Don’t be too sure. Many people would say that of “society”, that it is the individual people who are conscious and that society is a combination of abstractions + bits and pieces of alabaster and electrical wiring.
But a sociologist might say thought occurs in long waves, that cultures develop attitudes and reach conclusions over the course of generations, while individual actually are best conceptualized as blank slates, caused by their cultural context, no more than the momentary DNA through which the long waves of social thought are momentarily exhibited.
I would not make either claim. I believe individual intelligence and consciousness exist (although I do think most people are just sponges and mirrors, absorbing uncritically the thought in the thought-sea surrounding them and reflecting what’s around them without generating much insight of their own). I also believe in the “long waves”; I do see the species human as entity and not just structure.
And I see a valid process of prayer playing a role in making sense of things.
There’s room to debate if any of it happened. Historians don’t have definitive proof that jesus even existed (though I think he probably did, as a regular guy). The point I"m making is that if they made up some of it in order to make it more attractive to the masses, why not the god part as well?
How do you know that? Why couldn’t he be a metaphor?
The ploy could have been invented by the people in power who were at a loss on how to maintain peace. It could have been a power struggle and this seemed like a good way to get people to side up. You mention the “belief” in the Divine Something, but belief doesn’t automatically mean it’s real. They could have all been scammed into behaving, tithing, fighting, whatever. It’s worked with other religions. I have no reason to think it couldn’t have worked here as well.
It’s still not working for me. The free will can be exercised and god can still provide padding, so that any choice I make will be a choice free of pain or negative consequence.
Neither statement is more offensive because (unfortunately) you included a direct insult in your example, so the insult trumps the syntax.
Let’s go back. badchad has been accused of being insulting in his presentation.
You asserted that he was neither more nor less insulting than his opponents because each asserted that each had knowledge not shared by the other.
Ignoring the fact that you appear to have deliberately ignored badchad’s manner of expression, (for which he has been chided–not his claim to knowledge), I pointed out that your new definition of offensive actually places Der Trihs and a few others in the forefront of being offensive, based on the fact that they have a much higher percentage of posts claiming to “know” that a god does or does not exist when compared to theists who post on a much broader range of topics and who (on this board) tend to express themselves with fewer declarations of having possessed incontrovertible knowledge.
Now, if I were to identify things that were offensive, I would not use your odd characterization and Der Trihs would tend to fall out of the number one spot. Der Trihs is simply a True Believer among Evangelical/Fundamentalist Atheists. Given his perspective, I simply consider his postings style and his evident beliefs, and fail to find offense.
On the other hand, badchad makes a point of using insulting language to make his points. When True Believers make assertions of knowledge regarding religion, politics, economics, race, culture, sports, or whatever, their adherence to their ideologies generally will compel them to make absolutist statements regarding their actual beliefs in those regards. As such, while I recognize that their presentation of their beliefs limits discussion, I do not find their comments particularly offensive.
Your claim that simply asserting knowledge immediately renders the claim offensive seems to me to lack merit. (But if you insist that such is the case, then we are back to noting that the most “offensive” posters on this MB are, in fact, based on your definition, a handful of Fundamentalist Atheists. Such would not be my position, but you are free to hold it.)
We’re still on “The Problem of Evil 101”. How can a choice made without consequences still be considered “free”? If God makes it so that your “choices” are limited to those without adverse consequences, then you are not truly exercising free will, because some of your choices have been removed from you. You rightly remove some choices from a child in light of their understanding – “I will allow my daughter to choose which sweater she wears, but I am going to insist she wear a sweater because it’s cold out, so ‘no sweater’ is not an option” – but we are not children.
Sorry. I didn’t get that official memo. Its awfully convenient, isn’t it, for those who feel free to invent the rules as they go along?
It’s also convenient when you can just pull percentages out of your ass, and pompously go on to make further claims that assume your figures to be true. All of these theists don’t claim to “know” the Bible to be true, don’t “know” that God loves us, don’t “know” that he has an undisclosed plan for us? Get real.
I cut you off before you started pulling out your thesaurus, so I might focus on this bit of nonsense. To you, badchad used insulting language, but to me it was just witty and appropriate. But if you’re going to couch the discussion in your own judgmental and self-defined terms, you win the debate in your own mind. To me, the insulting language stems from those tell me that their unprovable and unsupportable delusions must be given credence in a serious debate.
You should know, inventing a definition of “offensive” based on an assertion of knowledge.
Based on my (forced) reading of large numbers of threads in GD, I would say that we chased off the theists who would assert knowledge several years ago. Those posters who are most likely to enter a thread and post that they know that there is no god do tend to outnumber theists who post assert the claim that their beliefs are, in fact, knowledge. There are only a handful of posters on either side of the divide who engage in that behavior, but the atheists have small lead. (Remember, we are not talking about whether a poster believes that his or her beliefs are true, only about the likelihood that they will assert knowledge in their posts.)
I can probably limit my posts to words found in my kids’ Thorndyke and Barnhart’s Junior Dictionary if it will help you follow the thread.
I don’t think any of it was “made up” in the sense that the authors did not believe it as they wrote it. Again, there is little historical evidence that the Biblical God was an intentional fictive construct. You can speculate that that’s true, but I’m unaware of any basis for that view. To the contrary, it seems clear the authors believed sincerely in what they wrote; some gave their lives for the tenets they recorded and lived by.
I don’t know it, seeing as how I can’t read the minds of authors long dead. But there’s no evidence for it as far as I am aware. This is your theory; not mine.
The Biblical God is not actually a great argument for peace. Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers” but the OT God seems to have had a different view. There were lots of power struggles, but since little of the Bible was written contemporaneously – as events happened – it seems unlikely it would have been written as contemporaneous propaganda to get people to “side up”.
Yes, yes, it could have been a great big scam they were all dumb enough to fall for – we’re back to the theory of “believers are stupid, deluded and retarded.” Maybe this is true but – here’s the kicker – maybe it isn’t. I never said “belief makes something real”, but neither does disbelief make anything unreal. At the end of the day you’re no more confident in your disbelief than I am in my belief – and no more able to prove it. The difference is that I admit I don’t know. You don’t.
If you seriously think that the Catholic church is just as bad as Scientology, then I really don’t know what to say to you.
(For godsakes, people, BATTLEFIELD EARTH!!!)
badchad, when you admit that you “know you can” pull the big “I GOT YOU!” game, you pretty much gave it up that you’re not here to debate, just to play games.
Honestly, if you people think I only pick on atheists, do a search for these three names: JerseyDiamond Joe_Cool lynn73 (originally known as His4ever)
They were far, far worse than badchad could ever be. And yet, that doesn’t excuse his behavior. Grow the fuck up. If you’re so secure in your beliefs, then why do you NEED to go around mocking people about their’s?
Likewise, slaphead and severus have both claimed to be atheists, and have been nothing but reasonable and courteous.
pseudotriton ruber ruber, badchad seem to have more issues than National Geographic. Fine, you’re right, but you sure seem threatened by the idea that people believe otherwise. Obviously, Jodi, Sarafeena or Polycarp don’t need to put down others to feel good about themselves.
Likewise, Kalhoun, you can’t possibly believe that framing a debate with terms like, “your widespread delusions” or “invisible fairy” is somehow neutral and civil.
To analyze this even further, the reason to build character in a person is to prepare them for future hardships. To say that an omnipotent being causes His creations to suffer to build character is ridiculous; the hardships are there only because of the omnipotent God.
It’s exactly like if I were to start kicking my dog randomly, so that he can learn how to avoid being kicked by me randomly.
This is another example of how the people who invented God really didn’t have a good grasp of omnipotence.
WTF is up with telling people to shut up? It’s a fucking message board. If you don’t like what a particular poster posts, ignore them, either by averting your eyes or using the ignore function. Nobody around here is ever going to shut up because somebody else told them to. If you’re scraping the bottom of your bag o’ tricks to the point that the best you can do is drag a “shut up” out, blow the dust off it, and pin it up, it’s time to step away from the computer and work on your rhetorical skills.
