What astounds me is how those guys are trying to find a common answer to an uncommon event. It's like if Tycho Brahe, when observing his first supernova, just said "It must be fireworks in space!" and then tried replicating the supernova by launching fireworks with the right combination of colors. I'm sure he'd be able to do something that looks like SN 1572 eventually, but it would have been all for naught because supernovae are not fireworks in space.

Why are we putting drug dealers in jail instead of these homeopathy quacks? At least the drugs the dealers sell has an effect!

@MaxWilder

I'm not trying to make you pick a side, I'm trying to show your brain already picked one for you the instant you form an idea about anything.

I'm also trying to show that by using the concept of "belief" in too broad a sense, you run counter to centuries of philosophical debate and risk falling into a religious rhetorical trap.

Finally, if you don't like "belief", you should check out neuroscience as they postulate no such thing. It doesn't mean though that there are no mechanisms in the brain that play the role of belief as we understand it in "psychological" or "mental" level (as opposed to a "neurological" or "brain" lelve).

@MaxWilder "But until it affects my life directly in one way or another, I have no reason to believe it either. I am neutral on the subject."

But what if I ask you directly : Does something like a Universe-level consciousness exists? Even if you answer that you don't have an opinion about it, you must believe in something: that the chances for its existence are 50-50, etc. And then, if you are an astronomer and must construct a theory on the workings of the Universe, then you MUST be believing either that the Universe forms a consciousness or that it doesn't since either theory imply many things as to the functioning of the Universe. Of course, it all depends on the definitions of "consciousness" and "Universe",etc. but if you don't like the definitions, tell us yours and whether you thus believe that the "Universe" is "conscious" or not. You may cry foul and go to quantum physics, but the brain is not a quantum computer. Your brain has a belief about a Universe-level consciousness, in one form or another, you simply just don't admit it.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that there is nothing wrong in believing that God doesn't exist. Believing that the act of believing itself is wrong is already conceding to the theists' argument that belief is somehow strictly part of the religious phenomenon. "Beliefs" are a mental shortcut we humans have and need to function efficiently. Belief in something does not imply blindness to the shortcomings of beliefs. Thinking there are shortcomings to beliefs is a belief in itself. What I am saying is that there is no problem with beliefs, only problems with certain kinds of beliefs.

Beliefs are more general than you think, and this may be why you believe you can have a "no belief" about something. What you must understand is that a belief is not an opinion, nor is it a logical or statistical argument.

Explain to me how being good at basketball makes you a hero again?

@SDGundamX:

There is research, just not the kind you want.

@SDGundamX

Haha, your editing is moot since I received your original post by e-mail!

Anyway, as far as I know not much research has been done on this, maybe because American researchers fear they will not get grants for possibly "debunking" religion. In any case, I do not put much weight on psychological studies. Neurological studies are another matter though, and concerning the Buddhist monks (and other yogis) research has been done that demonstrates neuronal patterns similar to being high on drugs while meditating. Nothing concrete on the placebo effect (we don't even know how it works on a neuronal level), but I would bet money that what I said will be found true at least in some cases.

Now, the rest is conjecture based on accounts of religious experiences by religious people and on my own lifelong feelings and introspection as an atheist that never believed in the christian god even though my grandmother was a pastoral teacher and fervent catholic; and comparing those thoughts and feelings with those of other prominent atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins, while also reading much of the science behind human behavior in general. I am also a philosophy major, for what it's worth (not much if we're talking strictly about scientific evidence, but can be worth lots if we are talking about science or religion in themselves). And really, its not that only religious people get angry when their worldview is challenged, it's that most people that set hard limits on what is real and what isn't will get angry when you present evidence that they cannot refute against your beliefs. That's why most religious scientists don't get angry, but try to find flaws in theories instead: they compartmentalize well, mostly because they are more intelligent that the general population. Still, I think that compartmentalization is a dead end on all levels.

On a closing note, it is not wrong to have opinions on subjects based on conjecture, etc. as long as they are in line with what has been demonstrated so far in science. Physicists don't have any proof about string theory yet many believe that it is "true", meaning that they believe the basic approach is sound and will ultimately give the best answer to today's unsolved problems in physics. The problem with religious thinking is that none of the basic and necessary premises of religion have any empirical evidence, i.e. it's all metaphysics. This is what I meant by non-rational beliefs: they are not irrational, but they are based on indemonstrable premises, fallacies or faith.

@Gallowflak

What you're describing does not pertain to the debate of religion vs. atheism per se, but of human psychology, social hierarchy, etc. Of course there will always be dumb people that need to be spoon-fed what to think. The question is, will they function better with religious ideas or atheistic ideas? For now, since atheism is frowned upon by the majority, atheists will indeed represent more of brightest members of society, those that can think for themselves and that can stand up for their convictions. The same can be said of original prophets and their first followers, who decide to go against the flow of society in order to gain what they perceived as an advantage: they invent a new religion and stand up for their beliefs. The difference, again, is in the aims and consequences of religion vs. atheism. Religion restricts your thinking to a subset of the "world" with added "unworldly" dependencies like god that enforce the limited "world", whereas atheism expands thinking to the "world" with nothing more or less added/subtracted. I think atheism is thus a better suited worldview for everyone and is especially liberating to those in-between the brightest and dumbest, the "middle class" of intelligence, those that can think for themselves but may fear the risks associated with it in a religious society or do not know where to start or how to think correctly/productively (avoiding fallacies, etc.). You may think, like Voltaire, that this is only a matter of tolerance. Maybe it is, but again I would argue that tolerance is a value easier to maintain in an atheistic environment than in a religious one (mostly because atheism, being neutral, does not fix a priori what the boundaries of the "world" are since it has no arbitrary dependencies, except maybe for human experience itself; but that is something we cannot do anything about as long as we do not evolve into something more than homo sapiens, whether through natural selection or technology).

@Gallowflak

I would argue that it does require at least a greater intellectual maturity to stay an atheist and live with the conviction that there is no big brother in the sky to help you or alleviate your suffering. For example, Jesus said the suffering will be alleviated only when you die, but most Christians ignore that part and think that prayer acts in this world, hence the strong placebo effect seen in some. Now I am much more impressed by the Buddhists monk who, after years of training, can use this placebo effect almost on demand, but you have to wonder if at that point religion is necessary at all. It seems more like mental discipline. Religious belief may help to persevere in your attaining this mental discipline, but I very well doubt that it is beyond science's grasp.

Also, you seem to have missed a crucial part: the atheist says that his understanding of that experience must change, not that it will (automatically) change. Herein lies the shortcomings of the human mind. But the potential for change, the openness, is there. Of course, if you think that I mean that "openness" also means openness to religious ideas, then you are sadly mistaken. Religious ideas have been rejected by the atheist because they do not adhere to the basic premise of trusting only experience (I could broaden this to accommodate the odd rationalist atheist but they are so rare in my experience that the effort would not be consistent with the Pareto principle to do so).

Now, you may think that compartmentalization can give you the best of both worlds: I use religious ideas in some domains (like morals and ethics) and science in others (basically everything else). But that is wanting to eat your cake and have it too. Religious ideas presuppose some weird metaphysics that will creep in your science sometime or another. Plus, counting on religion to guide your morals blinds you to the actual psychological underpinnings of those judgements. And really, if you change some of your religion's moral teachings because they do not agree with you, can you still say you are of this religion, nay that you are even religious at all? If you do compromise your religion's teachings in a kind of modern pragmatism, then you are misguided about religion: you do not need it. What I think is that many prominent religious figures come to this conclusion, that they do not need religion since they are "beyond" those kinds of petty worldly matters. But since they think they are special and that everyone else is below them, they think the masses still need religion. But really how they come to this conclusion, by falsely believing themselves superior, is ultimately irrelevant, and in fact many lay religious persons reason the same way with regards to their fellow citizens: others need religion, not me, so I need religion to protect me from them, etc. They do not see that a rational discourse about morals/ethics is possible, so they stick to religion as a default answer because they were educated that way.

Now, if we were perfect reasoning machines it would not matter whether we were "religious" or not, "theist" or not: we would never base our reasoning on false or unproven assumptions except as a way to partake in thought experiments, i.e. we would not base our actions on those thought experiments, except to verify the validity of their conclusions. That is the kind of perfect reasoning the atheists want. Of course, a perfect reasoning machine that has religious beliefs would suffer quite rapidly from extreme, possibly debilitating, cognitive dissonance. That is why I think religion must be erased if we want our reasoning to evolve towards something like perfection. You may not like the prospect of becoming a Vulcan now, but will you even be able to mind when you will have become one? No. Of course, those who will become Vulcan-like will be our descendants, not us, so they will care even less.

Wall of text warning. No tl;dr. Learn to read dammit (see what I did there?).

@quantumushroom

Unusual post from you there qm. But again you miss the point (what did you expect?).

First off, religion necessarily has an effect on society otherwise no one would care if you adhered or not (i.e. there would be no religious wars, no religious-based hatred etc.). The problem is not that religion enhances your sense of well-being, it's that as a consequence (or side effect if you will) you close yourself off from people of a different religion and from contrary opinions on many different matters: you trade freedom of thought for psychological safety and by doing that you deserve neither. Now, if you're a "religious scientist" type then your either not really religious or not really a scientist. Compartmentalization can only get you so far.

Second, wtf does any of this has to do with liberalism? Your tangent does not intersect my argument at any point. I bet you can't derive for shit. Do you even know what derivation is?

Third, atheism is neutral. Atheism is to theism as amoralism is to moralism. The antonym to moral is not amoral but immoral. In the same way, the antonym to theism is non-theism. A non-theist can be religious, he simply does not believe in a deity or deities. Atheism was a term invented by theists to vilify non-theist and polytheists. It has been adopted by non-religious people like "nigger" has been adopted by African-Americans, as a way of empowerment. It encompasses many views, most of them non-religious. It does not mean atheists cannot suffer from the same delusions as religious people, only that they are less likely because by identifying and refusing to accept the kind of bad thinking that goes on in religious circles, they have inoculated themselves to a point.

Fourth, on the contrary one could say that there have never been a religion without a state. Every religion needs a vector of power to affirm its authority and convert others. The Jews in Pharaonic Egypt formed a state within a state, electing their own leaders and applying the laws of Abraham to their brethren, much like Muslims try to do in western countries by following sharia law and even trying to make it official. I would go so far as to say that religion is the prototype of the state. Look at Buddhism. Not a year after the Buddha died and already sects formed and tried to control the movement he started. The conflicts may not have been overtly violent, but they were power struggles and as such quite far from the detachment from worldly matters taught by the Buddha. All prophets are dictators. Their intentions may be good, but it will always turn sour when they're gone as they, and not their god or teachings, are really what unify their followers. The continuation depends not on the person or the teachings but on the institutions that they or their successors build, just like a state. You could see what I mean if you had read the Leviathan of Hobbes (that's not what he says, but the parallels he makes and his insistence that religion is necessary for the state's well-being goes in this direction). This, to me, argues for anarchism but of course with people like quantumushroom - not to mention the potential for greed and cruelty still in all of us - I would have to say we are not ripe for it just yet. It may well be that a great part of the population will need to be forced to become atheists just to live among an atheist society comfortably, like atheists were once forced to recant their views in religious societies. While it would mean some psychological violence, as long as we stay in a democratic state it would not do more damage than what religion does now and I believe it would benefit humankind in the long run.

@Gallowflak

Nowhere did I say atheists were more rational than the religious. In fact, most rationalists (like Descartes) are religious for various reasons, one which I will explore below. I said that atheists are more reasonable and detached in their understanding of the world. Now, while "reasonable" comes from "reason" it does not mean here that a reasonable person uses more reason than another. It means that a person is more sensible than another. For example, there are no empirically verifiable evidence of a god or gods. Any religious person not mentally ill will agree. They may argue for the acceptance of anecdotal evidence or of natural phenomena as "acts of God", but just saying something doesn't make it so and anecdotal evidence is not verifiable/repeatable by a third-party and thus of very little value. So there doesn't seem to be any evidence for deities, even Pascal admitted that fact in the frickin 17th century, that's why he had to make a wager with non-believers: he tried to say that by betting on an infinite reward you cannot lose (many think that Pascal says the odds are infinite, but that would be empirical. Pascal says that since god is presumably infinite, and that you presumably gain this infinity when you die, you should take the bet since by doing so you lose nothing in this life. Of course the last part I think is false, also the dying part. Only the "god is infinite" has any kind of weight and it is very light). Of course he didn't really understand mathematical infinity and thus didn't realize that doing so meant you only had an infinitesimal chance of winning in return.

Digression aside, this means that the natural state of a rational being would be non-theistic. Only non-rational belief (based on logical fallacies or the sentiment of faith) or logical arguments based on non-empirical premises can lead to the existence of a god as part of one's thinking. Thus, while not necessarily non-rational, religious thinking most of the time is. In other cases, when dubious premises are used, we would say that the conclusions are not reasonable, meaning that they do not agree with our raw, unfiltered experiences of the world. This is exactly why many religious persons and theists resort to rationalism, as it lets them bypass primary experience in order to define god a priori as the creator of our experiences by some logical argument with dubious premises. Of course this comes from an empiric viewpoint, but then again rationalists don't have a monopoly on reason even though they let us empiricists have a monopoly on experience: that's where the Kantians enter, but that's a story for another time I'm afraid.

>> ^bmacs27:

If you've got me pegged as a creationist/ID proponent, you've got me pegged wrong. I specifically said, filling gaps in knowledge with divine intervention is obviously not valid. My point is simply that many who claim ID is unfalsifiable also claim irreducible complexity as impossible to demonstrate you might open evolution up to the same criticism. I don't really care what side I argue for, I'm just interested in hearing a hire level of debate. Frankly, I didn't want to talk about logical fallacies, I wanted to talk about biochemical processes, like opsin barrels, and energy barriers. That shit is dope.
Now, the real problem here is that what we mean by "evolution" is a moving target. It's so broad it's meaningless. In many ways "Darwinian evolution" has been falsified hundreds of times, much like Newtonian mechanics. It was wrong in the details. In fact, almost every rule I was ever taught at an elementary level about any sort of obviously falsifiable detail of evolution has turned out to be false in some weird or possibly limited case (e.g. epigenetics smells awfully Lamarckian). Still, we don't say "Darwin was wrong." You can't falsify evolution in the broad sense the same way you can't falsify gravity. At this point it's common sense more than science. It's more like a world view we use to form specific falsifiable theories than a theory itself. It's a world view that has been shown to be extraordinarily enlightening for sure. So much so, that at this point even with that Hippo fossil, I don't think people would change their minds.
That's fine. I just get worried about how far people push the assumption of natural selection (e.g. evolutionary psychology). I feel that there would more constructive arguments resulting from a healthy skepticism about it. I understand that there is a sociopolitical undertone to the whole debate, and I respect that. I just happen to think that those with the better arguments will win (natural selection). So often I see bullshit jive being put forth as reasoned debate, which I think is what happens when ideas gain too much popular acceptance. Thus, I'd like to see an elevated level of debate about the topic. Since you aren't going to get QM to form a coherent paragraph, I might as well be the uke.


Well, you may not remember, but not long ago "gravity" was thought not to exist. It took Galileo to prove without a doubt that it did. Same thing with "evolution": the concept was understood before Darwin (by, among others, Lamarck), but it took Darwin and his idea of natural selection to prove it (with Mendelian genetics being the Newtonian mechanics's analog). Newton said that two mass attract each other, and it still is true today only now we know that it is so because they each form a gravity well. In the same way Darwin said evolution happens by natural selection. I do not know how our understanding of the concept will change (or not, which is possible) in the future, but it will still be recognizable as being that the most fit (adapted) organism in a situation surviving and producing more offspring than the rest. What will change, I think, will be how we define fitness, organism, survival and reproduction. Already, the concept of "meme" shows how broadening some of the terms can lead to new understanding in the psychological realm. If you want to show that Darwin is wrong, then by all means attack natural selection and show us a better mechanism for evolution, the same way Einstein replaced Newtonian mechanics with general relativity. But really, I don't see how talking about biochemical processes will ever falsify natural selection. In fact, I don't even see how a flaw in natural selection could be revealed by some biochemical process: they seem to be on two different levels of abstraction. But if you know of one, then by all means enlighten us.

>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^mizila:
In fact, I think atheists tend to appreciate life more and just plain be happier.
Actually, David Sloan Wilson in an amazing experiment using the "Experience Sampling Method" pioneered by Csikszentmihalyi (the guy who investigated psychological "flow" experiences) found the following:
"On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires. On a moment-by-moment basis, they report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited. Some of these differences remain even when religious and non-religious believers are matched for their degree of prosociality." (From this article in which Sloan takes issues with some of Dawkins' statements in The God Delusion.)
So technically, your statement just hasn't been borne out by scientific investigation. That's not to say ALL religious people are happier than atheists. We're talking in the aggregate: on average, religious people tend to be happier (along with having other benefits). This should, of course, in no way interfere with your happiness as an atheist. You personally might be happier than everyone else that Wilson studied. But that doesn't mean everybody in the world besides you is better off without religion.
EDIT: What I would say, I guess, is that some people are happier and more productive being religious and others are happier and more productive being atheist. Depends on the individual.


Like Karl Marx said, religion is a drug. But what I would add is that instead of being opium, it's a mild performance enhancing drug. At least that's what religious people think. But it's simply a placebo: religious people think that by believing in god they are protected/doing good/gaining eternal afterlife/etc. and so they feel better. Classic self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing. The problem of course is that this changes their mental balance, and if something comes that challenge their world view they will get angry, like the addict you try to reason with. If something happens to make their religious worldview crumble, they get depressed, i.e. withdrawal syndrome.

On the other hand atheists are always on neutral. If new scientific evidence challenge their worldview, they'll just say "well, my experience of the world is the same, but my understanding of that experience must change". This is exactly to the contrary of the religious, who always thinks that his experience of the world itself is at stake. Religious people think their experience of the world includes a god, when in fact only their understanding of the world - gotten from the Bible or whatever source of authority - includes a god to explain Everything Else. This is why, I think, the theological debate hasn't advanced in two thousand years: religious types try to prove or disprove the experience of a god - which with the way they usually define god is impossible either way - whereas scientific types say with Laplace that a god is a superfluous hypothesis in the understanding of the experience we have of the world.

So atheists are more mentally stable and view the world and our experience of it in a more reasonable, detached manner. These, I think, are two things needed for humankind to not destroy itself with its own technological marvels. With this in min, it is no wonder that fundamentalists think global warming and weapons of mass destruction are "necessary" : they think the world is ok as it is and all is well with their god's plan, whereas they must also protect themselves against the guys that do not believe in their own god (the atheist commies and the islamic terrorists).

>> ^VoodooV:

I hate questions like that "Is religion a force for good?"
you can't answer that rationally with just a y/n. I would just paraphrase the old addage: "There are no bad religious members, just bad religious leaders."
if we actually held our leaders to higher standards instead of the opposite, maybe shit wouldn't be so bad/polarizing?


If you knew the extent of the philosophical debates that surround the whole issue of defining what "good" means -or more generally what moral values are- you would like that kind of questions even less, but for a whole 'nother lot of reasons. For example, ask someone if he thinks the word "unicorn" refers to something real (and not just an image). Most sane people will answer "no". Now ask if they think "good" refers to something real. They will either answer an uneasy "yes" or won't be able to respond. A small minority will venture a categoric "no"; then you just have to ask why they think killing is "bad" (or "not good") and they'll be at a loss for words, unless they're philosophers. Of course, "God did it" is not an appropriate answer to any of these questions: you should be able to say what "good" is whether or not God did it, just like we can say what a tree, or even a unicorn, is.

So a better, less confusing, starting point would be: "Is religion useful to mankind?". But the obvious answer is "it depends on the circumstances". Just like you can say that straw can be useful to build a house out of, you can say religion can be useful as a psychological aide. But normally, in our day and age, you would not use straw to build your house but wood or concrete or steel or brick, etc. Your straw building may stand for a long time depending on where you live, even resist some earthquakes better than other buildings, but come a big storm or a very cold climate and you won't stand a chance. The same with religion: if you have science and the scientific method you do not need to go out of your way to build your psyche out of the less adaptable religious concepts.

The unfortunate truth is, of course, that most religious people do not give their children the choice of either religious concepts or scientific ones. And when they do, it's because they've loaded the dice (e.g. the Jehovah's witness). So I ask, how can we hold our leaders to higher standards when we can't even see the benefits of these higher standards? (Here I assume science is a higher standard of thinking in general than religion, but even if we consider science purely as an amoral pursuit, can we let people that cling to belief systems thousand of years old dictate the standards of the leaders that are supposed to guide us in the future?)

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

You are setting up a very poor straw man/false dichotomy fallacy. Blank is merely pointing out correctly that this is a private matter in which the law has no real place. If they had made an an arrangement/contract before hand, that is one thing. But for a judge to decide the fate of children is completely the realm of parents and not courts. That is me putting words in Blanks mouth, he may have other reservations.
Edit: I should add, that if parents wanted to go to court in the case of no contract being established to mediate an arrangement; there is a place for that imo (they would have to front all costs for that justice I think...but that is a different conversation). However, the way custody hearings work is the state handing down decisions that are legally binding against the will, at times, of a party. This isn't all cases, some cases are mutual, and easy. But this is one of those cases where the state is going one step past mediator and into "moral law"...akin to regulating marriage and drugs.
>> ^Bidouleroux:
As opposed to what? The guy having the right to kill/beat his wife since she's a bitch? That would certainly go towards the well-being of his kids. The state is the only impartial third party here that can legally act on behalf of children, so the problem is not "statism" but the judge that represents the state.


I agree that it should be a matter between individuals, in a perfect world. We are not in a perfect world, thus it is not a matter between individuals. There are plenty of reason why this is and why it should stay that way for the foreseeable future, but none of those reasons apply here. The problem here is that a guy was denied custody not based on facts scientifically proven to be related to his children's well being but on the irrelevant fact that he is agnostic. It would be the same if the mother herself, in an "individual" dispute, made the argument that she won't let him have the kids because he is agnostic. If the state could not intervene, there would be no recourse for him (except to challenge her in a duel I guess). In this case, you could say "the families on both sides will be the judge when they can't agree" or "their mutual friends/coworkers/attorneys/whatever will make the final decision", etc. but this all comes down to third party intervention. The only third party that (theoretically) has only the welfare of the children in mind is the state. It is the same reasoning that goes behind contractual laws: only the state has the moral authority and objectivity to legiferate and intervene when a contractual dispute arises between two citizens that they cannot resolve between themselves in a fair manner. You can argue all you want about what's "fair" or not, but unless you want to return to pre-social anarchy (the bad kind) then you'll need to at least tolerate the state for the time being and recognize the necessity of its intervention in the interpersonal affairs of men.

P.S. Marriage law necessarily needs to be regulated as marriage is a contract. Unregulated marriages (essentially, religious marriages) are rife with unfair clauses that give all power to men in exchange for basically nothing, not even physical security (the man can beat his wife whenever he pleases and can repudiate her while she can't divorce under any circumstances).

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^JiggaJonson:
>> ^blankfist:
Hello, my name is blankfist, and I'm here today to say, "Haha, way to go statist idiots."

Statism is not the sole reason for this injustice.

But it's the sole reason his kids were able to be taken away.


As opposed to what? The guy having the right to kill/beat his wife since she's a bitch? That would certainly go towards the well-being of his kids. The state is the only impartial third party here that can legally act on behalf of children, so the problem is not "statism" but the judge that represents the state.