quote:The people who registerred the url and started the website.
Exactly. Could be some guy in his basement. I hardly see that as an indication that any group has broadly accepted the label. It's true that some atheists identify with the label, but it's hardly an organized movement. Atheists are affiliated with each other the same way cat lovers are - sure, there are a few cat magazines and cat clubs here and there, but most just own cats and leave it at that.
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: Yay! Godwin's Law makes an appearance!
Not just Godwin, but Godwin AND a straw man. It's a logical fallacy twofer!
Ok, how about this.
How long until a new atheists gets tired of the sub-human believers, we'll call them infidels, and decides to hijack a plane and crash it into a church.
When this actually happens, maybe you'll have a case. But it hasn't. No "new atheist" has committed any atrocities, nor done anything more than make condescending remarks on national television. Is that irritating? Sure, if you're religious. Is it bigoted? Of course not- religion, unlike race or sexual oritentaion, is a choice. Dawkins (and, I would wager, the vast majority of "new atheists") condemns the belief, not the believer's worth as a human being.
And even if Dawkins was a bigot, he's one dude (out of maybe five of his ilk who actually ever get on TV). How many outspoken Christians do we have condemning gays and atheists wholesale on TV? I'll give you a hint: it's more than there are in Congress, which in itself is orders of magnitude more than there are New Atheists being interviewed by Tim Russert.
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quote:If you think that religion is harmful to humanity, despite it's pervasiveness, then disdain for religion is not anti-humanity any more than disdain for cancer, also pervasive and harmful, is not anti-humanity.
I think it is. It's like claiming to love humanity but hating their tendency to form social groups, or claiming to love humanity but hating that whole obsession with having children, or claiming to love humanity but hating that the languages keep changing. Religion, in one form or another, has been part of the human experience since we know about human experiences.
Loving humanity means loving humanity, not just the parts that you identify with.
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quote:Wow. That's not a way of relating to or thinking about people that I would want to take as a model.
Would you seek to cure someone who was schizophrenic? Or advise someone with severe depression to seek medical help? Would you take someone with a leg injury to a doctor?
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quote:I'm not getting "respect for humanity" from this new group of atheists.
If you're not getting "respect for humanity" from Richard Dawkins, you haven't read Richard Dawkins.
Your right, I haven't. I didn't hear about him until the Wired article.
The atheists in this community are the only atheists I know. Or the only ones I know I know. I have a family of six, I coach a robotics team, I go to school, and I work. Usually, the only time I talk religion is with people who believe about the same as I do. When I saw this woman on the show last night and remembered the Wired article, I was curious as to why this new group felt such hatred towards me. So I took this to the only group of people I know who have some atheists on board.
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quote:Wow. That's not a way of relating to or thinking about people that I would want to take as a model.
Would you seek to cure someone who was schizophrenic? Or advise someone with severe depression to seek medical help? Would you take someone with a leg injury to a doctor?
My criteria for when to advise someone to seek help for a suspected mental condition, be it depression, OCD, addiction, whatever, is if it is negatively affecting their life and relationships. And I'm not sure I'd use the word "pity" even in those cases. Regardless, that rules out suggesting an involuntary cure for gays or theists.
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How many believers have I advised to seek help here on Hatrack -- or elsewhere?
(I'll answer that question for you: three. And in each case, I did it because it seemed like they were having trouble reconciling their personal beliefs with their religious faith in a way that was causing them serious mental distress.)
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quote:Thinking people are sub-human because of their beliefs is scary. I believe someone about seventy years ago thought that. His name started with an H.
Hitler believed the other races were inferior not because of their beliefs, but because of their genes.
Just saying.
quote:It's worth saying that a deity that works like this, who would grant this prayer while denying so many others, isn't exactly a benevolent entity.
Nah. You'd have to be able to understand God's specific reasons for answering/not answering specific prayers to be able to reach this conclusion.
quote:Wow. That's not a way of relating to or thinking about people that I would want to take as a model.
Would you seek to cure someone who was schizophrenic? Or advise someone with severe depression to seek medical help? Would you take someone with a leg injury to a doctor?
I've been thinking about this since the last time we had this talk, and I still don't like the schizophrenic comparison.
If you want to call theism some sort of mental disease, I'd call it 'functional alcoholism', where someone clearly drinks to excess but still manages to live a pretty solid life. Steady job, family, not given to violence or meanness. In a situation like this, the cure is literally probably worse than the disease.
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quote:How long until a new atheists gets tired of the sub-human believers, we'll call them infidels, and decides to hijack a plane and crash it into a church.
I think it's highly unlikely. In a very real way, this sort of action is even more antithetical to "New Atheism" than it is to Christianity. That said, like you pointed out, there are wackos everywhere; how long will it be before some Republican hijacks a plane and crashes it into the Times building?
I liken this to the people who say they don't go to church because when they did, the preacher asked for money and the people were snooty. I have two experiences with new atheism. One in the Wired article and one last night on TV. If they are trying to "educate" me, then they are doing a terrible job of it. They can't attack me and then expect me to say, "your right, I am stupid and sub-human."
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quote:The people who registerred the url and started the website.
Exactly. Could be some guy in his basement. I hardly see that as an indication that any group has broadly accepted the label. It's true that some atheists identify with the label, but it's hardly an organized movement. Atheists are affiliated with each other the same way cat lovers are - sure, there are a few cat magazines and cat clubs here and there, but most just own cats and leave it at that.
Ok, point taken. But doesn't the .org require a legal organization or can anyone get that. What is to stop me from getting a .gov url.
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Tom, your behavior (here and in person) is why I was so shocked by the comparison you made. I don't think of you in relation to theists as like the folks I know who pity and want to cure gays, it suprised me that you would equate your beliefs to theirs.
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quote:They can't attack me and then expect me to say, "your right, I am stupid and sub-human."
I thoroughly agree with this. I think insulting people is a very ineffective way to convince them of the rightness of your position.
quote:If you want to call theism some sort of mental disease, I'd call it 'functional alcoholism', where someone clearly drinks to excess but still manages to live a pretty solid life.
Also conceded. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the net effect of religious belief is up for grabs; we simply don't know whether it's a net gain or a net loss. I think certain types of faith may well be necessary in certain situations, particularly in the early stages of a civilization, and I'm not confident that even now it doesn't serve a useful purpose for some people.
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Anyone can get a .org. Bob's and my website is a .org because his nephew had already registered the .com.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: How many believers have I advised to seek help here on Hatrack -- or elsewhere?
(I'll answer that question for you: three. And in each case, I did it because it seemed like they were having trouble reconciling their personal beliefs with their religious faith in a way that was causing them serious mental distress.)
I saw a therapist about my religious problems when I was in my late teens. There can be a lot of factors that seem to overlap at those points. In the end I broke up with my boyfriend and went back to church, because while he was not mormon, he was also involved in underage drinking, which I thought a rational law abiding person shouldn't do. I only thought religion was the problem, but it really wasn't, and when I talked things through with a therapist that became clear.
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There were intentions for the TLDs to be used a specific way, but those intentions were not codified (or they were codified, but then the restrictions were relaxed).
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quote:It's like claiming to love humanity but hating their tendency to form social groups
I think it is more in tune with claiming to love humanity but hating their tendency to fear and mistreat outsiders. You seem to be slanting your analogies towards things that are positive or at least neutral, but religion is clearly identified as a negative thing in the context we're speaking of.
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brojack, If you know so little about this group, how have you formed such pervasive and persistant negative beliefs about them? And why are you maintaining them against the protest of people who know much more than you?
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quote:it suprised me that you would equate your beliefs to theirs
I'm trying to be fair-minded and accurate in my own self-description. It would be hypocritical of me to say -- or to have said -- that people cannot think of homosexuality as a disease without being biased against homosexuals while still asserting that I (like any "New Atheist") can somehow think of religious faith as a form of mental delusion without thinking less of believers.
I think people think less of other people all the time. The hard part is to remember why that's not considered a virtue.
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MrS, As I mentioned, it is based on the article and this interview. I'm asking this group to help me think otherwise. I know this doesn't include "All Atheists" or "All New Atheists", but this movement does concern me.
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quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by MattP:
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by Javert: Just so everyone knows "stupidity" and "ignorance" are two different things. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately either stupidity OR ignorance may cause you to confuse the two. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And most people use the two together.
What does that say about most people? Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Homosexuals are routinely insulted by preachers, both TV and otherwise. There was a guy back home who was always on the radio named Jay Cole. His catch phrase for the enemy was "Thieves, liars, adulterers and Ho-mo-sexuals."
To this day gay marriage is illegal because of religious people. Even people on this board oppose it for purely religious reasons. Christians dehumanize people like me daily. It's easy to hate the faithful for the harm their faith does to the innocent. I've been there myself.
But it doesn't help anyone. It just turns it all into a screaming match and makes everyone hate everyone else. Turn the other cheek when you can; stand up for yourself when you must; fight against those who codify their belief into law. Other than that, what they believe in is none of your business and we should all just leave each other in peace.
Sorry if this is disjointed or I repeated what others said. I've been trying to type this up for an hour but that pesky thing called "work" keeps interfering.
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: Just so everyone knows "stupidity" and "ignorance" are two different things.
Unfortunately either stupidity OR ignorance may cause you to confuse the two.
And most people use the two together.
I don't think that most people do. And those who do are, frankly, wrong. Ignorance is the state of not knowing, not a bad thing in and of itself, because it can be rectified. Stupidity is the state of being incapable of knowing- or much worse, the unwillingness to know.
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On the Georgia prayer thing, I have to wonder what people's reaction would be if the Governor called on people to go out and perform rain dances or some other non-mainstream practice and what would they think of the people who believed that this would work.
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Take a quick turn through the interwebs, you'll find lots of self-described atheists pushing what looks a lot like hate onto an amorphous bunch of believers.
Similarly, you'll find a lot of believers spouting similar terms at non-believers.
After hanging on solely at Hatrack for a long, long, time, I finally ventured out to the blogosphere. And it was pretty eye-opening. I'd heard that people weren't civil the way they are here; I had no idea that incivility was lauded in the majority of webish-spots.
It's not like brojack is wrong, necessarily. It feels like the majority of atheists I encounter on the web are of the rant-and-rave variety.
But I haven't run the numbers. And I hope that I'm wrong.
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Religious extremists aside, why do atheists hate anyone who believes in a higher being, and why do they have to be so militant about it. This has happened a few times on Hatrack. I don't think it is right to show such hatred for people based on their beliefs.
When I was in highschool a black man stole my dad's checkbook out of the mailbox and forged checks. Another time in Paris a black guy tried to rob me. Why do black people have to steal from my family? Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:I'm asking this group to help me think otherwise.
That really doesn't look like what you are doing to me, so I don't think I'll be able to help you.
Ok, so how did I offend you. People asked me how I came to my conclusion, I gave that reason. I'm sorry if I offended anyone on this and other threads. I just feel people should be allowed to believe what they want to without being judged for it.
I don't try to "convert" people. If someone asks me about my religion, then I will tell them. I am asking you about your beliefs. If you don't want to enter that discussion, that's ok. We can still play the movie quote game together. Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: On the Georgia prayer thing, I have to wonder what people's reaction would be if the Governor called on people to go out and perform rain dances or some other non-mainstream practice and what would they think of the people who believed that this would work.
If I hadn't heard about the Georgia prayer story at the same time as the reply, I would have thought "wow, that is going to open a you-know-what storm".
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I'm not offended, brojack. I'm also not an atheist or new atheist. If you've compared groups I belong to the Nazis or suicide bombers, I'm not yet aware of it.
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quote:I have to wonder what people's reaction would be if the Governor called on people to go out and perform rain dances or some other non-mainstream practice and what would they think of the people who believed that this would work.
I don't have a problem with it.
Should I? Why would you wonder this?
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The easiest way to make a group unified is to have an enemy to fight. So some (lonely?) Atheists decide that Religion is the enemy and try to form up ranks against them. Its the same process that some religions use to shore up their ranks to fight dangerous hatefilled atheists.
Neither could survive with out the other.
Each spews hateful words and vile names, build armies of strawmen and march them into oblivion, not to convince the other side. They have given up on that. They do it to pull in the ranks of their own side, to garner donations, support, power and money, position and influence.
What would happen if you threw a crusade and nobody came?
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Squick: You may consider religion to be an evil thing, but you do not speak for nor create the context.
MattP: You're really likening religion to war? Really? All religion? Funeral tokens of cavemen? The interfaith concert I went to last night? The cult of Isis in ancient Rome? Zen gardens? Vows of celibacy and poverty and service? Church-sponsored homeless shelters? Prayers for safety and of thankfulness? Researching ancestors and sealing all of humanity into a chain that lasts after death? Tiny statues of Mary in people's gardens? Pulling out a mat five times a day to pray? All those things are equivelent to war?
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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I don't consider religion an evil thing. However, the statement that you are responding to postulates that it perceived as such:
quote:If you think that religion is harmful to humanity, despite it's pervasiveness, then disdain for religion is not anti-humanity any more than disdain for cancer, also pervasive and harmful, is not anti-humanity.
Only to the extent that it's an arguably intrinsic quality of humanity and if it's OK to dislike one such quality without being anti-humanity, then it's possible to think negatively of other aspects without being, by default, anti-humanity.
You are the one that said "Loving humanity means loving humanity, not just the parts that you identify with." I'm just suggesting that someone can dislike portions of what currently constitutes humanity and still love humanity.
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quote:Originally posted by brojack17: I just feel people should be allowed to believe what they want to without being judged for it.
Actually, I think that judging people on what they believe is one of the few ways to do so fairly. If you believe that blacks are subhuman, for instance, you better believe I'm going to judge you for that. And the judgment is going to result in me thinking rather less of you. Same thing for people who believe in the Judeo-Christian God, but to a lesser extent.
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Religious extremists aside, why do atheists hate anyone who believes in a higher being, and why do they have to be so militant about it. This has happened a few times on Hatrack. I don't think it is right to show such hatred for people based on their beliefs.
When I was in highschool a black man stole my dad's checkbook out of the mailbox and forged checks. Another time in Paris a black guy tried to rob me. Why do black people have to steal from my family?
That is a little different. If you had heard of black people but never interacted with one and then you heard on on TV calling you the "blue eyed devil" and read an article about a black person saying white people are stupid, then I could see the correlation.
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MattP - so, to get this straight, you do NOT equate religion to war but are postulating that if it were bad like war is, then hating it would be okay?
That's two hypothetical steps beyond the useful. Never mind.
As for those who do equate religion to war, then that's a kind of willful ignorance I'm not sure how to combat.
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I think he's equating religion to humanity and war to humanity. Both are parts of it. Does that mean we should embrace war, because it is an inseperable part of humanity?
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Javert Hugo, this was the proposition you made: "you don't get to claim that you love humanity if you hate the religious streak in it that just won't go away."
I, and apparently others, thought you were using some sort of more general principle to develop this proposition. The more general principle might be written as "If you hate a fundamental part or streak of humanity, then it's wrong to claim that you love humanity." If this principle were true, it would mean that we couldn't condemn anything, including war, that seems to be a fundamental part of humanity. Which seems obviously wrong. So the principle is wrong, and therefore propositions derived from it would be unsubstantiated.
If this wasn't your working principle when you made your claim, could you perhaps clarify. Why *can't* you love humanity while hating its religious streak?
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quote:you do NOT equate religion to war but are postulating that if it were bad like war is, then hating it would be okay?
I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand, but I'll try one more time.
Again, you said "Loving humanity means loving humanity, not just the parts that you identify with."
My response is that this simple sentiment is that it possible to dislike individual attributes of "X" without disliking "X". For instance, I really like my car, but it gets poor gas mileage. I wish it got better gas mileage. I've even made a few modifications to the intake and exhaust systems in an attempt to get better gas mileage. Regardless of this flaw, and my obvious attempt correct it, I like my car. It's *because* I like my car that I've attempted to fix this flaw.
Also, I love my kids. I think that my teenage daughter's tendency to be dismissive of her younger siblings is harmful to the family and to herself. I am also trying to help her overcome these shortcomings. Regardless of those shortcomings, I still love her.
I like myself. I've got a raft of self-identified shortcomings to address. Regardless of those shortcomings, I still like myself.
Does it make sense yet? I was just pointing out that it's possible to be pro-something while being dissatisfied with an aspect of that something. I was not equating religion to war, but since you disagreed about being able to like humanity while disliking religion because religion was part of humanity I picked another part of humanity which was more clearly negative to show that it was possible to reject an aspect of humanity without rejecting humanity itself.
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Because you are loving an illusion. You can't separate religion from humanity without a massive retcon of human history.
And thinking about it, I mean that for war as well. War is hell and bad and to be avoided, but clearly aggression and possessiveness and territorial marking and the dehumanization of each other is part of us as well, and I think a true humanist would try to understand the individuals.
Of course, religion itself has so much good and done so much good and is expressed in so many other little ways that if anyone did try to say that religion is as bad as war then I'd question their education.
---
More specifically, a self-proclaimed humanist who hated on religious people precisely for their religious beliefs is lying about something.
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quote:I just feel people should be allowed to believe what they want to without being judged for it.
So you're okay with religious extremism and suicide bombers? Do beliefs only become an issue with you when the people holding those beliefs act upon them(in a negative manner)? Isn't that a bit like trying to put a band aid on a gun shot wound? If suicide bombing is a problem shouldn't we try to remedy it by getting to the root of it? Doesn't that necessitate judging someone's beliefs?
What if our president believed that the future of our country depended on obliterating Mexico? Would you say that he should be allowed to have this belief without being judged for it?
How can you help people with false beliefs if you just ignore them? Or even more fundamentally, how can the truth or falsity of a belief even be determined without conversation between individuals. Can't we judge peoples' beliefs and still have civil dialogue between each other? Are you really advocating the fact that everyone should be free to believe whatever the heck they feel like believing regardless of the validity of that belief and how that belief affects their behavior.
quote:She stated, "there is no afterlife"; she made this statement without any evidence.
also, I found this statement ironic.
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In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the net effect of religious belief is up for grabs; we simply don't know whether it's a net gain or a net loss. I think certain types of faith may well be necessary in certain situations, particularly in the early stages of a civilization, and I'm not confident that even now it doesn't serve a useful purpose for some people.
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