Where do you think religion comes from? Space aliens? Supernatural entities? Mischeivieous fairies?
No, it was made up by human beings. Human beings invented religion. If religion isn’t the fault of human beings, whose fault is it? Religion has no existance outside the human brain. You could imagine that religion is a memetic disease, but if that’s true then it is clearly a disease caused by the deficiencies and limitations of the human brain. It isn’t something that was done to us, it’s something we did to ourselves.
The way you argue, I can understand why Liberal theorized that you aren’t really an atheist.
Heh, “athiesm” simply means a lack of belief in God, gods or other supernatural forces.
It appears that Der Trihs doesn’t in fact disbelieve in supernatural forces; he thinks they are real, are malignant, and labels them collectively as “religion”.
To be fair, he could just be a frothing mad, rabid idiot-asshole who makes himself feel good by inventing a situation where he’s superior to 99.9% of the people in his school/country/planet, due to religion and/or politics. In such a scenario, the internal logical validity of his frothing wouldn’t be as important to him as, say, the ability to invent and rationalize reasons why he’s better than other people.
Now that’s just not true - religion exists independent of brains now - as books, as artifacts, as art. I’m not a subscriber to hardline memetics, but I do believe in some form of emergent extelligence, and that’s where religion resides now. Greater than the sum of its parts in some ways.
Couldn’t agree more
Naah, Liberal was full of it - that’s always been a bullshit slander against atheists, one that never seems to get old. But it remains bullshit, even in the case of someone as outspoken as DT.
Oh, and this is probably the best thread to wish Israel happy 60 years. May it have many more!
May it mellow a little in its old age, too, on all sides.
I concur. I hope that all involved will keep their wits about them in these times of great upheaval and discontent. It takes only one fools dreams of glory to destroy all that has been attained with the gallant loss of lives on all sides.
Why is it that these clowns so often have ignorance, stupidity and a big freakin’ mouth? Why can’t folks like that simply be quiet idiots?
Am I asking for too much?
Although, in the pit, I can certainly heartily agree with his claim “Certainly nothing to celebrate in my mind.”
I think the actual reason is that he was bullied as a child and the people that did it self-identified as Christian, so he has come to hate all religion. It’s not just to feel superior to people.
Edit: Hey, he actually displayed a sense of humor in this thread. The last paragraph of this post is actually pretty funny.
Why the dubiosity? They’re both realwords - and they refer to a little more than just the mythological background - also the analyses thereof, and several layers of meta-discussion, all preserved outside our brains in hard storage. Basically, the memories-outside-our-memories, as a active entity. One that changes us as we change it, and that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Eh, it may have started that way, but anybody over, say… 20 or 21 years old should have come to realize that High School is hardly a microcosm of all reality and is, in fact, a fairly artificial environment. While he may have started hating all Christians because some Christians kicked his ass a lot, I can’t see how that would cause his continued revolting behavior with regard to all religions and almost all other Americans, too.
I think it’s far more likely that he internalized those beating as proving that he lacks self worth, so he’s been trying to build himself up by tearing other people down, never really realizing that the original ass whuppings weren’t actually valid indicators of his lack of value. Sure, he seems like one of the walking wounded, desperately trying to feel superior because he can’t feel simply okay. I don’t think that justifies his behavior or can be explained simply by him getting picked on as a kid.
“Emergence” is of course a word; “Extelligence” is a neologism I’ve never heard before (indeed is identified as such in your wiki cite).
The notion that a cultural background is an “active entity” that is “greater than the sum of its parts”, taken as more than metaphorical, strikes me as a somewhat mystical claim - not that I’m disagreeing with it, but it is in fact very close to how some mystics picture an immanent diety. Unless I’m much mistaken, its existence is un-falsifiable.
The notion that this “active entity” both exists and is malign (in the case of religion) isn’t really “atheism” per se, but is closer to a form of mystic gnosticism.
Only if you believe all notions of emergent behaviour are inherently mystical. None of the parts or connections in this particular Extelligence require any other mysticism. I have not ascribed any sentience or even intention to it merely outlined that it is not just a static memory dump.
Good for them
Good thing I wasn’t making a scientific claim, then. Not that I buy into Popperian falsifiability as the be-all and end-all of even scientific debate. And I’m pretty sure the thesis could make claims that are falsifiable. But I’m not making any.
Only if you
a) make the mistake of reading “intentional” or “sentient” for “active” and
b) make the mistake of thinking that I’d make the elementary error of ascribing any intent, evil or otherwise, to religion itself, rather than religious people. You have me confused with the *memeticist * atheist.
I am merely saying that religion, like most human cultural artifacts, no longer resides exclusively in our brains, and sometimes throws up bizarre connections that people weren’t necessarily looking for - like, I don’t think researchers doing the God-Helmet experiments were initially looking to find the “mystic experience chip” in the brain, but I believe they might have (although subsequent Swiss work might count against it, but either way - new ideas!). There’s just so much interconnectedness in our various cultural/scientific/religious endeavours that new things arise out of them. Thus, greater than sum of its parts. But nothing mystical about it.
And just by the by, I fucking utterly hate being told I’m not what I claim to be. I do theists the courtesy of letting them label themselves, please do me the same. I might discuss the truth or coherence of theist’s beliefs, but I don’t often question that they hold them. Exceptions for really obvious 5th columnist trolls, of course.
Well, it is the “not just …” which is in question, isn’t it? What is it, if it is neither sentient, not has any intentions, nor is a “mere” cultural background - but an entity?
An immanent diety isn’t necessarily sentient and may not have intent. There is no sentience or intention in the Tao, for example.
Yup.
What sort of claim are you making, then?
It sounds very much like you are taking a similar position on this to a theist in the face of an atheist attack - god isn’t a scientific claim either.
First, I’m not making the claim of you - the “gnostic not atheist” was a claim about DT. He appears to believe that religion is activly evil unto itself. I make no claim about your beliefs on the matter.
Second, a diety-claim doesn’t require that the diety be intentional or sentient, merely that it exist as an entity capable of acting (for example, see: Taoism).
The notion that the whole of creation is greater than the sum of its parts and is capable of action as such is in fact a pretty good description of mysticism. Or rather, “mysticism” is the intuitive knowledge of the truth of that proposition, usually in a flash of insight (see “mystical experience”).
I’m not a theist. So already you’ve violated your own rule in describing me as such.
I don’t see why whether a particular “non-scientific” (your words) claim is, or is not, similar to “mysticism” is beyond the pale. It is only “about” you if you insist it is.
In any event, the original conversation was about DT, not you. It seems hardy right that you can inject yourself into it and then complain about being characterized.
I said nothing about the whole of creation - a system can be greater than the sum of its parts and still fall under the whole of creation, as long as all the connections are also real ones.
I didn’t call you one. I asked to be extended the same courtesy I give.
*I *wasn’t the one who singled out a term (that wasn’t directed at me) with a sarcastic smiley. You’re the one who started this dialogue, not me.
