[QUOTE=Valteron]
Religion is based on faith, which is believing things contrary to reason and with no supporting evidence. The genius of religion is that it has made faith a virtue. Thus, the virtue of faith insulates the believer against logic and reason.
[/QUOTE]
Religion is more overt about that, but I don’t think the difference is as black and white as you’re saying. Which is what Malthus said, too.
[QUOTE=Miller]
Thanks, Lib. Well put.
[/QUOTE]
You really put that stupid fucker of a Valteron in his place! :rolleyes:
Now it’s my turn:
“Gee Liberal, that’s what you are, but what am I?”
My thanks to Bart Simpson for that appropriate rejoinder to your puerile name-calling.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
Unlike you I see a difference between value teaching and religion teaching.
a) Take for example, telling a child that laughing at a cripple is bad because it creates hurt in another person, that they would not like it if someone laughed at them, etc. Teaching someone to feel compassion and realize how their actions affect others is a necessary part of socialization to make a person sufficiently mature to function in society.
b) On the other hand, telling a child that the Koran is the final word of God dictated to the illiterate Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel in a cave, or that Jesus arose from the dead, is indoctrination of religious myths to satisfy the desire of organized religion to control minds and loyalty.
The value in a) could be taught in any secular, public school, even if the children are of a dozen faiths and a few dozen atheists to boot.
The teaching in b), however, would quite rightly be banned from a secular, public school.
Compassionate treatment of the less fortunate is a useful social value that helps our society run better. Believing in Jesus or Mohammed are not useful social values, they are unproven religious dogmas.
[/QUOTE]
You don’t have a very nuanced view of what it is that religious people actually teach children, as you appear to be saying that values such as “compassion” are purely secular. But that is quite beside the point.
You seem to wish to argue that the specific values you have cherry-picked demonstrate that “your” values are superior and ought to be favoured. Fair enough. But that isn’t the issue. The issue is whether teaching of communal values to children is, or is not, “indoctrination”. I would argue that there is no sensible distinction to be made between religious, secular, or any other values in this respect - all are taught to children in more or less the same manner, through example, emulation of parents, and the like.
Moreover, in a modern Western society, there exist more than one source of “values”.
A belligerant asshole. This has been another example of easy answers to easy questons.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
You really put that stupid fucker of a Valteron in his place! :rolleyes:
Now it’s my turn:
“Gee Liberal, that’s what you are, but what am I?”
My thanks to Bart Simpson for that appropriate rejoinder to your puerile name-calling.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, that does seem to be a roughly accurate summation of the bulk of your posts to this thread. Fair play to you for your personal honesty.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
“Gee Liberal, that’s what you are, but what am I?”
My thanks to Bart Simpson for that appropriate rejoinder to your puerile name-calling.
[/QUOTE]
Alright, this has gone on long enough. I don’t care if you insult religion, I belong to perhaps the only religion in the world that advertises the fact that it’s a joke. But mistaking Pee-wee Herman for Bart Simpson is something I will NOT sit back and tolerate. Your arguments suck up and down the line, and you wouldn’t understand subtlety if it drove up to you in a Mack truck and smacked you in the face with lead pipe (colored in varying shades of gray). You’re too stupid to tell the difference between when people are disagreeing with you and when they’re insulting you, you’re to dim to even think of one “value” that not everybody agrees with, you’re irritatingly convinced of your own righteousness, and above all, you’re smug while being stupid (quoting Bierce is fine, but two posts in a row, right on top of each other, using the same quote? If you think your opponents are that stupid, why even argue with them?). I counted myself an atheist for 10 or 12 years and I’m probably still one, and I find your posts in this thread petrifyingly dumb.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
It always pisses me off when numbskulls like you argue on behalf of atheism because there are atheists here on the SDMB whom I very much respect. Their task at attaining a more general acceptance in American society is hindered by your sort of wild-eyed madman evangelism. If you truly value atheism, the very best thing you could do is shut up.
[/QUOTE]
There is indeed a danger of atheism being badly represented by people like me or Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.
I have an idea! Why don’t the “good” representatives of atheism like you and the people you approve of form a commission of inquiry, or “Inquisition” that would look into what atheists like me are saying and how we express it. Those that your Inquisition deems to be numbskulls like me who are doing more harm than good would be given a chance to recant. Failing that, they could be burned at the stake. Whaddya say?
[QUOTE=Marley23]
Alright, this has gone on long enough. I don’t care if you insult religion, I belong to perhaps the only religion in the world that advertises the fact that it’s a joke. But mistaking Pee-wee Herman for Bart Simpson is something I will NOT sit back and tolerate. Your arguments suck up and down the line, and you wouldn’t understand subtlety if it drove up to you in a Mack truck and smacked you in the face with lead pipe (colored in varying shades of gray). You’re too stupid to tell the difference between when people are disagreeing with you and when they’re insulting you, you’re to dim to even think of one “value” that not everybody agrees with, you’re irritatingly convinced of your own righteousness, and above all, you’re smug while being stupid (quoting Bierce is fine, but two posts in a row, right on top of each other, using the same quote? If you think your opponents are that stupid, why even argue with them?). I counted myself an atheist for 10 or 12 years and I’m probably still one, and I find your posts in this thread petrifyingly dumb.
[/QUOTE]
Gee Marley, that’s what you are, but what am I? And Bart Simpson DID use that line.
Anybody putting a gun to your head and making you read my stuff? Who is stupider, me for writing it or you for reading stuff that you find petrifyingly dumb?
By the way, I think you are insulting me in your posting, right??? Well duuuuh. See, I CAN tell when people are insulting me. 
[QUOTE=Miller]
Yes, that does seem to be a roughly accurate summation of the bulk of your posts to this thread. Fair play to you for your personal honesty.
[/QUOTE]
Inlcluding the reference to your puerile name-calling?
[QUOTE=Valteron]
Anybody putting a gun to your head and making you read my stuff?
[/quote]
So your response to “your arguments are awful and you sound like a jackass” is ‘stop reading them?’
It’s not a bad idea, but it’s not exactly a stirring defense of your rhetorical prowess. Years ago on the high school debate team, they taught us that if an opponent didn’t respond to an argument you made, then you automatically won the point because they’d chosen not to defend it. Similarly, it looks to me like you haven’t responded to my argument that you suck. 
So, my next question- are you between the ages of 12 and 14? If so, what you’ve said isn’t as stupid because I figure you’ll grow out of it in a few years.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
So your response to “your arguments are awful and you sound like a jackass” is ‘stop reading them?’
It’s not a bad idea, but it’s not exactly a stirring defense of your rhetorical prowess. Years ago on the high school debate team, they taught us that if an opponent didn’t respond to an argument you made, then you automatically won the point because they’d chosen not to defend it. Similarly, it looks to me like you haven’t responded to my argument that you suck.
So, my next question- are you between the ages of 12 and 14? If so, what you’ve said isn’t as stupid because I figure you’ll grow out of it in a few years.
[/QUOTE]
I can’t make you like my arguments.
Telling me I suck is just an insult, not an argument, and I have no responsibility to respond to insults. If that were the case, I could say that you are a numbskull. If you have no way of proving that your skull does not suffer from loss of tactile sensation (whatever the fuck that would mean) then I would automatically have won the point.
I guess that when it has gotten to the point where we are doing nothing but trading insults, it is a good sign that this thread has run its course, even if it is in the Pit.
So I think the time has come to chuck this particular thread. Liberal, Marley, and all the others, I hereby give you all the privilege of the final word so you can now jump up and down, hurl dung at me like monkeys throwing a fit, and claim that I ran away defeated in the face of your overwhelming logic and intelligent arguments. :rolleyes:
Which is what you usually do, as I recall.
Valteron, what’s your goal here? Seriously. If you want to actually make anyone more embracing of atheism/less embracing of religion, you’re taking an entirely counterproductive approach. Surely you can see that? Even the atheists here are generally put off by your rantings.
Perhaps your goal is merely to scream self-righteously, regardless of the deleterious effects?
ETA: Oh, damnation, my timing is awful.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
Telling me I suck is just an insult, not an argument, and I have no responsibility to respond to insults.
[/QUOTE]
Your very first post to this thread was an insult: you called everyone who believe in God mentally ill. If you don’t like the tenor of the discussion that has taken place since then, the responsibility is entirely yours, as you are the one who set the tone from your first foray into this thread.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
Religion is based on faith, which is believing things contrary to reason and with no supporting evidence. The genius of religion is that it has made faith a virtue. Thus, the virtue of faith insulates the believer against logic and reason.
[/QUOTE]
There are reasoned arguments for God and for faith. They are not proofs, they are disputable, and they are certainly not empirical in the sense of a laboratory experiment, but they are there. In the sense of the word faith that I believe you are using, reason goes outside of faith, but not against it.
And Hell, there’s reasoned arguments for atheism as well, which requires just as much fait as theism if you think about it. Here’s a Wikipedia entry of all things to support my point: Existence of God - Wikipedia
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
And Hell, there’s reasoned arguments for atheism as well, which requires just as much fait as theism if you think about it.
[/quote]
God, not this again. Atheism is not a belief but an absence of belief. It requires no faith at all. In fact, it is defined as having no faith at all. Even hard atheism – a postive belief that gods do not exist – does not require “just as much faith” as theism. Those are not symmetrically plausible propositions. Believing in an invisible, all-powerful creator on the basis of no observable evidence or necessity requires a much greater leap than assuming that universe is no more than what it appears to be. Saying it takes faith to be an atheist is like saying it takes faith to assume that sprites don’t exist. There is no equivalency.
It all hinges around who is making the outrageous claim I suppose. To the atheist, the ‘sky pixies,’ require proof. To the theist, the claim that the material world is everything is equally so, or at least similar in my mind. You cant prove there is no God, but then the chorus, perhaps justly so, proclaims that the burden of proof lies on the theist, not the atheist. So, I see your logic and understand it, but I think for many atheists atheism is not an assumption from all that is observable but a belief that there is no God/god, a belief which resembles faith.
Sorry, Dio, but B(G) and B(~G) are equally B. Now, ~B(G) okay.
I don’t think Dio was talking about B. Dio was talking about F.
ETA just to elaborate. Sure, B(G) and B(~G) are both B, Dio never claimed otherwise. But B(G) entails F(G), whereas B(~G) does not require F(~G).
B is fine. We all do it. We can’t avoid doing it. We even have to do it for ‘truths’. But I think Dio is arguing (and Valteron too, in his way) (and so do I argue) that whilst B is unavoidable, F is, and is also undesirable.
[QUOTE=Nancarrow]
… whilst B is unavoidable, F is, and is also undesirable.
[/QUOTE]
F is avoidable and also undesirable. (missed edit window)
I think faith and belief are synonyms in this context, as in this definition of faith: “belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion”.