The offenses of the Soviet Union were due to their conviction that they were the future, and that they were by definition correct, and that those who stood in the way deserved to die for obstructing the state and the workers. Just like radical religions believe that they are the future ( when Jesus returns all the heathen will perish,) that they are correct (the Bible is inerrant) and that sinners who blaspheme or fight against God need to be punished (or killed if you do abortions.)
If you’re sure you are absolutely right, all those who stand in your way are actually committing crimes against the state or God, and deserve punishment. The absolutism, the belief in historical inevitability, is where they are similar, and is the source for the crimes each commit.
Kid Chameleon
This sounds suspiciously like a challenge to prove God doesn’t exist. Am I right? Can you please clarify this for me? I’d hate to foist ten paragraphs of hardcore philosobatory pontification on you if you hadn’t actually asked for it 
magellan01
I’d be happy to try. However, like Kidchameleon, I’d very much appreciate it if you were to clarify your request. Religion, after all, is a very big word. Moreover, such a clarification may be better suited to GD. Iv’e been thinking of starting an ‘In defence of atheism’ thread for some time. Would you be interested in participating?
In my defence, I may be disrespectful of religion but I don’t consider myself hostile to the religious. It is true that I have absolutely no respect whatsoever for religious beliefs, as even the most laudable are essentially irrational (While a noble sentiment, and one with which I wholly concur, I consider even the ‘Golden Rule’ to be irrational since the reason given for following it is to appease an imaginary being). There is, I think, a qualitative difference between asserting that someone is labouring under a delusion and asserting that someone is evil for being under a delusion.
This may jibe with what I said earlier about finding Der Trihs’ debate style refreshing, but just because I find his snappy, spartan posts a welcome change of pace to, well, posts like mine, doesn’t mean I support him when he condemns all believers as stupid or evil.
Oh sure. Believe me, it took a fair while to shake off the fourteen years of Catholic indoctrination I underwent during elementary and high school. I might be the only atheist in the world who has to consciously put down the urge to cross himself after he blasphemes
So yeah, I did have doubts. Not really any more, however.
It’s not that they’re close minded, it’s that they’re too open minded
cosmosdan
I agree. However there is, I think, a qualitative difference between challenging a belief on the one hand, and flat out denying it on the other. To challenge a belief is to assume it has some validity, although not enough to justify holding it in the light of possible alternatives.
Take the Problem of Evil, for instance. It culminates in a straightforward denial of God’s existence. However this conclusion follows from premises which necessarily assume, purely for the sake of argument, that God does exist (eg. ‘God is all knowing’).
From what little I’ve seen of him, Der Trihs doesn’t even deign to use traditional atheistic arguments. He simply refuses to entertain in depth discussion on the matter until his evidentiary demands have been satisfied. I think that attitude annoys some of the boards theists nearly as much as the insults do.
I know. It’s a marvellous little book, isn’t it?
But that’s the trouble with irrational belief. As Sam Harris said, “Belief is like a lever which, when pulled, moves almost everything else in a persons life”. Someone who really, truly, believes that the pernicious influence of his homosexual neighbours could corrupt his children and put them on the fast track to hell is going to do everything in their power to ostracise them, including vote for measures restricting their freedoms. The God of Abraham is so intolerant in so many ways that theistic assaults on secularism are pretty well inevitable so long as his name still has cultural weight.
I agree, he can go overboard. I certainly don’t think all religious people are evil, or sick, or whatever. I come from quite a religious background myself. However, I do agree with him that there is no factual basis for religious belief, and that consequently there is no reason to elevate it above any equally unsupported belief in any other sphere of inquiry.
Yes, I do. For what it’s worth, I don’t buy into the whole Communism=Religion thing either. While, as you said to me in GD recently, valid comparisons can be made between the two, I don’t think they can really be considered equivalent if only for the pure and simple reason that Communism explicitely disavows the supernatural.
I agree, and that is precisely why I’m puzzled by its priviledged status in public discourse. Whatever facts are litter Christian discourse, they don’t support its central tenets. Every belief that makes Christianity a religion as opposed to an intellectual history has its basis in the supernatural and the apocryphal. For instance, we can prove St. Paul existed. That’s an easily verifiable historical fact. We cannot, however, prove he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus. And that’s what really counts, isn’t it?
I don’t think this comparison holds water. There is no objective standard by which beauty or country music can be judged. Religious claims about the world, by contrast, can be judged against observable reality. I wouldn’t consider someone a dick for believing in transubstantiation. I’d certainly have no trouble calling them wrong, but that’s as far as I’d go. Yet for some unaccountable reason to do so is considered deeply rude
A-elephantist: (politely) You know there are no pink elephants in pajamas, don’t you?
Elephantist: Of course there are!
A-e: Have you ever seen one?
E: No, but my dad and mom say there are elephants and the President says so, and I have this book here that talks about people seeing elephants.
A-e: But thhat book was written 100 years after the people supposedly saw them, and no one at the time mentioned the elephant in the room.
E: But everyone believes in the book - at least parts of it. Anyhow, the blue sky proves there are elephants. Everyone knows there are elephants. Only someone scared of admitting there are elephants would say otherwise.
A-e: (shouting now.) There are no elephants! You’re delusional.
E: Hah. I win.
Doesn’t that tell you something?
So all beliefs responsible for deaths are religions? Nope. People died because ot the belief that blood letting let out evil spirits.
That is precisely what it means. Religions are based on issues greater than how to feed people. They address question like where did we come from, why are we here, and what happens when I die. It requires the consideration of a Supreme Being or the existence of a higher order.
First, you’re assuming that all religions belie reality. You’re confusing reality for provability. Now, I happen to agree with you on this point, but it’s still an assumption.
And you keep trying to create these common denominators to prove equivalence. But they’re all stretches. They’re deaing with completely different issues. One is unknowable, the other is provable and has been proven. Just because there are theories or beleif systems at the foundation of both doesn’t mean they’re both religiond. You might as well say the Catholicism is a socio-economic theory. Lot’s of things are based on theories, that doesn’t make them religions.
I think you should have stopped after the first five words of your post.
Yes, it was a theory in practice. And in that practice, religion (and other things) were stripped from society. That created voids. Just because some of those voids had once been filled with or by religion, doesn’t mean that what subsequently filled them was religious. Take art. You can remove paintings of the Madonna and Christ from a museum and reoplace it with other art, Jackson Pollack, for instance. That certainly doesn’t mean that Pollack’s art is now religious.
Do you deny that it is possible to be self-righteous and hubristic and not be religious? You may want to refer to the subject of this pitting before answering.
Ordinarily, yes. In this case, based on the rest of your post to me, I don’t think so. But if you start it I will look at it. My guess is that it will be filled with pink unicorns and fire-breathing dragons, which shows how little some atheists understand about religion. Or polite debate.
There have been quite a dew threads discussing these issue. You may want to check some of them to come at it from a slightly different perspective. I do suggest that you qualify what you mean by atheist, strong vs weak, or your thread will suffer serious sub discussions.
I lview leaving room for the possibility that one may be wrong as a healthy thing. For the devout religious follower and the devout aetheist alike.
:rolleyes:
“There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with Der Trihs
For the maples want more sunshine
And the oaks ignore their pleas”
When was the last time a theist said that to you in a debate? Be honest.
That can easily be remedied with a hatchet, axe or saw.
Around here? Not at all, that fallacy pretty much has been beaten out of people thanks to efforts on both sides. On Usenet, quite often. (Not so much mom and dad, but more the 1 billion Christians can’t be wrong argument.)
But really, how many believers believe out of deep analysis, and how many believe because they are born and grow up in an environment of belief? I did. I was born Jewish, my parents were Jewish, most of my friends were Jewish and I actually hung around with fewer Christians than the number of Hindus and Buddhists my daughter knew. Everyone I knew assumed the Bible (our part of it) was more or less true. I didn’t have access to anything that contradicted the main stories (yeah, I knew the Earth was old) until I got into high school and read the introduction to the Bible we used in English that described J and the other actual writers of the Bible. If people were kept from religion until 18, or were taught all religions on an absolutely equal footing, how many would join Christianity as opposed to another or none at all?
So the average theist won’t say he is Christian (or whatever) because his parents are, but that’s the actual reason.
There are lots of ways to be obnoxious. I’ll even go beyond what you ask and say that not all religious people are self-righteous and hubristic. It’s the absolutism that’s the problem, not god belief. I was brought up Jewish, and we believed that there are laws we needed to live by, but that they did not apply to others. Absolutist religions believe that all are under the rule of god, and all must obey the commandments or else suffer great punishment. These guys don’t care if you disagree with them about abortion or contraception - they’ve got the answer. These are the guys whose nose is out of joint if gays marry. These are the guys who are so sure that abortion is murder that they think killing abortionists is justified. (Or, if they’re really nice, throwing them in jail.)
So, my question to you is: are you with this type of religionist, or are you against them? I make pretty sure I add enough adjectives to show that these are the people I’m talking about. Are you with me in opposing them or against me?
So you think it’s wrong for them to claim that they’re right and that other people are in error? Is that it?
By the way, has anybody told Der Trihs that he’s being Pitted? Just wondering, since he hasn’t shown up to defend himself.
Speaking somewhat more strictly, Communism was a utopian socio-economic system that didn’t have place for religion whatsoever, tried to eliminate it by all possible means and used ‘atheism’ as a tool to achieve that goal.
While living in USSR, I had to sit for many state sponsored classes of Atheism. Many of the teachers of Atheism in USSR sounded exactly like Der Trihs. Although, to be fair, the majority of those teachers were less radical, perhaps due to the fact they had lives.
We’ve had many discissions about religion and I think you know where I fit in. Prior to this thread I would have assumed I’d be more in your corner. Now, I don’t think so. I’d like to take the both of you by the scruff of your necks and bang your heads together until you both understood that as fervently as you both might believe what you do, either one of you—or both of you—may be wrong. But since neither of you will ever be able to prove the other one wrong, it’s easy to get up on your high horses and look down on all those that don’t hold your opinion.
And, Voyager, what’s with throwing in the people killing abortionists at the end of the list? It’s like me discounting atheism because of some asshole like Der Shit. There both detestable humans in my book. You and I have had similar debates before and I’m surprised you are using these tactics and being so rude to those who follow religion. I don’t myself, which I think you might recall. But it seems the discussions we had in the past were more probing.
What you say here is the crux of the issue for me:
And both sides can be just of guilty of it.
There are differences between
I think I’m right and I think you’re wrong (perfectly okay)
and
I know I’m right and I know you’re wrong (obnoxious without a lot more evidence than is typically the case for religious discussions)
and
Not only do I know I’m right, but I’m going to throw you in jail (or kill you) for acting on your incorrect belief.
But you know that, I’m sure.
The attitude and the power one side might have at any given moment are two different things. On a debate board no one is going to throw you in jail for anything, so why not have as meaningful discussion on an issue you have so much interest in? And that requires to engaged parties. The point of this whole thing is that if you don’t ackowledge the other side the right to believe what they do without being an asshole, debate will either get shrill or shut down. I’ve bowed out of discussion a couple times for that very reason. And I don’t even practice a religion.
Let’s start with the end. Can both sides be guilty of absolutism? Absolutely. And not just both sides of the religion debate. Animal rights activists who think their cause is so correct that they don’t mind blowing up buildings are guilty. SDSers from my youth who didn’t mind who suffered when they tried to smash the state are guilty.
Now for the rest. I challenge you to find one place where I tarred all religionists with the same brush. I’m actually very interested in the mindset that allows someone who believes in God to refuse to follow Biblical dictates that they know are wrong but are still convinced that God has spoken in those dictates. I’ve said time and again that the reason I think those people do it is that they are more moral than the god they follow. I think it is more difficult, and braver, to find a way to follow your conscience against what appears to be the commandments of a god you believe in than for an atheist to do it from a blank moral slate. I don’t really understand how they justify disobeying what looks to be god’s rule - but I’m sure glad they do
I bring up abortion because it is an excellent example of the impact of absolutism in our culture. If someone absolutely believes that the creator of the universe told him that abortionists are taking life, are nothing more than mass murderers, and no one does anything about it, can’t you see that they may think it is the moral thing to do. The weak link in the argument is the absolutism. If there is the chance that they are wrong, then what they are doing is immoral. Now some absolutists don’t go so far as wanting to kill people - they’d be happy to change the law to throw them in jail.
There is a big difference between a pro-lifer working as hard as possible to honestly convince people that abortion is wrong and should not be chosen and one who doesn’t care about convincing, but wants to coerce. I may disagree with the former person but would fight to make sure they are allowed to speak. The latter person has my contempt.
The cool thing about people with non-sked theologies, like Cosmosdan is that since they arrived at their beliefs in a slightly unorthodox way, they are more willing to consider the possibility of the correctness of others. I am too - a world with the god I believed in when I was young would be fine.