyway religion & intolerance ...

the strawberries are bubble universes

they're made of Mootrinos

is that jeff koons? don't want to live in a koonsiverse.

That is not Jeff Koons. It is a plaster cow.

(moo-on neutrinos)

'my point is that this understanding is unlikely to unseat the self (you & i as you & i perceive ourselves) as the author of human life - as the self perceives it. and a good deal of the experience of that self is subjective: emotional, spiritual, sensual.'

I'm not sure what you mean. If I had a memory that I felt was empirically true, but was proven false (like in those courtroom demonstrations where a bunch of witnesses are made to "remember" facts that never happened), that's pretty self-unseating. Like I'd feel my self fell out of its homunculus seat!

i'm speaking more about perceptions such as "i want children" or "i believe in a higher power" - and especially of the atavistic, nonverbal deep feelings that motivate them.

not denying that these things are probably based on something concrete - just suggesting that our scientific understanding doesn't necessarily change our fundamental experience of them.

are you saying that their phenomenological qualia (I don't know if i'm using either of those words correctly, especially togther) remains unchanged by scientific understanding of them?

yeah, though i wouldn't say that's always the case. in a general sense, that the deeper experience of life is not necessarily altered by our understanding of science - even when that understanding concerns our own consciousness.

like, that we understand "love" as a chemical reaction with a biological function doesn't stop us from falling in it, or sustantially alter the quality of the experience. suspect that the same is true of religious faith. that we can identify the areas of the brain that become active when religious experience occurs, and perhaps even why such experiences occur, will not likely cause many believers to cast aside their faith. the experience is still the experience.

on the other hand, i'd say that certain psychiatric and psychological theories HAVE altered the quality of human experience, at least to some degree, so i don't want to be too absolute about this.

I dunno man. One of the few scientific vindications of spiritually-derived techniques was on meditative/trance-like modulations of pain. Imagine if you could one day trigger a religious experience with an x-box -- wouldn't that take the edge out of it a little?

so does anybody like Dawkins or is he now an anathema to most atheists ?

I do. I have no problem whatsoever with him.

I like that Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, Ehrman etc. and Dawkins are visible at this moment.

Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, this moment is pretty much the first time that many agnostics-in-fact have discovered that they're not alone or even rare. They can contact others who raise children with secular values, and discover the children aren't amoral monsters. They can see secular NGOs achieve great good from humanist motivations. Its a watershed moment, particularly in the United States, and I think we're going to see pronounced demographic shifts in claimed religiosity in the next few decades.

I don't think we'll get to the point in my lifetime (outside academia, at least) that a profession of belief brings disdain at the speaker's credulity. And that seems Hitchens and Dawkin's ideal. I think that kind of vitriol can defeat much of the good humanists might otherwise achieve, and it's counterproductive at this early stage of the pendulum return when professed believers are still in the vast majority.

Do I like Dawkins as a writer? Absolutely, The Selfish Gene was one of the most life changing books I've encountered. But, for tone, I much prefer Harris, and Bart Ehrman (a biblical scholar, so slightly off-center from the new vocal atheists) is still better for capturing the right tone.

I am very glad you mentioned Bart Ehrman. I can't say enough good things about that guy. I grew up in a very Bible-centric Protestant denomination and his books have been perfect for me. As far as I can see he's a real wild card in this religious / secular debate because iirc he went to Divinity school as a strong Christian to study the Bible and came out agnostic. He pretty much the whole Bible as infallible Word of God thing

I mean to say

He pretty much *demolishes* the whole Bible as infallible Word of God thing

which in turn wrecks the Biblical Foundationalism of fundamentalists, esp southern Baptists etc

thanks for alerting us to this man's challenging opinions

lukevalentine, I'd also recommend the recorded lecture series Ehrman did for The Teaching Company A History of Early Christianity, New Testament, and Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication. Insanely overpriced in an era of low-cost audiobook distribution, but findable through torrent sites. Although his books are good, they tend get into repetitive ruts, wheras his lectures are among the best I've heard for cross-country driving.

Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, this moment is pretty much the first time that many agnostics-in-fact have discovered that they're not alone or even rare. They can contact others who raise children with secular values, and discover the children aren't amoral monsters. They can see secular NGOs achieve great good from humanist motivations. Its a watershed moment, particularly in the United States, and I think we're going to see pronounced demographic shifts in claimed religiosity in the next few decades.

― Biodegradable (Derelict), Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

dunno. i've been an atheist-agnostic-whatever for more than thirty years, in the rural sticks and in the big city. and i've always known quite a few others (most of my friends, really), and have almost never encountered much shock or negativity from the faithful. there were plenty of public atheists in my parents' time and their parents' too - though it probably did seem a bit more shocking then.

do agree though that the increased visibility and activism of atheists is a great thing. i get bugged when it verges into spiteful fanaticism, but you gotta take the bad with the good, i suppose.

And yet, this was just 3 years ago:

Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study (03/28/2006)

American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society.“It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.
Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”
The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation—with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts.

like, that we understand "love" as a chemical reaction with a biological function doesn't stop us from falling in it, or sustantially alter the quality of the experience. suspect that the same is true of religious faith. that we can identify the areas of the brain that become active when religious experience occurs, and perhaps even why such experiences occur, will not likely cause many believers to cast aside their faith. the experience is still the experience.

OTM. The knowledge-experience gap applies to all kinds of knowledge, scientific and spiritual. But I think in the spiritual realm it is a far wider gap. It is far more difficult for an objective observer to have a spiritual experience by performing the appropriate actions (reading holy scripture, performing rituals, prayer) than performing the appropriate actions in pursuit of scientific knowledge (formulas, calculations, logic). Perhaps more than anything this is a reflection on the insufficiency of the tools we use to get this religious experience.

re derelict's statistics:

i've read that and other similar polls. but "atheist" means different things to different people. in many of the same surveys that we find evidence of americans' strong distrust of atheists, we see that attitudes toward the "non-religious" are much more favorable.

this indicates to me that americans (not unreasonably) see the non-religious as those without a professed faith: agnostics, the "open-minded" and those who just don't care. they are accepting, in other words, of those who do not share but at least tolerate their own beliefs. but they seem to see atheists as specifically and actively anti-religious - as the sworn & dedicated enemies of faith. and since the vast majority of americans are religious, it doesn't surprise me that they therefore distrust these strawman super-atheists.

i think the solution is education. as atheism continues to come out of the closet, hopefully more americans will see that we're not a bunch of self-righteous prigs bent on eradicating all belief that doesn't conform with our own. to that end, i get pissed off when contemptuous, arrogant dickheads like dawkins are held up as spokespeople for atheism.

It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious

This must be why the Native Americans signed all those treaties. They knew that the Christian settlers were trustworthy because of their religiously-derived values.

I'm looking to organize a Group Shrug for fellow agnostics in the Boston area in 2010. Who's in?

humanism is a religion too.
― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, March 9, 2004 8:13 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

i've been an atheist-agnostic-whatever for more than thirty years, in the rural sticks and in the big city. and i've always known quite a few others (most of my friends, really), and have almost never encountered much shock or negativity from the faithful.

i've had the same experience - i was atheist-agnostic-whatever for most of my post-age-of-reason life and it seemed to me like most of the religious negativity came from political movements, not from people in everyday life, even in rural ny (which is more like the midwest than the city). it is probably a function of a) living in new england now and b) being in academia, but i come across anti-religious statements in person far more commonly than anti-atheistic ones.

i do think christianity plays a primarily negative role in american politics right now, but in terms of everyday interactions, do you guys worry about people knowing you're not religious? have you experienced harassment because of it? and where do you live, is it more of a southern/midwestern problem?

I grew up in suburban Georgia, and the exit you take off the highway to go to my (public) school has had a huge yellow billboard up that just says "Jesus" for as long as I can remember. There was a megachurch across the street that I watched get bigger and bigger every year, and all the popular kids would carry their bibles around with them. Sometimes the church would hold events after school on school grounds and I really hated that.

I was never ever harassed or taunted but I think that's probably because I was in a very extreme minority and I am a genuinely peaceful person. Mostly I was just excluded from being social with my peers. In order to hang out after school with most people I was friends with in my classes I would have to go to 'Youth Group' and I didn't like the sound of that.

I think the first time I realized things would be difficult was in elementary school when we were taught about Manifest Destiny. The teacher was explaining it and everyone else seemed pretty OK with it but I thought it was a load of genocidal bullshit.

I'd love to read some more first hand accounts like this.

thanks, adam. i'd love to read more as well.

i live in the southeast an dwhile i don't particulary care if people know i'm not religious, i certainly don't bring it up in mixed company. the last thing you want is some fundie, however genuinely loving they may be, trying to "save" you. i imagine a lot of the antipathy towards atheists is that they may bring into relief some people's own insecurities w/r/t their faith.

of course i don't mean to suggest that being occasionally (or often) "insecure" in your faith doesn't automatically result in dickishness.

doesn't automatically result

automatically results

You get taught Manifest Destiny at school? Do you mean as something-that's-true, or as something-that-people-thought-once?

it was taught to me in a very watered-down way - i was told manifest destiny is an idea american settlers had that their nation's special mission was to expand westward to the pacific, not really any mention of "because god said so" or "but there were already native people living there." but it was more a phrase of vocabulary we had to learn than anything we spent much time discussing, it's quite possible that my teacher was uncomfortable with it.

Yeah my teacher explained that it meant settlers could invade and take over the land "because it was a God-given right". God had already granted the puritans escape from religious persecution in the Old World, and was gracing them with this New World and thus it was destined theirs for the taking. Perhaps my teacher was just trying to combat the liberal bias that so obviously permeates the public school system. j/k

The idea of my country being founded on such a hypocritical stance, one that looked to the bible for validity, made a big impression on me as a youth.

parallels with the 'right' to invade afghanistan/iraq?

damn Adam. what year was this, if you don't mind me askin

when i was in high school i staged a one-man protest against the "see you at the pole" group which organizes a day to hold a public prayer on campus around the flagpole (thus further conflating religion and nationalism). my sign had matthew 6:5 quoted and "keep church and state separate" on the other side.

unfortunately this day also happened to be the one-year anniversary of 9/11. so from that day forward, the rumor spread that i was in the taliban. 4 realz.

do you guys worry about people knowing you're not religious?

It's more or less the other way round in the UK

50/50 in ireland, depending on context. with older relatives it's a 'thing', and quite a few people that i work with i'd say it would be too.

re: maifest destiny

texas history is taught in texas in 4th and 7th grade and it is very much in line with the manifest destiny horseshit (ie tx just wanted to be free but the stupid mexicans - boo! - wouldn't let 'em be free so davy crockett freed us at the alamo blah blah texas joins america to form velvet revolver supergroup now we are awesome yay!)

I was in elementary school in the mid-late 80s, so yeah the era of Reagan.

M Bison, I feel for you. I can't imagine how difficult it must be growing up atheist (or otherwise non-Christian) post-9/11.

i think that era i was around my most strident, dawkins-level bilous but i was p recently divorced from churchin as well.

Many xposts, specifically to that picture of the secular group billboard:

it really annoys me that people confuse secular and atheist. I presume all atheists would be in favour of a secular state, but there's no contradiction between being religious and being in favour of secularism too; arguably that's what Jesus's 'render unto Caesar what is Caesar's' line is all about. You hear it all the time, even the news will talk about things like 'people of faith' as opposed to 'secular people'.

'Secular' is a really useful word and concept, it isn't getting treated right.

Real Jeebus freaks call the rest of us 'downcast'...

Well, they're right about that at least

This is one of the things that annoys me about religion in politics - it's the loud intolerant ones who make all the noise, but the ones who actually favor secularism don't usually counter it with "WE'RE CHRISTIANS TOO, NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT BECAUSE THIS IS CIVIL SOCIETY" because that would be, well, hypocritical. (Also the loud intolerant ones just say "well, clearly you're not REAL Christians.") Drives me crazy when politicians have to recite their religious bona fides when they clearly find it inappropriate too. I have no idea what the solution is for this.

I thought all American politicians were religous?

they all say they are, and maybe they're all very sincere, but some of them only seem like they're talking about it because they have to to get votes, not because they think it actually has a place in politics. i respect that position and wish they did not feel obligated to say anything about it at all.

any of the ones you hear about have to make a more than passing nod to it.

Sorry, but your country is weird

Not 1 in 10 Texas students ever learn that the Texas revolution was largely fought to retain slavery: 1, 2, 3. Few Americans in general are taught that the intellectual bulwark of slave trade apologists was the Bible.

As a Texan living outside Austin, in a largely Republican area with 4 megachurches within a few miles, I don't mention religion or politics to anyone without a long acquaintance.

Few Americans in general are taught that the intellectual bulwark of slave trade apologists was the Bible.

incidentally, the intellectual bulwark for slave trade abolitionists was ALSO THE BIBLE

Amen to that

derelict, that def resonates with my own schooling, the whle slave territory landgrab was something i learned in high school independently (and later in college in more detail).

where are you in tx?

m bison:
SW Houston at present, due to sick parents, though I'm looking at Montrose/Museum District real estate for a move in the near future.

i'm only barely familiar with that area as my company's base/home is in west houston in the galleria area. museum district is dope iirc.

i'm in san antonio, went to high school kinda far nw (a lot of kids who live in the hill country go that school and there's an ag program, so pretty conservative area).

Incidentally, the megachurch phenomenon in suburban America is really unique in the developed world. From what I've seen of them, they're totally antithetical to any mystic/spiritual/religious subjective experience. My theory is that we as a culture turned to them as an escape from the all-together too-easy socal isolation among atomic families, in the land of the lawns. Any professed belief is secondary to deeper strains of loneliness and loss. I'm trying to recall the name of a recent book on the inner lives of political conservatives that made similar points, but coming up blank.

SA's most prominent megachurch is cornerstone church (led by chrsitian zionist rev hagee, i live like less than 10 minutes drive from it. i've known a couple of ppl who have attended/were members. one was a family who had only lived here for a short while and subsequently moved shortly thereafter, the other was younger and single and i think in both cases there's the appeal of a big brand name church to identify with.

This is one of the things that annoys me about religion in politics - it's the loud intolerant ones who make all the noise, but the ones who actually favor secularism don't usually counter it with "WE'RE CHRISTIANS TOO, NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT BECAUSE THIS IS CIVIL SOCIETY" because that would be, well, hypocritical. (Also the loud intolerant ones just say "well, clearly you're not REAL Christians.") Drives me crazy when politicians have to recite their religious bona fides when they clearly find it inappropriate too. I have no idea what the solution is for this.

^^so very very otmfm. makes me hate moderates almost as much. quit being pussies, guys.

derelict, was it related at all to this article?

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/the-radical-christian-right-is-built-on-suburban-despair

ah found the neuroscience article I was thinking of upthread: It sounds cockamamy, but it is true. Scientists have found that the brain’s 100 billion neurons are surprisingly unreliable. Their synapses fail to fire 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet somehow the brain works. Some scientists even see neural noise as the key to human creativity. Boahen and a small group of scientists around the world hope to copy the brain’s noisy calculations and spawn a new era of energy-efficient, intelligent computing. Neurogrid is the test to see if this approach can succeed.

m bison, that's the one. I don't think I care much for the title of his book American Fascists; its just crudely inflammatory. But I've come to similar conclusions about the diagnosis. Organized religious communities have sprung up because many have abandoned the support networks that were once found in more urban life. Britisher's may be amazed by this, but the place I'm residing in has moderate suburban density, on the order of the less compact suburban hamlets outside big UK cities. The nearest pub or bar is more than 3 miles distant. There are 3 liquor stores nearer. There's a lot of lonely drinking going on.

don't forget the meth and oxycontin

"incidentally, the intellectual bulwark for slave trade abolitionists was ALSO THE BIBLE"

As cool as the story of John Brown is, man he crazy!

I'm not too keen on the idea of atheists organizing as a vocal group/self-identifying as a minority separate from the rest of humanity. If Obama is the closest we get to an atheist president, I'm totally cool with that.

i just long for the day when a candidate, when asked about his super-jesus credentials, can just say well that's really none of your business and won't affect my performance one iota so stfu.

You hear it all the time, even the news will talk about things like 'people of faith' as opposed to 'secular people'.

This polarization is my main grief, it's either you believe in YHWH (God, Jesus, etc. as long as it's close enough it's OK) or you have no faith in anything and think the universe is a big accident with no meaning and no truth. There's no room in-between.

Also not that there's anything wrong w the latter view.

i do think christianity plays a primarily negative role in american politics right now

Agreed. That seems obvious, I think, to all but the most evangelistic and willfully blind.

but in terms of everyday interactions, do you guys worry about people knowing you're not religious?

Not really, no. But I do not lead with this information. It's irrelevant to almost all common human interactions.

have you experienced harassment because of it?

It's not quite harassment, but -- and I think this is kind of heartbreaking -- religion divides my family in a very harsh way. My relatives who are Jehovah's Witnesses, including my only remaining grandparent, all but one remaining aunt or uncle, and a great deal of my extended family, are almost totally cut off from me. (Grandma makes an exception, but only because she still thinks she can evangelize to me.) I can't speak to them, because they are not allowed to speak to me. There are people that I grew up with that I can't so much as send an email to, asking how they are, how's the wife and new baby, etc. They are not allowed to speak to me, because I do not share their religion. That is some fucked up shit, right there.

and where do you live, is it more of a southern/midwestern problem?

Even back when my uncle on my mom's side was still a JW, he moved to LA for a few years, and reported that even the JW's in California are a lot more easy-going and open to culture and life in general. I don't know about the Midwest, but there's certainly a generalized head-up-ass thing in the South.

http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/12/15/north-carolina-fundamentalists-are-on-the-offensive-to-oust-atheist-councilman/

Funny how this guys pick and choose what parts of the constitution to promote and uphold, just like they do with the Bible.

But I do not lead with this information. It's irrelevant to almost all common human interactions.

same here. i feel a little nervous when it does come up, usually just in terms of weekend/evening plans if i'm going to a service or event, and then i sort of subconsciously look for opportunities to explain that my church isn't evil.

i'm sorry to hear about religion dividing your family that way. i have a friend from upstate ny who is cut of from her entire jw family similarly (in part due to being queer) and it's very, very painful for her. heartbreaking is right.

Another charmer crawls out from under his rock:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James has responded after referring to another commissioner's son as a 'homo' during Monday night's debate on domestic partner benefits.

During the discussion, Commissioner Vilma Leake, a Democrat, spoke in support of providing benefits for the domestic partners of county workers in same-sex relationships. The commission voted 6-3 in favor of providing benefits.

Shortly after Leake's speech, James could be heard (on recorded audio) saying the following:

James: "Your son was a homo?"

Leake responded, "Don't make me hurt you. Don't do that to me. Don't talk to me about my son."

Following the incident, FOX Charlotte received a statement (via email) from Bill James, who says, "I can type but I can't talk."

In the statement, James says:

"Vilma is a religious hypocrite."

"She was married to a Bishop in the AME Zion church. This church has historically opposed homosexuality."

"In justifying her position last night in public she used her son’s ‘lifestyle’ and his death from HIV-AIDS to justify voting for benefits to allow individuals to use tax dollars to engage in the same behavior that resulted in her son’s death."

"It is akin to someone whose son is an alcoholic and died from the disease, using his death from drinking as justification to have the taxpayers pay for more booze."

"Her position was that her ‘faith’ demanded that she do this to support her son and his ‘lifestyle’ which she acknowledges killed him."

"In doing so, it is legitimate to ask her what ‘lifestyle’ and in particular whether her son was a homosexual. Her response was to threaten me with physical violence (typical for her). Of course, this isn’t the first time she has threatened elected officials. On the School Board she had a long and checkered history threatening to harm those she disagrees with."

"Well, if she didn’t want to make her ‘son’ an issue – why did she use him, his lifestyle and his tragic self-inflicted death from AIDS as the reason for her vote?"

Mecklenburg County Commission Chairwoman Jennifer Roberts says Commissioner Bill James should apologize for his comments.

Make sure to read the comments there. They're a real hoot.

http://www.orthocuban.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Calvin-and-Hobbes-05.gif

OK, the dude in my post right above kenan's decides to double down: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/latest_eruption_from_bill_your_son_was_a_homo_james_de_infest_areas_where_g/

Homosexual conduct is illegal in NC (even after Lawrence V Texas). We arrest 250 homosexuals each year in Mecklenburg alone for either a ‘crime against nature’ or ‘solicitation of a crime against nature’. Unlike prostitution (exchanging money), even suggesting homosexual sex is a criminal offense in NC. If we were all that ‘progressive’ would we be arresting 250 homosexuals a year? Setting up sting operations to de-infest areas where they congregate? Point is, if you want to delude yourself that homosexual conduct is ‘ok’ go ahead. The law, the police and the DA however have a different view.

I think that if you’re someone who is homosexual and you believe that you are born that way and have every right to engage in that behavior, I think the offensive thing, I would surmise, is not the word ‘infest’ or ‘de-infest’ but the fact that the police are actually doing the sting operations. We can parse words — what phrase should I have used? But the central question for most people is not what particular term got used but whether the action was occurring. Was I accurate in saying there are these sting operations going on and those sting operations — whatever term you want to use — target homosexual men? That is why the county took and spent significant amounts of money to rework the park to take out certain landscaping things to prevent, once the sting operations cleared them out, prevent them from re-congregating — or re-infesting if you use my original term.