posted
I don't know that I've ever seen your reasons for why you dislike 'religion'. Normally, people bring up religion in other threads and you kind of snipe at them. As such, a lot of your rationale against ' 'religion' is kind of spread out all over the place.
If you wouldn't mind, can you explain what religion is to you, why it is, in particular, bad for the world, and why you think the world would be better if it embraced atheism.
I recognize that I am making some assumptions as to your attitude about religion and atheism. So, pardon me if I've misconstrued any motivation or feeling on your part that is not true. As I mentioned, your stuff is all over the place, and that's why I'm making this thread. I want to understand what your thoughts are on the matter.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
The sky is also "kind of" blue (wait, I'm in L.A. -- bad example). Water is "kind of" wet; oxygen is "kind of" necessary for continued life on this planet as we know it.
And Storm, he has. Not that I agree with his arguments, but he has made them. (And I could swear you were part of at least one of those discussions, too.)
Unless the point of this thread is to provoke KoM into violating the ToS (which PJ reminded him about last night), I wonder what it's point is.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Hey, Storm, while you're here, remember that discussion we had some time ago about legal restrictions on freedom of speech? At the time I felt like I hadn't done a very good job of explaining my position, but it came up on another forum last week and I did some more research. I was going to start a thread with your name on it, but that French legislation came up here, so I posted what I found here.
Just wanted to clarify my position a little bit is all. Sorry for the hijack. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: Unless the point of this thread is to provoke KoM into violating the ToS (which PJ reminded him about last night), I wonder what it's point is.
Not at all. Sheesh.
Because as I said in the first post, I don't recall him actually making an argument, setting down his logic all at once? Like:
A. Here is what religion is B. Here is what human beings are C. Here is why they don't go well together D. Here is why atheism is much better for them
If he has, when did he do this?
I've had discussion with him, but we never finished that discussion regarding the nature of religion, and it didn't progress very far.
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posted
That wasn't meant to be an accusation -- sorry it came out that way. It was more of a reminder (about Pop's reminder) coupled with honest curiosity.
I refuse to sift through KoM's posts looking for what you are asking for, but I am still pretty sure he has posted it. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Answering this thread at all will most likely put KoM in violation of the user agreement. While I think that's a great idea of it could finally be convincing enough to get rid of him, it's probably something close to entrapment.
It will be interesting to see if he can answer without the usual insults and condescending mockery. I suppose that experiment is worth a try.
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quote: It will be interesting to see if he can answer without the usual insults and condescending mockery. I suppose that experiment is worth a try.
Perhaps, as an example, we should restrain from the sort of casual, condescending mockery that you're criticizing KOM of.
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posted
Again, I did not create this thread in the hopes of getting him banned. I think I've mentioned before that I don't really have a problem with KoM to the extent that I guess a lot of people have. Though I concede that he lacks tact on occasion, I can think of a lot of other people, past and present, that I think lack just as much tact, but whose opinions, because they are held by many here, cover that lack of tact. Heck, a lot of people here probably think I'm just as tactless as KoM.
That said, I encourage this thread to be a thread where Norwegians and Americans can come together in a fraternal spirit of carin' and sharin'.
posted
A weak one. My only regret is that KoM undoubtedly enjoys the attention his remarks gain him.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote: A weak one. My only regret is that KoM undoubtedly enjoys the attention his remarks gain him.
In that respect, he is no different than anyone else on this forum, I'm sure.
Part of the reason I created this thread is that I think it will allow KoM to come up with an argument in a virgin space not in relation to anything else anyone has said, and thus, hopefully, give him a clear space to air his grievances regarding religion constructively and in general, rather than at someone, which often comes across as spiteful.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: I refuse to sift through KoM's posts looking for what you are asking for, but I am still pretty sure he has posted it.
I think "dredge" would be a better word than "sift".
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posted
I would be very interested to see KoM put his ideas into one coherant post. But only if that post was aimed at explaining his views, and not trying to tear someone else's views to shreds.
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quote:...But only if that post was aimed at explaining his views, and not trying to tear someone else's views to shreds.
Some views can only be expressed as a rebuttal to someone else's views (especially when that opinion is an all-out rejection of religion in all its forms and guises).
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posted
True, but in this context he wouldn't have to be so darn specific. By which I mean, directed at one individual's view's in particular. You see, I just had him try to tear me apart, and I'd like to see how his views stand on their own, with no one else's to support him.
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posted
I saw the exchange on the other thread, and I'm not trying to make excuses for KOM. There's a right way and a wrong way to make your point.
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posted
I think KOM could answer this thread without violating the TOS. I think the warning in the other post was for the overboard personal attack. I don't see anything wrong with KOM explaining his view of religions in general, even though it will be uncomplimentary. But then I'm not Papa Janitor, so I guess what I think is pretty much moot.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Storm Saxon: [QUOTE] A. Here is what religion is B. Here is what human beings are C. Here is why they don't go well together D. Here is why atheism is much better for them
I don't know about KOM, but I can give my own views on the subject. (Although I'm agnostic rather than atheist)
Sketch outline, try not to get too bogged down in sematics because we're covering some hard to define terms...also for simplicity when I say "religion" I actually mean "most Western religions, particularly but not limited to those based on the Bible".
A) Religion is a set of beliefs to explain that which one cannot (or does not want to) explain through science, where science is distingushed from religion due to its emphasis on deduction from (first) principles and verification through evidence (vs. faith and historically significant texts). B) Homo sapiens sapiens? (not sure what you want here) C) While on a small scale (tribal), religion can bring people together, on a large (global) scale, religion acts as a disruptive force. This is because it is pragmatically impossible to get everyone to agree on a religion (when religion inherently is based on arbitrary beliefs) and religions are usually mutually exclusive (if not inherently hostile to each other). Historically, this means that religion acts as a force leading to conflict, oppression and suffering, similar to other divisive forces such as nationalism, racism, class conflict, etc. D) I think atheism might be just as flawed. However, my own flavour of agnosticism is based on the principle that humans can never determine whether a god/gods actually exist. It may exist, it may not, but both views are inherently equally valid. Thus, why live (or die) based on the existence or non-existence of a god.
Without religion, one divisive force would be removed from the world. (Its hard to get people to suicide bomb while saying "Allah is great, if he exists, but if he doesn't, sorry...my bad".)
The world would not be perfect (the other divisive forces would still be present), but at least people would be deprived of one arbitrary division, and the world should suffer less conflict.
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posted
Well, really, this is not complicated. Religion is a set of stories that people tell each other to feel better about dying, and in some cases about living. They are not true. Basing decisions on untrue beliefs is a bad thing. This is particularly so when the untrue belief is a really big one like 'there is a god'.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
The track record for that has not been good. When Europe went from being Christendom to being a collection of secular states, we got the Lenin purges (I don't know the death toll), the Stalin purges (some 25M executed), and the Holocaust (some 12M executed). The only comparable knowingly caused humanitarian disaster was Mao's agriculture-collectivization famine (some 50 M).
Don't get me wrong, I *like* states being secular, but we don't have evidence that secularism reduces violent conflict.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
You've cherry-picked your examples, though. What of Britain, the Scandinavian states, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the US, which went through the same transition without bloodshed?
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posted
I'd take a different angle on that one, KoM, which is that the "secular" states cited are "secular" only in one sense: that they did not worship a "God."
But theism is not a formal requirement for religion, and I'd argue that Leninist Russia and Nazi Germany had at their hearts the same sort of dangerous certainty that cripples many religious states.
In my opinion, that's the enemy, and it's not religion: it's Certainty, particularly certainty regardless of evidence. The idea that something is so because you SAY it's so, and that you can make it so everywhere by forcing other people to stop saying otherwise, is the enemy of rational thought.
And rational thought is just about the closest thing we have to actual virtue anywhere on this planet.
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posted
Indeed; that's where I was going. I usually prefer to take these things one step at a time, though.
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posted
So we're not really arguing that religion is the enemy. We're arguing that rationality is preferable to faith.
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posted
So do you consider yourself somewhat of a humanist then? Along the lines of the philosophers of the Renaissance time?
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: So we're not really arguing that religion is the enemy. We're arguing that rationality is preferable to faith.
But religion is the main surviving, and longest lasting, expression of irrational faith. Further, nazism and communism at least had the advantage of promising a good life on this earth; when they failed, it was clear to all that they had failed.
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posted
I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith. The problem is found when we confuse or conflat the different kinds of questions.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith.
I would ask you to prove it. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith. The problem is found when we confuse or conflat the different kinds of questions.
I disagree that faith is required to address this "something more," whatever it might be. For example, accounts of personal spiritual experiences often mirror my own experiences with powerful works of music. If I don't need faith to address my experiences with such works, I'm not at all convinced that faith is necessary for the other kinds.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith.
I would ask you to prove it.
And those things that are beyond rationality are also beyond proof.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I would argue that, while rationality is preferable to faith for some questions and in some spheres, that there is something more to human existance/experience that cannot be addressed except through faith. The problem is found when we confuse or conflat the different kinds of questions.
I disagree that faith is required to address this "something more," whatever it might be. For example, accounts of personal spiritual experiences often mirror my own experiences with powerful works of music. If I don't need faith to address my experiences with such works, I'm not at all convinced that faith is necessary for the other kinds.
It is possible to explain a response to powerful music by, say, examining how certain wavelenghts have an evolutionary connection that triggers a chemical response which in turn causes us to "feel" an "emotion". Or we could decide that there is something "more" goin on there.
But I am not talking about faith as a response to specific spiritual experience. I don't think that spiritual "experiences" are a suffucient basis for faith. I was referring to the human experience as a whole. Experience is perhaps not the best word...condition? life?
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posted
I would tend to argue that even if religion is entirely irrational in and of itself its existence has still allowed some peoples to form a useful bond when conditions might otherwise dictate an "every man for himself" outlook, and possibly die off as a result. Consider the works of antiquity that were perserved by monasteries during the Dark Ages, without which Europe might never have emerged, for example.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't think that spiritual "experiences" are a suffucient basis for faith.
I don't either, anymore, but that leaves me without any items on my list of things that are a "sufficient basis for faith." I'm not really sure if I'll ever be able to populate that list again, though thinking about it isn't very high on my list of philosophical priorities anymore.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: And those things that are beyond rationality are also beyond proof.
No, we've been over this already. It's not beyond proof/a proof.
People exist.
Happiness is a byproduct of people.
Happiness is good/a good, even though happiness is not directly measurable. At least, accurately...yet.
In any case, if my belief in something makes me happier, it is good, and right because the end result is that it makes me, which does exist, more gooderer.
Now, if the result is the same, which is better, that I believe in something that exists objectively but makes me happy, or something that doesn't exist but in my head, or subjectively, but makes me likewise happy?
In this case, we have to resort to some kind of value system (which doesn't exist) to prove that one or the other is better.
In short, there is no way to not resort to some kind of faith, or subjective value system, or belief, that one is better than the other.
This is just a quick sketch. I'm sure I've left out all kinds of permutations and stuff, but there you are.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: I would tend to argue that even if religion is entirely irrational in and of itself its existence has still allowed some peoples to form a useful bond when conditions might otherwise dictate an "every man for himself" outlook, and possibly die off as a result. Consider the works of antiquity that were preserved by monasteries during the Dark Ages, without which Europe might never have emerged, for example.
Such as, for example, the Archimedes palimpsest, where he develops calculus two thousand years before Newton? The math was rubbed out to make room for hagiography. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
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posted
Storm, honey, I can't even prove that you exist. But I like to believe so. It makes things more gooderer.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:In any case, if my belief in something makes me happier, it is good, and right because the end result is that it makes me, which does exist, more gooderer.
And if your joyful belief is that the white race is superior to all others? Plenty of people have been happy because they weren't born brown.
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posted
KoM, the means used to arrive at a belief are not sufficient grounds for judging that belief.
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posted
Yes, they are; in fact, they're the only grounds. And anyway, what has that got to do with what I said?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote: And if your joyful belief is that the white race is superior to all others? Plenty of people have been happy because they weren't born brown.
The point of that little exercise is that at some point you have to appeal to something that doesn't exist. You can't use terms like 'better' or 'worse' in the context of a value system without appealing to something that doesn't exist.
I'm sure we all understand that there have been plenty of dorks out there who have cheerfully scientifically 'proved' that racism and/or slavery was right and proper.
quote: Storm, honey, I can't even prove that you exist. But I like to believe so. It makes things more gooderer.
I'm certainly not beyond rationality, I assure you. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: I would tend to argue that even if religion is entirely irrational in and of itself its existence has still allowed some peoples to form a useful bond when conditions might otherwise dictate an "every man for himself" outlook, and possibly die off as a result. Consider the works of antiquity that were preserved by monasteries during the Dark Ages, without which Europe might never have emerged, for example.
Such as, for example, the Archimedes palimpsest, where he develops calculus two thousand years before Newton? The math was rubbed out to make room for hagiography. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Never said they were perfect. But would you rather trust your flammable lore to Irish monks, or, say, Vikings or Goths?
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