Just Google “secularism” and “religion” and you can find plenty of examples. Here’s one that mirrors my post almost exactly, and the funny thing is I just found it this instant with a Google search – I hadn’t read it before I posted.
Now **Scylla ** and some of the other theists posting to this thread probably aren’t operating from some hidden agenda. I think they’re arguing in good faith – no pun intended. But this particular meme (that atheism and secularism are religions) is certainly making the rounds these days in religious circles as justification for breaking down the wall between church and state.
Almost completely off-topic, I know, but does anyone else think the term “meat-puppet” was used completely incorrectly? I don’t mean that it was offensive, I mean that it simply makes no sense being used to describe the views of most atheists. However, it makes perfect sense to describe the views of Christians and other believers in souls.
They believe that the human body (the “meat”) is controlled by the soul (the thing that pulls the puppet strings). Atheists in general do not believe in souls, although there’s nothing about a lack of belief in any gods that necessarily implies a lack of belief in souls. Hence, in the typical atheist viewpoint people cannot be meat puppets - because puppets have controllers. Only if puppets routinely pulled their own strings would the term make any sense. “Meat robots” works, I think, or “meat automotons”.
Thanks for the cite, very interesting. I think I’m going to start learning some other language so I can go live elsewhere when the faithful manage to get faith legislated.
I wonder how they plan to get around the multiplicity of religions? I suspect that the average Christian would be somewhat against Buddhism (ugly personal experience) and I can damn sure guarantee that the Moslems wouldn’t care for the Hindu religion having any say in things.
I don’t much care for the title “atheist” either. I’ve run into more than a few people who seem to define “atheist” as “anti-christian”. This is so disappointing. It seems that some people tend to insulate themselves from rational discourse on these matters. I suppose even I do so some times. To me, the title “Bright” just seems smug.
Saint Rationality is…well…I haven’t thought much about it, considering I just made it up. So it’ll be a “she”…OR, it can be one of those things that you see at a fair that you stand behind to take funny pictures.
“Yes folks, for only 1 dollar, YOU can get a picture as Saint Rationality!”
I too know of people who have gotten free of religion too. I guess you have a lot more hope than I do.
Refards
Jotun (who is bleakening his outlook by reading “The End Of Faith” by Sam Harris)
Jotun Good to meet you as well. “Smug” is the exact word for “Brights.” OTOH, I don’t like defining myself as a negative. I just finished End of Faith and enjoyed it immensely. It seemed to get a bit vague toward the end where he tries to suggest alternatives but he was extremely sharp and clear in the beginning and middle.
“Hope” is about all I have. I’m living in a more-or-less theocracy right now and it is very little fun at all. The school-system is a shambles and what jobs exist go to foreigners like myself or Saudis who have been educated abroad. The unemployment rate among Saudi males between 19 and 30 is over 25%. Women don’t count as they can’t drive or work anyway. It’s a real mess.
When I see US politicians pushing to allow religion into schools just to pick up a few extra votes, it gives me the creeps. I honestly wonder how they can be so unconcerned. Do they think that their religion won’t make the same mistakes? Or do they just not give a damn?
The US people and their “faith-based-initiatives” should come over here and live a while so they can see where those initiatives lead.
This is not what ** Scylla ** is saying. Nor does he believe that atheist won’t feel grief, or such things.
He’s basically stating (he can correct me if I’m wrong) that without an absolute external standart, morals are arbitrary and objectively unecessary and that in a purely mechanist world, human life has no intrisinc value.
I agree with that, but…so what? I’m not sure how it is relevant to a debate about atheism anymore than for instance stating that it feels better to believe you’ll go in heavens rather than just rot away. A belief isn’t anymore true because it’s more comfortable. And a moral norm isn’t any less arbitrary because it’s external.
Stating that without god your value system rest on shaky grounds doesn’t make the existence of a god anymore likely, and asserting that there’s a god providing a moral norm doesn’t prove that this norm isn’t as baseless as any arbitrary set of values I could come up with.
You don’t seem to understand what the HUP tells us about reality. It is not telling us that we are limited in our ability to know stuff. It is telling us that there is a limit to what stuff there is to be known.
Keeping with the basics, if we know a particle’s momentum perfectly, we cannot know anything about its position. This is not a limitation of ours; no human, no alien species, nor any deity (even yours) can know either, because that bit of information simply does not exist. The particle does not have a position.
Imagine a standard deck of 52 cards, 13 of each suit. Shuffle them. Now, what suit is the 14th card from the top? The 26th? How about the 71st?
That last one is tricky, no? I can confidently state that not even god can know the suit of the 71st card, because it does not exist. Just like when a particle whose momentum has been perfectly measured, its position does not exist.
Thus, the original statement is exactly correct: “…science and logic and observation can determine anything that can be known”
As an added bonus, science and logic and observation can also determine what is knowable and what is not, and then determine everything that is knowable.
Often on this board people are challenged to provide a cite, and rightly so, because they assert something and it’s up to the person making the statement to provide the proof. If you don’t, you’re entering Aldebaran territory “my post is my cite”) and will get slammed.
Scylla wants atheists to prove that god doesn’t exist, and when they raise to the bait, he gets to say that it’s “just an opinion” and dismiss it as such. Because of that, arguments that are based on (or rather seems to be based on) atheism, can be dismissed as opinion of a fringe group.
However, the burden of proof is not on the atheists. The Scientific Method teaches us that the believers supply the proof and then the unbelievers try to pick those proofs apart. If they can’t do that, we’ll eventually have a “Theory of God”.
Thank you. I hadn’t realized that Scylla’s response was directed at me. Apologies for that.
In any event, you take my meaning exactly. No scientist, theistic or otherwise, claims to know everything. Just that, given time and tools, they can discover anything that can be known.
In addition to these points, there’s also the fact that no external moral standard is knowable anyway. What religionists try to point to as objective morality is really just an arbitrary personal guess. Choosing to submit to a religious morality is still an autonomous moral decision in itself. An objective morality that cannot be known is useless.
You’re also right that objecting to atheism because a non-theistic universe seems nihilistic or meaningless is nothing but special pleading. It amounts to arguing that “A universe without magic would make me unhappy therefore magic exists.”
Hmm. I’d agree, because you could, for example, write a very complex program that could be accomplished with three lines of code.
When doing simple math, sure. You don’t need to wade through all the other options. Likewise, if you want a piece of food carried somewhere, it would be much easier to put it near an ant than to try and explain what you want to a person (“Hey, could you carry this piece of cheese?” “Uh, why?” " I want to see if you’re better than an ant." “…what?”) In the world of small-piece-of-food carrying, the ant is probably better than a human.
True. Likewise, a wise ant (could there be such a thing? let’s just say an ant, actually) is better than a comatose person.
Bare in mind with this example, though, that the comatose person has always been so - if he’s been a “normal” human at one point, then your analogy is that a computer broken now is better. Which, again, would be correct; the ant is still worth more, in that it can move about, and have thoughts. If the person can be “fixed”, like the computer, he’d be back up to better than the ant again.
Why, then, do we even attempt to help the person who is “broken” if they are worth less than an ant? Because humans have the potential to be more - which is also the reason why you don’t go around killing people, but i’ll get into that later.
I think you may be asking yourself, “Does he really believe an ant is worth more than a comatose person?”. Yes, I do. Apologies to all those who may know people in comas, but this is my opinion.
Apologies, then. It seems to me sometimes that theists are either incapable or unwilling to imagine such a thing - It’s good to know you aren’t one of them.
It wouldn’t make it simpler. It would retain the same amount of complexity. The other points I agree on, though.
Oh, I agree totally. Life is, when looked at it this way, utterly worthless. There is no point to doing anything, really - we’re born, things happen, we die. I’m in total agreement with you here. A world with a deity would probably (not definetly) have more worth - mainly 'cos of the judgement and afterlife parts.
Hmm. I think the problem is we’re not seeing eye to eye on what each of us believe. I’m agnostic, btw - to be more detailed, I believe it’s impossible to prove for certain that there are no deities. I believe it’s possible to prove some Deities do not exist, by means of characteristics of theirs being contradictory with each other or the world - which I why I feel more confident saying the mainstream christian God does not exist, than I do saying Zeus does not exist.
Acceptableness? Why should it be acceptable? At this moment in time, I believe life has no point. That’s not acceptable - i’d much rather prefer it to. But why *should * there be acceptableness to us about the universe?
You didn’t apologise, though. I don’t think you’re just being mean, here, but more that you don’t understand my and others points of view on this. I think it would be akin to saying to a theist “Hey, your God saves people after death - so let’s go on a killing spree!”. It’s morally repugnant, and to have it suggested that our personal beliefs are morally repugnant is, as I hope you’d imagine, unpleasant.
Fair enough. I too am quite happy to say that we could have a spiritual part, and that I am wrong. That’s why i’m agnostic rather than athiest or religious.
Sounds good to me. Likewise i’m happy to admit that the part of me I consider “Me” is not the result of flesh, but in fact a soul, or spiritual part. As I see no evidence for that, I have to go with the other.
Because we feel it. If you were to discover there was no God, would you still feel grief at a friends death? I’m sure you would. Why should we care? Because we feel very, very sad. It’s part of us - built in (well, except for psychopaths) that we have emotions - just because they are biological does not make them worthless, or the same as other, less important biological functions. I do not shed a tear as I shit. I do when a friend dies. It is meaningful because I feel it - sure, i’m forced to by my biology, but simply knowing that does not mean I can just say “Hey, actually, it’s just hormones - back to work!”. I’m sad - it being biological or soul-based doesn’t matter.
Empathy. By killing him, you will cause him pain. If you choose a painless method, his family and friends (if he has any) will care. I do not want to be in pain, or feel sad, and so I also want to spare others this - because i’m a nice person
Actually, what might be interesting addition to your question might be “Ok, what if he has no friends or family? What if no one will mourn his passing, or even they will be happy about it? Why not kill him then?”
Why not indeed! On the face of it, it seems sensible to agree if you’re an athiest. However, I believe that humans have the potential to be good - I do not want to rob this person, unpleasant as they may be, of his capacity to do good in the world, even if all he’ll ever do is give some change to a homeless guy.
What if I knew, for certain he’d never do any good? Then yep, kill him. That’d be fine, morally speaking (you’d still have the law to contend with, here). If I could get away with it, I would consider it my duty, much as it is my duty to help people, to kill this person. I might not be able to, but i’d try. Self-imposed duty, btw.
Same reasoning as above. You take into account other being’s pleasure or pain as well - maybe it’s built in as a herd defence mechanism, maybe it’s a choice we make. Either way, I wouldn’t kill him, even though I might want to.
Theist: Atheists are X, because they believe in Y.
Me: No, we’re A, because we believe in B.
Theist: No, you believe in Y, because I read that somewhere.
Me: Trust me, we believe in B, because Y makes no sense.
Theist: Really? I didn’t know that.
Me: There’s a lot you don’t know.
Theist: That’s because I never really bothered learning anything about atheists. Or A. Or B.
Me: I can tell.
Theist: Atheists are X, because they believe in Y! I’m an expert on this!
Woah. Waitaminute.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett: You can grind up the whole universe into the smallest possible particle and not find a single particle that is “justice, fairness and decency”. Nor beauty, pride, love or another human concept.Most of what we regard as just, fair and decent are construct made from a religeous base. IIRC, this is a base for some writing that C.S. Lewis made (“Mere Christianty”?) to prove that since these concepts are universal (or nearly so) among humans from Greenland to Easter Island,it must be because of som deity injecting us with all that stuff.
Being non-religeous myself, I still realize that alot of what is called “Western” culture ows a huge debt to the Judeo-Christian tradition and that religion in general has been the glue that has held societies together over the millenia.
I can understand the anxiety religeous people feel about a secular society and in a way, they are right. We’re losing some common ground that keep us together and so far, there hasn’tbeen anything strong enough to take its place.
I think humans need a certain amount of spirituality and that the void left in our secular society has been filled with new age, astrology, UFOs and the like. I wish I could find something that would guide me, but haven’t so far.
If you find it, let me know, ok? I would love to find a guiding secular philosophy or “code” to follow. I have explored many different paths, but all have too much mumbo-jumbo to them, and to me that detracts from the benifits I should gain from such a guide.
I sure wish Athiesm was a religion with a universal code and guiding principles. Then I would join up and have structure to my life that I had when I actually believed in God (or wanted to believe in God).
Perhaps some intellectual and ethical code based on intellectual rigor, of not comparing ourselves to others, but constantly working to better ourselves, whether physically or mentally. Yes, sort of like Transhumanism but without all the turning into robots thing.
I think you have it backward, since people have been reading tea leaves and animal bones and trying to get stoned and predict the future for much longer than they’ve been following Jesus and Muhammad. Religion addresses that spiritual need and provides a moral and social code.
So I think there’s more of a buffet principle at work there - people pick and choose what they like. Being religious or irreligious doesn’t rule out beliefs in astrology, aliens and psychics. Strictly religious people tend to dislike those things, but that’s not most people.
Your question is not a simple question, it is poorly worded. You are setting up an either/or scenario. Yes it is spiritual and yes it is biologically based. You are asking me to choose one or the other. That’s like asking me whether I thought that I felt the pain of a splinter in my toe, or whether I felt it in my brain, the two are part and parcel, and inseperable. So your question ISN’T straight forward. It leans a little bit to one side.
But this particular meme (that atheism and secularism are religions) is certainly making the rounds these days in religious circles as justification for breaking down the wall between church and state.
