People make stupid comments all the time. Whether or not it was intended, this thread was essentially trolled off-topic with enormous rants about religion vs. atheism. Instead of going on forever about it, why not pay as much attention to it as it deserves? Immediately after the religious posting, Enoch magnificently addressed and concluded that religion doesn't consistently shape behavior nearly as much as good parenting in just 1 post. Of course the religious faction is going to reply back; their religion is a strong component of their identity. Just don't mind it and continue the thread forward.

If it's possible to salvage this thread at all, we were actually talking about how behavioral shaping comes most strongly in 2 forms revealed so far:

1) Mass showing of materials which help instill understanding of people who are very different from normal in some way, with sincere discussion (such as dealing with bullying the gay or mentally retarded individuals)
2) Parenting, to ensure that children hold strong values about understanding each other and treating each other well.

Are there any other interesting ideas to add to the list? Also, point 2 is huge; how do you get more parents to parent better?

>> ^Bidouleroux:

>> ^draak13:
It's too bad that this all became about religion; we had a lot of worthwhile discussion about social reform and behavioral shaping until it became a religion slugfest.

Well, religious idiots think such reforms must come with some kind of religious doctrine attached. Wintstonfield et al would deny it so as to appear virtuous and selfless, but ultimately indoctrination is the goal of religions themselves even if it may not be the goal of every individual member. And as every dealer knows, giving the first dose free is the best way to create addicts.
This is the original "religion is good and should be encouraged" argument by Winston:

(A) You need to instill the population with a moral belief system
(B) Churches are one of only a few organizations which have the development of a moral belief system in the population as their primary function
(C) Supporting religion in this effort of morality development is inherently a good thing for society

(A) is of course. Although I prefer "ethics" because it refers to strictly to actions.
(B) is a load of bullcrap. Churches, or any kind of religious organizations, don't have the development of a moral belief in the population as their primary function. Their primary function is the indoctrination of people in the belief system of said religion. That these belief systems come with moral/ethical precepts is irrelevant here.
(C) is dubious, at the very best. Supporting a religion's effort for morality development is akin to endorsing the underlying metaphysical nonsense of that religion. The problem is knowing whether the good brought by a religion's moral development outweighs the bad brought by the indoctrination into that religion. I do not accept any indoctrination at all, so religion is out of the question for me, but some may think that it is a good tradeoff. Most of those people are either already indoctrinated or morons.
So I agree that religions, or Churches or whatever, have no place in a discussion about social reform and behavioral shaping. Now, if only those religious idiots would stop trying to attach religious doctrine to every piece of ethical advice they give we could actually get this discussion somewhere.

>> ^draak13:

It's too bad that this all became about religion; we had a lot of worthwhile discussion about social reform and behavioral shaping until it became a religion slugfest.


Well, religious idiots think such reforms must come with some kind of religious doctrine attached. Wintstonfield et al would deny it so as to appear virtuous and selfless, but ultimately indoctrination is the goal of religions themselves even if it may not be the goal of every individual member. And as every dealer knows, giving the first dose free is the best way to create addicts.

This is the original "religion is good and should be encouraged" argument by Winston:

(A) You need to instill the population with a moral belief system
(B) Churches are one of only a few organizations which have the development of a moral belief system in the population as their primary function
(C) Supporting religion in this effort of morality development is inherently a good thing for society

(A) is of course. Although I prefer "ethics" because it refers to strictly to actions.
(B) is a load of bullcrap. Churches, or any kind of religious organizations, don't have the development of a moral belief in the population as their primary function. Their primary function is the indoctrination of people in the belief system of said religion. That these belief systems come with moral/ethical precepts is irrelevant here.
(C) is dubious, at the very best. Supporting a religion's effort for morality development is akin to endorsing the underlying metaphysical nonsense of that religion. The problem is knowing whether the good brought by a religion's moral development outweighs the bad brought by the indoctrination into that religion. I do not accept any indoctrination at all, so religion is out of the question for me, but some may think that it is a good tradeoff. Most of those people are either already indoctrinated or morons.

So I agree that religions, or Churches or whatever, have no place in a discussion about social reform and behavioral shaping. Now, if only those religious idiots would stop trying to attach religious doctrine to every piece of ethical advice they give we could actually get this discussion somewhere.

OK Winstonfield, I'll tell you why you're a (religious) idiot. You seem to be asking for it after all.

1. All Christian codes of conduct (its ethics) can be traced back to Greek philosophers. It probably goes further back than that, but we only have records up to the Greeks. Religions at that time did not concern themselves with ethical matters, at least not in any systematized way (it was a collection of old wives' tale about what happened to the boy who cried wolf, etc.). Judaism was one of the first, if not the first, religion to do this. This is why it was laughed at. Everyone in the ancient world knew that religion had nothing to do with raising good people: the City did. Nowadays we would say: the school, or the government or whatever. Only when religion takes over the schools or the government (like Judaism did in Judea or Christianity in medieval Europe) does it serve that purpose. And all monotheistic religions, by their nature, seek to become the only power, so it makes sense that they would encompass all things about life. Which makes their message too spread out and (philosophically) weak. This is why a religion like Christianity, that was proliferated by Roman slaves, could itself become the basis for Black slavery centuries later.

2. Churches do not want to build better people for a better world. They want to indoctrinate people so that the Church becomes the World. They want uniformity of thought. They are totalitarian in their very nature. Especially monotheist Churches. But then again, polytheisms usually do not have Churches.

3. Churches do not teach moral behavior. They preach moral behavior. Anyone can preach. Few can teach. The ancient Greek and Roman nobility would pay fortunes to get a good teacher for their children, and the City was seen as having a duty to educate all children to become proper citizens. And here you say we must put our faith in the words of preachers, who recite two thousand year old parables about a supposed King of the Jews that lived in a Roman controlled desert? What the fuck is wrong with you?

4. You should learn about Evolutionary Stable Strategies. For a strategy to be evolutionary stable, it is not required that it do anyone any good, only that it be good at reproducing itself. Religions are such strategies. They are parasitic. They hijack the timeless ethical wisdom of our ancestors to perpetuate their useless metaphysics.

5. He means what I said at 4. Since it's important, I'll repeat it here: religions are hijacking the timeless ethical wisdom of our ancestors to perpetuate their useless metaphysics.


To be on topic, as an aikidoka I believe this is a perfect example of the good usage of violence (or force). Once you cannot peacefully avoid conflict anymore and the opponent still presses for combat, you give him the fight of his life. It may very well mean that you failed to avoid conflict, but that is why we learn to fight: so that when we do fight, we can prevail without killing or maiming (this kid probably does not know aikido so give him a break). But even so, in very rare and specific circumstances, you will have to kill to preserve your life or that of someone close. But if you tried to avoid conflict as the precepts of aikido dictate, it is safe to say that you are still a better person than he was*. After all, sometimes a good razing is the only thing that will keep a forest alive. Individual trees do not matter in the long run.

*Some aikidoka would be reluctant to say this. They are either Japanese people and thus have a hard time admitting to unpopular/controversial opinions or they are deluding themselves and being weak. How can there be good if no one is better than anyone else, if no one is worth more than anyone else? Of course, it's easy to say "worth less" = "worthless", but that is only being cynical and misses the point. As for me, as an atheist I do not believe in Good or Evil and so goodness is more like IQ: normal people in a given society get a median of 100 points of goodness or virtue or whatever you want to call it. Even psychopaths need to be good sometimes in order to live in society (some may say they fake it, but faked or not their actions are sometimes good). Inter-cultural comparisons, while not impossible, are difficulty to do and ultimately arbitrary.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

1. You're speaking for all churches, which doesn't make sense. Different churches are... different.
Churches are different. This is true. But most religions do not go about teaching negative behavior. I've never been in a church (Baptist, Lutherain, Catholic, 7th Day, Mormon, Jewish, whatever) where I heard the message, "Its OK to steal, lie, cheat, sleep around, or be intolerant to others." Quite the opposite. Most churches teach what would be called 'positive morality'. The relative degree of success each church achieves then becomes represented in the population.
2. You're implying that all the morals that a church teaches are the right ones. Many people strongly disagree.
You are using absolutes here. I did not say "all the morals". I said that churches teach morality codes that encourages the "build a better world by building better people" outcome that some were saying was a preferable dynamic to a soceity where we cheer the slamming of bullies into the sidewalk.
3. You're saying that the best way to teach morals is to make people believe in God. Many people strongly disagree.
No - I did not say that. I said that churches/religion were places where moral behavior is taught, and that should be encouraged rather than denigrated.
4. You're saying that fighting against churches in various forms is counterproductive to
producing moral people. Many people strongly disagree.
This I DID say. Undermining organizations that instruct their members to be better people - merely because you may not agree with all their tenents - is counterproductive to producing a moral people. Many people strongly disagree? Then those people are morons.
Let's move it away from religion for a second. For the sake of argument, let's say that we're talking about a completely non-religious group which has as its sole purpose the desire to teach people the societal benefits that come from adhering to a Utilitarian philosophy. This group goes around, building charities, helping the poor, caring for the sick, and otherwise providing a bunch of service and societal benefits. In short - they are doing good and helping people.
But then a group of Wittgenstienians come along who strongly disagrees with the Utilitarian philosophy. They begin to loudly shout that these Utilitarians should be eliminated, ignored, and marginalized because what they believe is 'wrong' or 'old-fashioned'. They acheive a certain degree of success, and the Utilitarian group starts getting fewer people showing up, and therefore has less ability to continue doing its good deeds.
Now - how exactly has society been advanced by this scenario? It hasn't. These hypothetical Wittgenstienians are not doing good themselves. They exist only as a parasitical contradiction to the Utilitarians. They are not replacing the good deeds, actions, and benefits that were being done by the group they disagreed with. They are doing nothing except reducing the number of people who were doing good things. How is that "building better people?"
Now - that is an exaggeration of course. In real life, not all of Group "A" are necessarily doing good things, and not all of Group "B" are not contributors to the good. But by and large the example serves the purpose of illustrating that religions do contribute to the societal good, and that there is little or no societal benefit that results from hassling them merely because you don't agree with them.
5. You're misrepresenting the true purpose of most churches that I've heard of, and misrepresenting Christianity in general.
I... have no clue what you mean with this statement. At what point did I ever make statements about "the true purpose of religion"? All I said was that one of the main functions of religion is to teach morality to people. Well - that's true. When you sit down in a church & listen to a sermon or go to Sunday School, 99 times out of 100 the message is one of personal morality. I've been in all kinds of different denominations, and this is a characteristic that they all pretty much share.

>> ^NinjaInHeat:
First of all, you misunderstood me completely, I was talking about spiritual belief, there's a difference between believing the sun will come up and believing in god and even there I have a problem with the verb "believe". I don't believe the sun will come up, I know it has come up every day since the day I was born so I assume (with quite a bit of certainty) that it will come up again tomorrow.
I understood from your words that you believe in god, you talk about meaning with such certainty and then you talk about humility? To me, true humility is accepting you can't truly believe in things of the spiritual nature, they are metaphysical, you have no means of judging their meaning/existence or lack there of. You could look at the different explanations science/religion/your own personal interpretation can offer and say which you feel the most at peace with.
You talk about the "trap" of nihilism, again, ironic. As far as I'm concerned religious belief is the trap, it is in of it self arrogance, it is saying "I believe in something because I do, because I have faith". I don't "believe" in science, I accept that it is our most efficient tool at understanding the world, it isn't an answer, it is a means. I don't understand how any humble human being deems it justifiable to just pick from a plethora of so called "answers" or "truths" and say "this one, this is true, this explains everything, there is meaning". Again, if I misunderstood, I apologize, but if you are religious then why would you talk about something like the sun rising and falling? It is a physical phenomenon that we can observe and make (somewhat) objective assumptions about. You must realize that in religion logic is never on your side, it is the belief in spite of logic, the insistence on the least likely, arrogance.


I can tell you're itching to attack my views here, but since you're not sure, you can't unload the big guns. I'll make it easier for you. Yes, I believe in God. No, it isn't because I was raised with religion (i wasn't), nor was I indoctrinated. I was agnostic until a few years ago. I believe in God because of personal revelation.

Now you say God isn't likely. How would you know? If you want to look at it that way, everything is equally unlikely. Why should anything exist at all? I think you're having the problem that most atheists have, seperating the question from religious ideas about it. The question, "Was the Universe created?" is a perfectly reasonable one. I don't see why it seems so out there to some people to believe that the Universe could have been created. To say it all exploded out of nothing randomly I think is a much more bizzare (and ridiculous) thought.

The spiritual is not something you believe in, it's something you experience. It's not a matter of conceptualizing it, it's a matter of what is happening in actuality, real time, in the here and now. Before my beliefs changed, I had no clue what any of it was all about. I presumed people were imagining it. Not so. There are interconnections between us which transcend physiciality. There are parallel realities in which people can and do travel, in their dreams or wide awake. Until you experience it personally, you absolutely won't know anything about it what-so-ever. It's like trying to watch a football game from outside the stadium based on the noise the crowd is making.

I don't believe the things I do, or have the faith I have, because of some selfish need or weakness or fear. I believe as I do because of my personal experience. I wouldn't believe it, otherwise. It isn't arrogant of me to believe in something in which I have sufficient evidence personally. To me, truth is something tangible; it is not a vague conception. It is the framework of who and what I am. Regardless of whether it seems real to someone else, it is real to me, and the impact I have on the world is a direct result of that truth. So, either way you look at it, it's a real thing. This is what I meant about all the meaning out there. 7 billion human beings living out their truth. It is tangible to all of us.

First of all, you misunderstood me completely, I was talking about spiritual belief, there's a difference between believing the sun will come up and believing in god and even there I have a problem with the verb "believe". I don't believe the sun will come up, I know it has come up every day since the day I was born so I assume (with quite a bit of certainty) that it will come up again tomorrow.

I understood from your words that you believe in god, you talk about meaning with such certainty and then you talk about humility? To me, true humility is accepting you can't truly believe in things of the spiritual nature, they are metaphysical, you have no means of judging their meaning/existence or lack there of. You could look at the different explanations science/religion/your own personal interpretation can offer and say which you feel the most at peace with.

You talk about the "trap" of nihilism, again, ironic. As far as I'm concerned religious belief is the trap, it is in of it self arrogance, it is saying "I believe in something because I do, because I have faith". I don't "believe" in science, I accept that it is our most efficient tool at understanding the world, it isn't an answer, it is a means. I don't understand how any humble human being deems it justifiable to just pick from a plethora of so called "answers" or "truths" and say "this one, this is true, this explains everything, there is meaning". Again, if I misunderstood, I apologize, but if you are religious then why would you talk about something like the sun rising and falling? It is a physical phenomenon that we can observe and make (somewhat) objective assumptions about. You must realize that in religion logic is never on your side, it is the belief in spite of logic, the insistence on the least likely, arrogance.

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^NinjaInHeat:
The lack of conviction you speak of, the unwillingness to accept any "truth" as absolute is by definition the opposite of arrogance. How can anyone who -believes- in anything say to the "non-believer" that he's arrogant? A believer must be arrogant enough to say "I believe in this, I don't believe in that", a logical person simply says "I am not informed enough to decide what is true and what is not, I believe everything is possible". As far as I'm concerned, belief is the ultimate form of arrogance: a person allowing himself not to be completely objectiveBR>

Believing something is not the ultimate arrogance. I believe the Sun will come up tomorrow. Is that arrogant, or is it just good sense? Essentially, I am taking a leap of faith, but the precipice isn't very high. We can believe things just on the basis of observation and deduction. Just because I could be wrong doesn't mean I have no basis for my belief. My belief there is completely justified by the long history of the Sun coming up every day without fail, the stability we find in the continuim, and what we have observed about the behavior of Sol and other similar stars.
How is one supposed to be truly objective? Only God could be truly objective. We simply don't have enough information to be objective about anything. Our lives are consumed with self-interest. Just to maintain our life here we have to eat, be clothed, etc. I guarantee you no one on Earth is as interested in this as you are. We are inherently selfish for this reason. We have to be. It isn't like someone else could or would live our lives for us. Unless we reach out and grab it for ourselves, no one is going to be putting it in our hand.
A logical person may say he isn't informed enough to make judgments about everything, but he is reasonably informed enough about some things to feel fairly confident in his stance. Is that arrogance? To believe something is true, regardless of whether he could be wrong or not? We all have that in common, you know. Every one of us could be wrong about absolutely everything we know as true and real. I think its admirable, to take a stand for what you believe in, as obviously Mr Hitchins did and still does. I think its cowardice to dismiss it all as meaningless. The Earth is ripe with meaning, with value. It screams out to us every moment of every day. To look at this world and see nothing meaningful has got to be a mental illness at best.

"metaphysical esoteric nonsense"

Correct.

I recommend you all forget about the Kubrick / Spielberg melodrama and go read the source material. Brian Aldiss eventually wrote three short stories about David. In fact, in a foreword titled "attempting to please" he talks about Kubrick, Spielberg, AI, etc. It's quite interesting. Here, let me type out a bit of it:

"So why was 'Supertoys' not filmed? [...] My belief is that he [Kubrick] was basically mistaken. Obsessed with the big blockbuster SF movies of the time, he was determined to take my sorrowing domestic scene out into the galaxy. After all, he had wrought similarly to great success with [Arthur C.] Clarke's story.

But 'The Sentinel' looks outward to begin with. It speaks of a mystery elsewhere, whereas 'Supertoys' speaks of a mystery within. David suffers because he does not know he is a machine. Here is the real drama; as Mary Shelley said of her Frankenstein, it 'speaks to the mysterious fears of our nature'.

A possible film could be made of 'Supertoys' showing David facing his real nature. It comes as a shock to realise he is a machine. He malfunctions. Perhaps his father takes him to a factory where a thousand identical androids step off the line. Does he autodestruct? The audience should be subjected to a tense and alarming drama of claustrophobia, to be left with the final questions, 'Does it matter that David is a machine? Should it matter? And to what extent are we all machines?'

Behind such metaphysical puzzles remains the simple story - the story that attracted Stanley Kubrick - of a boy who was never able to please his mother. A story of love rejected."

@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

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.

Agreed, but religion is a special consideration because it claims to know of a divine, metaphysical truth of enormous importance. Being an atheist, I've no issue with people subscribing to religion - not at all. I take issue with religion being imposed on children, inserted into the wrong canals of education and being so significantly involved in politics and government.

You've just said, in so many words, that you have no problems with religion, as long as it's invisible and has no effect on society. Children are incapable of making rational, informed decisions (same with a lot of "adults"). While Bertrand Rusell is correct that children's religious beliefs is installed at the mother's knee, there's not a better way. The State has no morality.

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.

You've also just described liberalism. Liberals believe they are doing only good and that liberalism is altruistic. Who's going to argue against caring for the poor? But when the latest social program not only fails to reduce an evil but instead legitimizes and expands it, it's depressing. It has to be the fault of The Other. It's the Republican/Devils' fault--or lack of money--when the real answer is flawed human nature.

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.

Atheism is not neutral. It is a declaration that there are no deities and no supernatural influences, because they have never been scientifically proven. Yes, the religious are 'dependent' on their God/s, but the idea that atheists are Vulcan geniuses is equally absurd. Man remains a vicious animal with only a thin veneer of reason. If a stranger struck your child for no reason, rare is the fellow who would stop and say, "This stranger is obviously mentally unbalanced or just having a bad day, that's why he did that." The other 999 out of a thousand would have to be restrained to keep from killing the SOB.

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).

There has never been a successful State sans religion. Remove God and the State becomes god, and the results of that are never good. Put another way, "As long as there is poverty, there will be gods."

>> ^quantumushroom:

I like Penn, admire and respect him. And I understand the rejection of the contradictions of the Bible. While faith is a personal matter, rejecting any religion on its contradictions alone seems narrow-minded. Life itself is fraught with paradoxes and contradictions. Many liberals believe in higher taxes on the wealthy, yet no one can make sense of the US Tax Code, filled with more than its share of contradictions, paradoxes, hypocrisy and passages that should have been ignored long ago.
It's possible to Believe and have faith in something without it being "perfectly" understood.


Agreed, but religion is a special consideration because it claims to know of a divine, metaphysical truth of enormous importance. Being an atheist, I've no issue with people subscribing to religion - not at all. I take issue with religion being imposed on children, inserted into the wrong canals of education and being so significantly involved in politics and government.

If a national leader, as an example, relies upon their religious faith for aspects of decision making, that strikes me as uncomfortable but tolerable - if their decisions have honest merit. However, it's grotesque when politicians bandy about their blind faith as if it were to their credit, and I don't believe there should be any religious references in the structure of government. Likewise, children should be educated about religion but not have it installed into them; on such an important matter, the decision to become religious needs to be made by a fully autonomous, intelligent person.

I'm not an anti-theist, but considering the (especially Abrahamic) religious claims, the stakes could not be higher. Religion deserves great attention and scrutiny for exactly that reason.

Your points are both well made and entirely pointless regarding the video. I say that not as an insult but as someone who sees things much as you suggest. The crux is, though, that the same can be said for all of science together. The dissecting of space into abstracts of meaning is no different from any other abstraction that people do. The trouble is, and where I think your description is too simple is that the abstraction and the dynamics are one in the same. The geometry they're trying to get down to in the video here describes the base dynamics of gravity throughout the universe. In that sense, it isn't just a structure applied to the universe by human minds but something fundamental. Describing gravity as a curvature in space time could be considered a human abstraction (like the electromagnetic field or the wave function in quantum mechanics) but the issue of whether the mean gravitational background of the universe is flat or not goes beyond that. Just like the mass and charge of the electron. It's a fundamental; it is the dynamics, the flow.


>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

More over, what is it say it isn't changing or is due to change, or is always in a state of flux. There might be some other more fundamental rule governing that overall shape...or what if the same isn't consistent through the galaxy. And is shape something you need to confine to matter and not the container in which mater is in? If both have a shape, and ones shape is affecting the others shape, what does shape even mean anymore. Is the shape the thing you have, or is it the thing you have after the thing above you is taken into account. What is shape?
My metaphysical interpretation of the universe is non-dimensional. Space having depth, IMO, is a result of the minds interpretation of the details of the universe. While the elements (heheheh) of Euclid's geometry are completely sound, and thus, trying to talk about the shape of the universe as humans experience it will be a question that has an answer, it doesn't answer the more important question, does existence itself have dimension. In the same way that I don't believe color is a property of light, I think you can reduce space and time (though time gets interesting) to an experience of minds.
Even without my own metaphysical framework built up, all interpretations of space (lines, squares, rays) derive their existence from one essential element, the point. A point has no dimension. A line is essentially a collection of dimensionless points. It is not necessary to interpret them as something with dimension. For example, y=x. Algebra, in general, allows for a dimensionless explanation for the interaction of points. Y=x doesn't have to look like anything, per say, for it to be solved in algebra. While humans will retain the contextual information of space and shapes when working for algebra, those are interpretations that correlate back on the human reality. In other words, much akin to a computer program, the universe could (and I believe does) operate without a property of space. Space is a result of minds in the same way monitors construct visual images from a computer. Both are interpretations of dimensionless data.
Seeing in spaces helps us be better hunters, but as that confers to the ultimate truth of reality, I am less certain. The real story might be less about space and gravity, but the overall governing dynamics which exist as a simple set of seemingly arbitrary rules. The reality of the universe might be very closely understood as a computer program or a very sophisticated algebra expression.

>> ^Mcboinkens:

Misleading. He is saying density is directly related to shape. What exactly qualifies as flat in the view of shapes? That implies that the Earth if flat too. I have a feeling there is quite a bit of debate about the process used here to determine it is flat and not saddled.


More over, what is it say it isn't changing or is due to change, or is always in a state of flux. There might be some other more fundamental rule governing that overall shape...or what if the same isn't consistent through the galaxy. And is shape something you need to confine to matter and not the container in which mater is in? If both have a shape, and ones shape is affecting the others shape, what does shape even mean anymore. Is the shape the thing you have, or is it the thing you have after the thing above you is taken into account. What is shape?

My metaphysical interpretation of the universe is non-dimensional. Space having depth, IMO, is a result of the minds interpretation of the details of the universe. While the elements (heheheh) of Euclid's geometry are completely sound, and thus, trying to talk about the shape of the universe as humans experience it will be a question that has an answer, it doesn't answer the more important question, does existence itself have dimension. In the same way that I don't believe color is a property of light, I think you can reduce space and time (though time gets interesting) to an experience of minds.

Even without my own metaphysical framework built up, all interpretations of space (lines, squares, rays) derive their existence from one essential element, the point. A point has no dimension. A line is essentially a collection of dimensionless points. It is not necessary to interpret them as something with dimension. For example, y=x. Algebra, in general, allows for a dimensionless explanation for the interaction of points. Y=x doesn't have to look like anything, per say, for it to be solved in algebra. While humans will retain the contextual information of space and shapes when working for algebra, those are interpretations that correlate back on the human reality. In other words, much akin to a computer program, the universe could (and I believe does) operate without a property of space. Space is a result of minds in the same way monitors construct visual images from a computer. Both are interpretations of dimensionless data.

Seeing in spaces helps us be better hunters, but as that confers to the ultimate truth of reality, I am less certain. The real story might be less about space and gravity, but the overall governing dynamics which exist as a simple set of seemingly arbitrary rules. The reality of the universe might be very closely understood as a computer program or a very sophisticated algebra expression.

As an atheist, I agree with the message, but come on, it's just a straw man argument. The Christian guy doesn't make any attempt to explain his position in a metaphysical sense, and allows the woman to continue to believe that he's talking about a literal person who's watching/stalking her.

She is right though, there's very little about "Jesus's love" that resembles actual love.

>> ^coolhund:

Interesting. I guessed it would piss off some of you, especially the ones I mentioned, but ignoring and bending facts... well, thats new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism


Who is bending facts? Be specific, rather than throwing out vague accusations.

Crotchflame already explained the difference between Atheism and Agnosticism, but since you like wikipedia so much, from your own link to Atheism

"Atheism, in a broad sense, is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities." (emphasis mine)

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic

"Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable" (again emphasis mine)

Do you understand the difference?

Debating protip: for a start, highlight who you are accusing and what you're accusing them of. Then, instead of just adding a link, use supporting arguments from that link to, you know, make a point?

Otherwise it reads like this: Wow, Jesus was gay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus

Doesn't make much sense, does it?