Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

[MFB]

Sorry to hijack the *thread, I thought it was an open forum! And Sweet T Swift GIF!

Its funny, bc Im not religious. But Im not bitter toward religion in the least.
I never said anyone was wrong, only sharing my thoughts.
I think my words are being twisted.

I believe people can be ethical regardless of thier beliefs. Religious, atheist, or otherwise. Ive met good ppl of all creeds. I do think religion is being used as a scapegoat here for ppl's unethical actions. Perhaps you guys have had nothing but bad experiences w religious folk. Ive had a lot of good ones.

I dont believe terrorism\suicide bombers\brainwashing\politics agendas\etc are tied to religion so much as they are tactical goals. I see Religion being used a distraction to justify actions toward social and economic goals that have nothing to do with religion.
Furthermore, there have been many secular terrorist organizations.

And again, I never said the religious folk I know are 'perfect'. They fuck up like the rest of us. I said they are good people, that have never pushed an agenda on anyone in my experience. They are an example of how religion works for some people. I think its presumptuous to assume theyre being good ppl in an effort to recruit ppl, or they are being good ppl bc of the reward of heaven. Imo The people Ive worked w are authentically nice bc that is reward in itself and its what they believe is right for them and only them.

Again. Im not religious. And Im not arguing that there hasnt been a lot of bad that has come from religion, but there is also a lot of good. Im saying that religion helps a lot of people optimize themselves. I dont think there's a right or wrong. It's personal. People should be able to believe what they need to when they need to.

 

[Dameon]

How do you know what's real and what isn't? Expecting a "burden of proof" response.

I assume you mean as far as gods go, since in the philosophical sense that's way too broad a question. Despite your dismissal of "burden of proof", it's very important. Besides that, it's impossible to prove something's not real, as far as gods and magic go. All these gods and magical people had no problem with showing off in the past, it's only apparently recently that every single one of them has developed a problem with proving their own existence, and their existence is contradictory to things we do know and can prove.

Ok Christian doctrine is bullshit. But admitting that isn't atheism. Athiesm is denial of all god or gods. Its just another belief doctrine.

I didn't just address Christianity, although some of my specific examples were from Christianity. Atheism isn't a belief doctrine; you aren't taught the principles of atheism by somebody, there isn't some sort of atheist scripture handed down by the elders. You aren't required to believe anything that you can't prove for yourself.

I believe people can be ethical regardless of thier beliefs. Religious, atheist, or otherwise. Ive met good ppl of all creeds. I do think religion is being used as a scapegoat here for ppl's unethical actions. Perhaps you guys have had nothing but bad experiences w religious folk. Ive had a lot of good ones.

I'm not arguing that people can't be moral regardless of their beliefs. I believe that your beliefs affect your worldview and your actions, especially when those beliefs require you to give up your capacity for critical thought. However, here's the problem, certain religious ethics are objectively immoral. Murdering your son in cold blood because a voice in the sky tells you to is ethical in biblical terms, but objectively immoral behavior. Beating your slave is immoral, but by biblical ethics it's okay (as long as you don't beat them to death). Having a crowd of youths torn to pieces because they make fun of you is ethical according to the bible, but I hope we can all agree it's immoral.

And while these are specifically Christian ethics, all the major religions have this feature. There's a difference between ethics handed down from a religious source, and morals derived from sound philosophical principles.

I dont believe terrorism\suicide bombers\brainwashing\politics agendas\etc are tied to religion so much as they are tactical goals. I see Religion being used a distraction to justify actions toward social and economic goals that have nothing to do with religion.
Furthermore, there have been many secular terrorist organizations.

Secular terrorism is very different from religious terrorism.
Religious terrorism is more violent and deadly, and the more religious an organization is, the more attacks it will carry out.
As religious terrorism has grown, the rate and lethality of attacks has grown dramatically.
Saying that "non-religious people do it too" is disingenuous; they don't do it the same, or nearly as much. Religion creates specific opportunities to exploit in somebody's psyche; it requires suspension of critical thought, it requires belief in what you're taught over evidence. It gives you a system of ethics based on a history of genocide, rape, and slavery in the name of a creator that mercilessly punishes non-believers and the disobedient.

Again. Im not religious. And Im not arguing that there hasnt been a lot of bad that has come from religion, but there is also a lot of good. Im saying that religion helps a lot of people optimize themselves. I dont think there's a right or wrong. It's personal. People should be able to believe what they need to when they need to.

See, here's where your problem is. It's like you're stuck halfway; you admit that "a lot of bad comes from religion" (to paraphrase you), but you can't admit that those bad things are done through religious people, using the religion. And here's the thing, I can quantify the bad stuff that comes from religion; I can show you solid, numbers-based evidence that religion encourages and enables people to do that bad stuff, that people do it in higher numbers because of religion. Show me some numbers that show religion helps more people than it hurts.

Meanwhile, people flock to religious 12-step programs to treat addiction, when the success rates are abysmal, instead of using actual science-based approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Doesn't seem like religion is helping them optimize themselves when it counts; in fact it's setting them up for a cycle of addiction and hopelessness when they could get the help they need and have much better odds. Conversion camps where gay people are beaten, insulted, and berated turn out broken people with life-long mental issues; that doesn't seem optimal. I don't think you can be your optimal self while you believe in a magical invisible sky genie that will punish you for thinking wrong thoughts.

Nobody's saying anybody shouldn't have the right to their beliefs. Nobody's proposing making religion illegal, that kind of stuff just makes religion stronger anyway; they love their martyrdom. Don't build straw men.

 

[Gypsybones]

I’m being lazy and not quoting anyone, but I’m sure y’all can keep with the program.



The faithful believe that certain truths have been 'revealed.' The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic.




Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.


There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me, but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.




*to make a point my friend, it was not a berating




“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”

~Richard Dawkins


Goodnight folks

 

[Gypsybones]

 

[benton]

Religion brainwashes people into behavior that they absolutely wouldn't do without religion, because religion teaches you to ignore evidence and believe what you're told, and you don't have to worry about dying in service to god because this world is just a small stop before eternity. This isn't something that happens without religion, you need religion to convince people to prefer faith over facts. Yeah, you can argue there's theoretically atheist conmen, but is there an atheist equivalent to a megachurch? Atheism is all about critical thought, it's the opposite mentality of religion.

Speaking from personal experience, with some religions its actually much worse than what you are describing. Children who are raised in mind control cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses experience a stunting of their ability to think and reason for themselves whereas without the mind control of the cult being applied, presumably the child's ability to think and reason independently would develop normally.

When you see a group of Jehovah's Witnesses in public proselytizing, any children in the group are being subjected to literal mind control which in my opinion is child abuse and one of the effects of which is the hobbling of the development of the child's intellect with respect to logic and reason, because in order to keep the child under mind control as they mature into adulthood, it is necessary that the cult member not have the ability to think for themselves. What I have described from experience is directly Satanic in my view.

edit: with respect to "truth" and religion: truth is manifested each moment and is living and in flow (dynamic)

truth can never be possessed as an object because as soon as one seizes truth and tries to hold onto it, the flow is interrupted and the "truth" becomes a dead thing (static), and truth cannot possibly be a dead thing

 

[MFB]

I was thinking about responding, but I dont see anything productive coming from an ongoing back and forth.
So Ill say, agree to disagree.
And
God bless you, my doods!

 

[Maxnomad]

Some believe that that truth has been revealed. But, this belief runs counter to faith itself, which is by definition persistence in the face of uncertainty.

Experiments can only be conducted under conditions of prior non-knowledge. Galileo dropping stuff off the tower of pisa was conducting a test based on untested assumptions about the nature of stuff and towers. Science is unavoidably embedded in culture, and culturally informed.

"Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe" honestly this is such a wildly incoherent statement (it does not cohere) that it needs no comment. Here's one anyway. If you're not a physicist, you can only have blind faith in physics

What is real is not an overly broad philosophical question. I was actually just flipping through the relatively short book "what is real", and I'm looking forward to it

Here's this

https://info-buddhism.com/Tibet_as_...5GHgLAw1wqDquLn-1tFOmdNnZUkEMjOxgeAWsSE5pumOE

 

[Dameon]

Some believe that that truth has been revealed. But, this belief runs counter to faith itself, which is by definition persistence in the face of uncertainty.

Experiments can only be conducted under conditions of prior non-knowledge. Galileo dropping stuff off the tower of pisa was conducting a test based on untested assumptions about the nature of stuff and towers. Science is unavoidably embedded in culture, and culturally informed.

"Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe" honestly this is such a wildly incoherent statement (it does not cohere) that it needs no comment. Here's one anyway. If you're not a physicist, you can only have blind faith in physics

I like how you paraphrased what I said as something very different, and then said it was "incoherent". Yeah, it's incoherent when you change all the words. Speaking of incoherent, how is Galileo's experiment related to culture? Care to elaborate on why you think experiments require "conditions of prior non-knowledge"? Scientists do experiments to verify the results of other experiments literally all the time.

I don't have blind faith in physics, because the vast majority of it is independently verifiable. I can repeat Galileo's experiment, for example, and verify that two objects of different weights reach the same terminal velocity. At a certain point, yes, I have to assume that the entire scientific community isn't united in a giant conspiracy to lie to me, but the odds of that are pretty slim.

What is real is not an overly broad philosophical question. I was actually just flipping through the relatively short book "what is real", and I'm looking forward to it

"What is real" is a very broad philosophical question, it's something that's been debated from many different angles with many different conclusions throughout history. Just because there's a short book on it doesn't mean that book explores it in the depth it deserves. Regardless, discussing the broad idea of "what's real" isn't immediately relevant to the conversation, beyond the answer I gave.

I don't see how your link is relevant at all, either. Can you explain why China's oppression of Tibet is relevant to the discussion of whether religion is good or bad?

 

[Maxnomad]

Ok, bear with me, I'll try and take these one at a time but I don't have like notes prepared or anything.

First of all, I didn't paraphrase you, I quoted gypsybones, verbatim

Second, the relation between culture and experimentation is the determination that brings the experiment about, it's a question of what's already valued in that culture. For example, with us, it's profit. I just read a thing about sleep deprivation being correlated with stronger but temporary antidepressant effects from sleep deprivation, but you can't market sleep deprivation. Similarly you can't just patent a plant, but if you can isolate and synthesize some compounds, bam, there's a pill for the market. "Science" is not one monolithic thing, neither is religion. The article, if you read it, makes it clear that monasteries were places of refuge and centers of culture in an otherwise pretty shitty setting. The same was true, on and off, of Christian monasteries, which had various degrees throughout history of independance from the church. For that matter, the new testament was compiled a couple hundred years after the life of christ, written accounts taken from oral testimony, and there were a few of those that are deemed heretical, sacreligious, etc. Those are a supposedly a lot more radical, I haven't gotten to reading them

 

[Maxnomad]

And yes, what is real is a broad philosophical question, but it's also a determination you make every waking second, I'm pretty sure you can handle it

 

[DweebyChimp]

"When the fortunate one looks around the war-field of the world before him, he finds that it is easy to follow worldly religion but it requires supreme grace to triumph over this war against the very māyā."

We just had a visitor to our farm/temple in the middle of nowhere who was a prison inmate& former atheist locked up in solitary. Thru hopelessness he came in contact with our camp through a book program.
You can't touch divine yoga. Tangible joy saturated with peace & joy. Where is the path illuminated by Atheists that leads to freedom from poisonous qualities like envy&greed? If anyone is lost in the dark forest they should be so kind to switch that lamp on... because if your talk & actions don't spread the light of love, then what toxins are you broadcasting??

Proof is in the pudding, & the pudding is full proofed.

 

[roughdraft]

"When the fortunate one looks around the war-field of the world before him, he finds that it is easy to follow worldly religion but it requires supreme grace to triumph over this war against the very māyā."

We just had a visitor to our farm/temple in the middle of nowhere who was a prison inmate& former atheist locked up in solitary. Thru hopelessness he came in contact with our camp through a book program.
You can't touch divine yoga. Tangible joy saturated with peace & joy. Where is the path illuminated by Atheists that leads to freedom from poisonous qualities like envy&greed? If anyone is lost in the dark forest they should be so kind to switch that lamp on... because if your talk & actions don't spread the light of love, then what toxins are you broadcasting??

Proof is in the pudding, & the pudding is full proofed.

do you mean foolproof, fully proven or proofed?

 

[Dameon]

We just had a visitor to our farm/temple in the middle of nowhere who was a prison inmate& former atheist locked up in solitary. Thru hopelessness he came in contact with our camp through a book program.
You can't touch divine yoga. Tangible joy saturated with peace & joy. Where is the path illuminated by Atheists that leads to freedom from poisonous qualities like envy&greed? If anyone is lost in the dark forest they should be so kind to switch that lamp on... because if your talk & actions don't spread the light of love, then what toxins are you broadcasting??

There's so much to deconstruct here. For one, did your religion fix this prison guy, or did he come to you already wanting to be better? I don't know what you consider "divine yoga", but I get peace and joy all the time, and I don't need a god to do it.

Also, are you suggesting that atheism is all about envy and greed? Many of the most greedy people I've seen are religious, or operate under the guise of religion. You don't need god to spread love. I'm as capable of experiencing and spreading love as anybody who believes in a god. And your belief in a god doesn't mean you aren't just as capable of being an evil monster as anybody else.

 

[DweebyChimp]

do you mean foolproof, fully proven or proofed?

Yes.

 

[iamwhatiam]

Speaking from personal experience, with some religions its actually much worse than what you are describing. Children who are raised in mind control cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses experience a stunting of their ability to think and reason for themselves whereas without the mind control of the cult being applied, presumably the child's ability to think and reason independently would develop normally.

I'm glad you brought this up as I was raised Jehovah's Witness. Thankfully, I was never baptized and discovered how bullshit it all was in my late teens. Not only is it a mind control cult, but if you are baptized and THEN decide later you no longer believe, then you'll be completely shunned by all your friends and family that are still in. As in, they treat you like you don't even exist anymore.

I won't even go into the other fucked up policies of that religion (unless someone asks) because I'm not trying to derail this thread.

I cant understand being hostile toward religion. Ive known way to many religious ppl that were really good ppl, mainly bc of thier faith. Its not my place to tell someone what to believe.
It doesnt matter what someone believes.

To some religions, it DOES matter what someone else believes and they will completely shun you or worse when you decide you no longer believe their faith. How is that good?

 

[DweebyChimp]

There's so much to deconstruct here. For one, did your religion fix this prison guy, or did he come to you already wanting to be better? I don't know what you consider "divine yoga", but I get peace and joy all the time, and I don't need a god to do it.

Also, are you suggesting that atheism is all about envy and greed? Many of the most greedy people I've seen are religious, or operate under the guise of religion. You don't need god to spread love. I'm as capable of experiencing and spreading love as anybody who believes in a god. And your belief in a god doesn't mean you aren't just as capable of being an evil monster as anybody else.

Smoking Ganja&getting drunk doesn't equate to real peace&joy eh?

I WILL NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR BEING AGAINTS VIOLENT MATERIALISTIC SOCIETY! & I REFUSE TO ALLOW BITTERNESS TO WITHER MY HEART.
....don't you know it's Kali yuga?

 

[Dameon]

Smoking Ganja&getting drunk doesn't equate to real peace&joy eh?

I never said they do, stop trying to build strawmen. Also, you don't get to decide what equates "real" peace and joy. People can find those things in practically any activity, and you don't need a god to enjoy those feelings, nor does worshiping a god guarantee peace and joy.

I WILL NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR BEING AGAINTS VIOLENT MATERIALISTIC SOCIETY! & I REFUSE TO ALLOW BITTERNESS TO WITHER MY HEART.
....don't you know it's Kali yuga?

Then it's a good thing nobody asked you to do either of those things...

 

[benton]

I'm glad you brought this up as I was raised Jehovah's Witness. Thankfully, I was never baptized and discovered how bullshit it all was in my late teens. Not only is it a mind control cult, but if you are baptized and THEN decide later you no longer believe, then you'll be completely shunned by all your friends and family that are still in. As in, they treat you like you don't even exist anymore.

In my personal experience and from my observations, I believe that all children who are raised in the JW cult are victims of psychological child abuse at minimum because of the indoctrination and formal mind control techniques that are employed, which in my opinion are harmful to children because their brains are developing (and for a myriad of other reasons). The cult programming is much more harmful to children than it is to adults who were raised and socialized "normally" in my view.

JW children are socialized to interact with and respond to other people in specific ways in order to facilitate conversion of new members into the mind control cult.

I was well into my 30's before I began to realize that much of my interaction with other people was based on a false persona that had resulted from my cult indoctrination. For example, I had believed that I was one of the most extraverted and socially agreeable people around when in reality I am one of the most introverted people and actually have some inherent anti-social personality traits (as I assume many of us here have).

For a time I experienced much confusion because it was difficult to differentiate my actual personality from the false persona that resulted from the cult programming. I have been able to eliminate some of the programming through concerted effort and by retraining myself in various ways. I suspect that I will never be able to completely eliminate the programming and I work to mitigate it.

Formal, daily meditation was a game changer for me. It has enabled me to observe my thoughts and review my interactions in a detached manner in order to shift through them and figure out what is me and what is the cult. Shit is fucked, man!

 

[DweebyChimp]

I never said they do, stop trying to build strawmen. Also, you don't get to decide what equates "real" peace and joy. People can find those things in practically any activity, and you don't need a god to enjoy those feelings, nor does worshiping a god guarantee peace and joy.

Then it's a good thing nobody asked you to do either of those things...

Neat opinion.

 

[Maxnomad]

Oy vey