posted
I don't have trouble believing you'd think you'd be right to do so Tom, I have trouble believing that you would be unable to tell it would annoy or outright offend people. Would you, honestly, be surprised when someone got annoyed at you after you told them that their belief in Christ was the same as a cocaine addiction?
posted
Ah. I've been mentally making a distinction between "obnoxious" and "offensive." Are we defining "obnoxious" as "telling someone a hard truth when we feel it's necessary/beneficial?"
If you feel that it's the manner in which the truth is told that's the problem, let me ask: what would be the polite way to ask you to be less religious, for your sake and for the sake of the people around you?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Are we defining "obnoxious" as "telling someone a hard truth when we feel it's necessary/beneficial?"
Well I'm certainly not.
quote:If you feel that it's the manner in which the truth is told that's the problem, let me ask: what would be the polite way to ask you to be less religious, for your sake and for the sake of the people around you?
The biggest problem in this hypothetical is your hypothetical self feeling the need to go around and tell people the truth rather than discuss what they believe and why. If you want to change peoples minds the first one is neither effective nor is it likely to be done without being obnoxious. The second one will allow at least some measure of success. As someone who tried to "talk people into" religious beliefs for two years I have had some experience. Either someone did not know what they believed (they were searching) or the only way to reach them was to discuss what they believed and why with them.
posted
But you were prosthelatizing. Secular humanism relies on the notion that rational people, given the freedom of thought and access to information required to understand the natural world outside a religious context will naturally draw the same approximate philosophical conclusions. Meaning that a lot of the work of someone actually interested in teaching secular humanism must be time spent freeing the learner from religious guilt and circular reasoning, or at least creAting an environment in which these learned habits are not adaptive.
The reason it isn't a religion is that it requires no actual teaching on it's own. It emerges from liberal and thorough education, unless a person is otherwise inveigled.
So really, secular humanism, or whatever you want to call it, requires very little entertaining of someone else's belief structure, outside of it providing an opportunity for instruction on weak and poorly founded reasoning. The striking aspect of this is that secular humanists emerge from every belief structure the world has, and in large numbers.
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posted
If it helps, Tom, I am quite satisfied that for you the effect upon the hearer is not only an acceptable side effect but the majority of the appeal.
quote:It isn't that all humans are delusional - it is that all humans - including you, right now - use mental shortcuts to make sense of the world. There are so many prejudgments and assumptions going on right now in your head that it would make it spin to know them, which is precisely why they occur.
I don't really doubt this, but I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on the subject. Is this an established consensus in a scientific field (psychology, cognitive science, etc)?
Are there any specific examples you can point to for an individual, as an outside observer? I think mostly I hear similar statements in a context of those quizzes that indicate that "you are racist, even if you don't think you are". Also the various cognitive biases might be related to what you are speaking of here.
Yes, I believe it is. I'm not a professional, but it seems to be well established that people have assumptions, biases, and tendencies that they don't know about, and it is these assumptions, biases, tendencies, and mental shortcuts that allow people to function.
The racist example is a good one, because I think that is true. It isn't that all people are racist, but that everyone - all people - bring their experiences and their knowledge to bear on future social interactions, and that inevitably means you treat people in the manner that you think will bring about the most optimum outcome, and sometimes that means opening up earlier than you would otherwise and sometimes it means not trusting.
It is, of course, good to fight that and establish principles within yourself (such as: everyone gets a chance before I make a decision), but you can't change that much of activities involved in human interaction are like breathing - under your control, but usually you don't think about it.
These activities rely on guess and estimations and beliefs about the world, and a whole slew of them are flat out made up.
I find it utterly absurd when people claim that they have managed to short circuit their brains to avoid all those mental shortcuts necessary for functioning. It isn't that I think that's bad to do - it's that it is impossible.
Maybe that's why so many religions urge charity - refraining from jumping to the worst conclusion and giving people room to be less than perfect in one's estimation also gives oneself permission to be less than perfect. Which one, of course, absolutely is.
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quote:If it helps, Tom, I am quite satisfied that for you the effect upon the hearer is not only an acceptable side effect but the majority of the appeal.
Katie, I do hope that you someday become sensible to the often-delicious irony woven through nearly every one of your sanctimonious pronouncements nowadays. It's possible that you already are, and the personality you wear on here is a really elaborate piece of performance art, but I think it's more likely that you've simply lost perspective. That makes me sad.
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posted
Tom, you just called a huge swath of humanity the equivelent of meth addicts and act like you're the better person for it. My opinion of you has been gathered from your actions.
I have no respect at all for any of your opinions and I think the majority of the time you're lying anyway.
In other words, don't worry yourself about me. There's nothing there for you.
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posted
For me, atheists who insist that theists are delusional are about on par obnoxious-wise with theists who insist that anyone who doesn't believe as they do is going to hell. All of them pushy and certain and smug about things they can't really know.
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quote:If you feel that it's the manner in which the truth is told that's the problem, let me ask: what would be the polite way to ask you to be less religious, for your sake and for the sake of the people around you?
I don't know. Don't antagonize them? Show at least some token respect for their intelligence and ability to choose? Don’t be patronizing? There are a few of us on here with experience in proselyting; we had to learn the same thing about approaching people and ultimately asking them to be more religious. Perhaps you’d like some pointers? Asking them to be less religious is essentially the same thing. In either approach, you’re asking them to change their minds and lifestyles, overcoming a bunch of inertia in the process. Opening with your frank opinion of their beliefs is not how to do it, and new missionaries learn that fairly quickly.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: For me, atheists who insist that theists are delusional are about on par obnoxious-wise with theists who insist that anyone who doesn't believe as they do is going to hell. All of them pushy and certain and smug about things they can't really know.
Both might be pushy and smug.
But one is just saying that he thinks you're wrong. The other is saying the he thinks you're wrong, and you deserve to be punished for it.
So, not quite on par, at least in my book.
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quote:All of them pushy and certain and smug about things they can't really know.
The smugness is not contingent on their having beliefs like "you're going to hell."
I have approximately the same respect for the belief "Nonbelievers going to hell" and for the belief "There is a vague God who cares about you and is good and works in ways we can't fully understand."
My respect for the *person* depends on how they approached me and why. I have respect for someone earnestly trying to save me from going to hell, to approximately the same degree I have respect for political activists who happen to be going about their activism all wrong and have wildly naive views (even if I agree with their general goals).
(I know people who believe I'm going to hell, also believe that I'm a good person, and reconcile this with the belief that hell is an absence of God's love, which I only will have to deal with because I'm actively rejecting it.)
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quote:The other is saying the he thinks you're wrong, and you deserve to be punished for it.
No. The other is saying that they think that you're wrong, and that there will be consequences for it.
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quote:Asking them to be less religious is essentially the same thing.
I actually fundamentally disagree on this point. I would not be attempting to teach someone to believe something; I would be attempting to teach them how to think critically.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Asking them to be less religious is essentially the same thing.
I actually fundamentally disagree on this point. I would not be attempting to teach someone to believe something; I would be attempting to teach them how to think critically.
Which is an admirable skill to have. But very first, you have to convince them to let go of how they were believing and accept a new way. That's where most of the toes get stepped on.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Who was it? KoM? Who wanted to round us all up in re-education camps?
I believed we were speaking in generalities. If you'd like to start listing off people that don't adhere to generalities, I can start compiling right now. Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I find the scorn from one group about equal to the scorn in the other.
Hmmm...I guess maybe that isn't quite true. I find the scorn from atheists more irritating and less personally hurtful because I don't feel responsible for them.
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quote:The other is saying the he thinks you're wrong, and you deserve to be punished for it.
No. The other is saying that they think that you're wrong, and that there will be consequences for it.
Well, some of them are saying that. But I know more than a few who take a perverse pleasure in the hellfire and damnation the nonbeliever will receive, especially if they've specifically rejected a given religion.
Of course there are also those for whom, "You're wrong about God," also pretty clearly means, "You're a mouth-breathing loon who shouldn't be trusted with anything until you recant. Also, I'm ever so much smarter than you."
I will say both ends are pretty obnoxious, but one end *does* take some spiteful, triumphant satisfaction in the everlasting damnation angle, whereas the other doesn't.
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quote:But very first, you have to convince them to let go of how they were believing and accept a new way.
I don't think you can talk someone into sensibly re-evaluating their beliefs in the same way you can talk someone into uncritically accepting your own beliefs.
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quote:Well, some of them are saying that. But I know more than a few who take a perverse pleasure in the hellfire and damnation the nonbeliever will receive, especially if they've specifically rejected a given religion.
We were going off of what Boots said, which is this:
quote:For me, atheists who insist that theists are delusional are about on par obnoxious-wise with theists who insist that anyone who doesn't believe as they do is going to hell.
posted
Tom, there are few really big similarities between your side and there's.
No matter of logical argument/call to faith will shake either of you from thinking you are right and the other side is wrong.
Neither of you knows for certain or ever can know while alive.
Both of you feel obligated to try and change the other person's mind, for their own good.
In the end it isn't about being right, because you can't know, but instead it's about what brings comfort and happiness. Isn't it a better way to just live and let live?
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quote:No matter of logical argument/call to faith will shake either of you from thinking you are right and the other side is wrong.
Neither of you knows for certain or ever can know while alive.
I disagree with both these points, actually.
quote:instead it's about what brings comfort and happiness
And yet you tried just a little while ago to argue that a comparison to heroin addiction was silly (on the grounds that religions don't cost people money, isolate them from their friends and family, and occasionally kill them, even).
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Heroin doesn't give comfort and happiness...it gives you a chemical high which your brain can't achieve from real life at that strength and requires more and more to the point of your spiritual, emotional and eventual physical death.
Ask a heroin addict if they are happy or comforted...they might say yes while high, but I doubt highly that that will be they reply without the needle in their arm.
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quote:So, there is a call to faith that would change your mind and make you a true believer?
No, but there are certainly logical arguments that would.
quote:Or a logical argument which would break someone's faith and turn them into a "rational atheist"?
I've actually seen this happen, so yes.
quote:And you have proof that God doesn't exist, and further that He doesn't exist as they say he does?
Certainly. In fact, the second stipulation is part of what makes it possible, since proof that there is no god of any conceivable kind or definition is fairly hard to produce. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:But very first, you have to convince them to let go of how they were believing and accept a new way.
I don't think you can talk someone into sensibly re-evaluating their beliefs in the same way you can talk someone into uncritically accepting your own beliefs.
Either way, what you want them to do is think more like you do, right? Regardless of the type of changes they're expected to do in their thinking, there are certain conclusions you are guiding (or nudging) them toward. Your expectation, from what I gather, is that some sensible thinking will lead them to reconsider their belief in divinity, and over time give it up. Merely thinking critically isn't enough. Would you consider their thinking appropriately sensible or sound if they went on to reaffirm their belief in God? In the end, your goal is to save them from what you consider wrong and destructive thinking. That's not fundamentally different from what a religious proselytizer is doing, and the approach is therefore similar.
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quote:Ask a heroin addict if they are happy or comforted...they might say yes while high, but I doubt highly that that will be they reply without the needle in their arm.
*suspicious look* Are you deliberately sneakily advocating on behalf of this analogy, or do you just not realize that you are?
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quote:Merely thinking critically isn't enough. Would you consider their thinking appropriately sensible or sound if they went on to reaffirm their belief in God?
If they had good reasons for it? Absolutely. Note: "I prefer not to believe that I have been deluded" or "I prefer to believe this because it makes the world seem like a nicer place" are not, IMO, good reasons, but I'm willing to leave it there as long as they're aware that these are their reasons.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Ask a heroin addict if they are happy or comforted...they might say yes while high, but I doubt highly that that will be they reply without the needle in their arm.
*suspicious look* Are you deliberately sneakily advocating on behalf of this analogy, or do you just not realize that you are?
*L* That is pretty awesome.
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posted
In general, logical arguments don't breed believers...in this case "belief" is not simply a strongly held opinion, but something based on faith.
I submit that if a logical argument swayed a believer then their faith was not rock solid to being with, says the non-religous guy.
You do have proof? Tom is going to be on the cover of ever major newspaper and magazine in the world! Let's see it!
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
But you don't seem to accept that people who believe in God are capable of having that belief and still thinking clearly. That's where this whole argument over the world delusional comes from. To cease from delusional thinking, a necessary step is to stop believing in God. I personally don't recall you allowing for religious belief in a right-thinking person.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Ask a heroin addict if they are happy or comforted...they might say yes while high, but I doubt highly that that will be they reply without the needle in their arm.
*suspicious look* Are you deliberately sneakily advocating on behalf of this analogy, or do you just not realize that you are?
You don't watch a lot of the show Intervention do you? Most of a heroin addict's time is spent begging, lying or stealing, and suffering between hits, they are miserable the majority of the time and often say how much they hate their life.
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quote:I personally don't recall you allowing for religious belief in a right-thinking person.
I think it's fairly difficult to be a believer in the divine and remain intellectually rigorous, yes. There are a few scenarios in which I think it's possible, most of which involve delusion.
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quote:Most of a heroin addict's time is spent begging, lying or stealing, and suffering between hits...
One of the nice things about religion as an opiate of choice is that even when you can't afford a "hit," you can generally still get one.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: But you don't seem to accept that people who believe in God are capable of having that belief and still thinking clearly.
At the risk of misinterpreting Tom, I think he means that those people aren't capable of thinking clearly about that belief. Not about everything.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
But the point of convincing someone to start thinking critically ala Tom is to have them begin to move away from religious belief. If they kept their beliefs, they wouldn't be thinking appropriately critically.
I was making the point that this is quite the same as convincing someone to adopt religious beliefs and could be handled in much the same way.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: One of the nice things about religion as an opiate of choice is that even when you can't afford a "hit," you can generally still get one.
Oh yea, gathering in nice cloths to hear an elder of your community teach about how Jesus wants people to be kind and love each other and then to join with like minded people in singing about how much you love God and want to be a better person and then gathering over some coffee and danish to talk about how your kids are doing is just like mixing up a dangerous drug and boiling it on a dirty bent spoon and then using a hopefully clean needle to mainline said dangerous drug into your vein, although you probably have to use your neck or hand or feet as you have likely collapsed the main veins in the crook of your elbow and then your eyes roll up in your head as your body goes slack and you fall to the floor of a filthy public bathroom not far from where you falated a stranger for the money for your fix.
posted
Or to put it more succinctly, religion can help people to be better morally and spiritually through interaction in a community of people dedicated to goodness and charity and comparing it to a dangerous and amoral drug is insulting.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:But the point of convincing someone to start thinking critically ala Tom is to have them begin to move away from religious belief.
No. The point of convincing someone to start thinking critically is to make them capable of engaging reality more directly. Religious belief is fine as long as it accurately models reality (i.e. as long as it does not use religious epistemology.)
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SW, I'm not sure what your last reply is meant to be a response to. Are you arguing that because certain methods of taking opiates are very dangerous, and not every Christian church engages in, say, snake-handling, the analogy is invalid? Would you consider smoking hashish to be a better comparison than shooting up smack, by that logic?
I know you're new here, and probably haven't seen me actually defend the occasional merits of religious belief. But it's worth pointing out that the observation "religious belief helps someone be a better person" is true regardless of the actual religion being examined. This strongly suggests that the actual driver is not the religious belief, but the framework around it. It's arguing that God must exist -- and that it's rude to even suggest otherwise -- because cathedrals are pretty.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I'm not that new (I had another account and it goes way back)...but that's hardly the point.
Saying that heroin use and religion are not a fair analogy are not the same as saying that it's rude to suggest that God doesn't exist because cathedrals are pretty.
I would defend your belief that there is no God as vehemently as I defend their belief that there is.
There is a difference between your private opinion that a belief in god is delusional/their belief that not believing sends you to hell...and either of you telling the other that in no uncertain terms. You can both believe whatever you like...but when it comes to public declarations...there are some niceties that should be followed or else there might be fistfights. And my point is that either side insisting they have the one and only truth publicly is rude. That's all.
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