Skeeve CA

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Comments to Skeeve

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siftbot says...

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MrFisk says...

I've always found down-voting videos after they've had a chance to sift to be the best policy.
In reply to this comment by Skeeve:
I just have to downvote for this guy's stupidity.

Police are there to uphold the laws. Period. If you have a problem with the laws, make an effort to change them, don't try to convince police not to uphold them. Hold police accountable, by all means, but to argue that they shouldn't uphold a particular law is beyond ignorant.

One of the most horrible things I can think of is having a society where the police decide which laws they want to uphold or not.

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bareboards2 says...

Yes, thanks so much for that quote and the interpretation.

We do indeed agree.

I talk about the pendulum of society -- it may swing back and forth, but it is as a whole moving towards greater justice.

It wasn't that long ago that children were hanged in England for stealing bread.

There is hope. Education is the key, as you said.

I love the Sift. I have really enjoyed our exchange today.

bareboards2 says...

Well, it is partly biological, not solely biological, of course. We agree.

I think we are on the same page. If you go to my profile page and read the conversation between ChaosEngine and me, you can see that I also have concerns about the children and see that I believe strongly in keeping religion out of the laws.

I don't think the indoctrination of children IS a separate issue -- I think it is part and parcel of the passionate energy that some atheists bring to the conversation and I believe strongly it needs to be dealt with -- short of removing the kids from the home or going ahead and sterilizing fundies. You are 100% correct, I think -- education, education, education.

The thing about a perfect world also applies to our conversation.

Fundamentalist religious folks think they have the answer. Fundamentalist atheists think they have the answer. I'm just saying -- carve out your territories and stop trying to invade people's minds. Both of these groups need to stop that. It is a losing game. Create a game where you can win -- [edit] religious fundies stay out of the laws and [edit] rational atheists need to put up the billboards. And the internet! Ah, the lovely internet. Saving grace for many an isolated person.

In reply to this comment by Skeeve:
I think you have dug to the heart of our disagreement.

First, you repeatedly state that religion is biological. I think that is partly accurate, but it's not that simple. I think religion itself is memetic, but the need to believe in something is biological. Religion is a symptom of our evolutionary need to believe/explain what we don't understand.

As for not being able to force evolution, we've been doing that - consciously or unconsciously - for thousands of years. While sterilizing the religious and only allowing atheists to breed might be one solution, I think the proper course is education combined with laws separating religion from the government.

While education doesn't work 100% of the time (as your example points out), it is pretty clear that those with more education have less religion. Nations with better education systems have less religious adherence and individuals with higher educations tend to have less religion. And the key words in those sentences are "less religion"; it doesn't mean less belief, it just re-aims that belief from religion to rational thought/science/etc.

Education is to religion as the scalpel is to the appendix - it removes the evolved, no longer useful, but still dangerous, problem.

With regards to it not being right to tell someone not to take comfort in that which comforts them, I partly agree. If it isn't harming anyone else, then I don't care what someone believes and I'm not going to get in their face about it (if they try to convert me though, they have opened the door and are fair game). But the line is drawn when someone's beliefs harm or pose a threat to the well-being of others. In that case, anyone who opposes equal rights (whether for homosexuals, women, non-religious) are fair game.

The issue I struggle with personally is the indoctrination of children. Having experienced that personally, knowing how that limited me (and harmed me, in some ways) I have difficulty allowing the indoctrination of children to go uncontested. But that's a different problem for another discussion ;


>> ^bareboards2:

We'll have to agree to disagree.
I don't think you can force evolution. It isn't a choice. Not unless you start breeding programs.
Want the biological need for the divine to go away? Sterilize all religious folks. I don't think you can talk folks out of it.
I speak from experience. My brother is a retired Air Force pilot with a Master's degree in aerospace engineering. Grew up in a secular household. His need for structure and the divine led him to the Mormon Church. Talk about goofy beliefs!! Good lord! And he voluntarily turned off his reasoning brain to accept all their nonsense as true. You say religion has "served its purpose." So why did he go there, when he wasn't indoctrinated into it growing up?
Not for me to tell him not to take comfort where he takes comfort.
However, it is for me to tell him to back off on gay marriage and not impose his church's beliefs on others. (And to tell him that when the church's membership starts falling, I guarantee his Prophet will suddenly hear from God that it is okay to be gay now.)

>> ^Skeeve:
I think most atheists would agree with you, that religion has served an evolutionary purpose. I don't have "The God Delusion" with me at the moment, but I'm pretty sure Dawkins acknowledges that as well.
But whether or not it serves an evolutionary purpose or not is irrelevant. The appendix served an evolutionary purpose - then we evolved to do without it. The same goes for the wisdom teeth; most people have them removed because they can cause huge problems, but in a world without dental care they are incredibly important.
Most of us atheists believe it is time, at least in the west, to "evolve" beyond the need for an invisible sky-daddy. We have the opportunity to do with religion what evolution did for the appendix.
Belief in a god is irrational. That's not to say it didn't serve a purpose, as evolution is not bound by the rational, only by phenotypic fitness. But, religion has served its purpose and, like the appendix or the wisdom teeth, it's time it was removed from our lives.
>>


bareboards2 says...

Forty years ago. I remember three things from the book (at least, I think it was that book)

1. Grok

2. The "truth-teller." Someone asked them to say what color the house was, and she said -- the side that I can see is yellow.

3. Oh, yeah, four things -- the fact that every step she took, it looked like someone was arranging her long skirt, that somehow she was outside time.

4. The line "there are two types of people in the world -- those who know they are bi-sexual, and those who don't."

It's been forty years. I wonder how accurate my recollections are.

Is it time to re-read it?

In reply to this comment by Skeeve:
A bit of a tangent from our discussion of evolution and religion: have you read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land"?

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