Hey, gobear, chill a little!
You’re one of my favorite posters, and I think a lot of the vitriol you’re showing here is beneath you. I don’t necessarily disagree with you here, I just think you need to rein the defensiveness in a little. I’ve seen you handle much worse on the boards in a calmer way.
Peace.
Sorry, it’s just that I’ve have had several posters attacking me because they are reading shit into my OP that isn’t there, not to mention being accused of “changing my story,” which is a blatant, fucking lie.
But, yes, I’m going to have a Merlot spritzer and listen to some Sondheim. Thank you.
Anytime. 
Just don’t have too many Merlot spritzers and post about something you are passionate about. Last time I posted about a subject I cared a lot about after having several Red Hook ISB’s, I got my dumb ass banned. 
gobear, I don’t think that I had any trouble in understanding your OP, but please correct me if I am mistaken.
From that first post to the present, I have found you to be very consistent.
What I heard gobear saying in the OP was that he does not have a great tolerance for the **attitude** of those people who *make it a point* -- go out of their way -- not to know something.
That attitude is not "apathy." Apathy means you don't care; you're not interested. People who take no interest in something don't dwell on it long enough to "make a point" of remaining ignorant..
We all have our priorities and we are all ignorant about certain things. We have to choose how to spend our time. I don't hear gobear argue with that at all. There is no shame in ignorance unless you actively cultivate it! I don't run away from knowledge of anything! The more I can learn, the better.
The person who has chosen not to read the early philosophers has made a choice about the philosophers she or he wishes to learn from -- a choice about how to spend time. This person is not actively running away from knowledge of the early philosophers. I suspect that if someone engaged her or him in an interesting conversation about early philosophers, she or he wouldn't cover his ears and say "Me me me me me me -- I can't hear you! -- me me me me...
In my understanding, the person who makes a point of not knowing something is virtually shielding her or his brain from it. It is an *active* stance and not a passive one. One is actively avoiding knowledge.
To return to another example: I have never seen *Dharma and Greg.* It has not been an intentional avoidance. I just don't think about it. I am neither proud nor ashamed that I don't watch it. I make no judgments about the show or even whether or not I would like it if I watched it. I just keep reading.
Finally, I have not seen any sign of arrogance in gobears posts at this thread. I have seen signs of frustration (first) and then anger. But I don't *know* that. I'm not the authority on what gobear is feeling! No one is except gobear.
And I'm not pouncing on anyone either. I don't even remember the names from the OP -- just the attitude conveyed by what was said.Thank you, Zoe. That’s a beautifully expressed precis on the thrust of this thread.
listening to “Finishing The Hat” and sipping my Merlot spritzer.
You’re right, I didn’t understand your OP, despite the fact that it was certainly written in 100% crystal clear language and no one, certainly not myself, or Shayna, kabbes, xenophon41, or jinwicked could have misunderstood it. :rolleyes: Regardless, you stopped your quote of my post right before I asked this:
A simple, you know, answer to this question, and I would have slinked away into the night. “No, it’s only religion that I care about.” I probably would have asked you why religion and not physics, ethics, art, or any of a billion other subjects, but I at least would have understood what the hell you were talking about.
I thank you for clarifying what you were replying to when you wrote “Again, you’re proud of what you don’t know. In my book, that makes you and His4ever on the same level.” It was me stating
Now I have to ask… what the hell is the connection? Where is the pride in what I don’t know?? Honestly, if this is your reply, it seems like a non-sequitir to me.
You still have yet to retract your bullshit that I was maintaining that Jack Chick is a representitive of religion, when it was clear (and reiterated by me!) that I was holding up Jack Chick as a representative of Ignorant Fundamentalism. But I’m not especially shocked.
**
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Er, about you, of course. I mean, seriously, I haven’t been accused of having a hissy fit since I was, what, 7? You, on the other hand, probably haven’t been accused of having a hissy fit since 7 PM. But thanks for the laugh!
Here is the error you’re repeatedly making. You keep making these simple, bite-size statements which aren’t what you actually mean. If your clarification is to be beleived, you don’t actually think that “ignorant atheism” is the problem. You think that ignorant atheism + spiteful refusal to learn + uninformed opinions are the problem. I don’t think you’ll find very many people who would disagree if you stated it that way, but as you’ve said it, you’re accusing a lot more people than you intend to of being “vile”.
Sorry, but that demonstrates that some ignorant atheism is bad, not all. There have been a lot of people speaking up here who are ignorant on matters of religion but would never act in such a way. It’s true that these are not the people you’re complaining about, but as long as you keep saying that “ignorant atheism” (a term which accurately describes the positions of these reasonable and rational people) is vile, you’re insulting people you don’t intend to.
The basic problem here is that your position on the issue is not as simple as you keep stating it to be. You say “ignorant atheism is bad” and someone says, “wait, I’m an ignorant atheist…what beef do you have with me?” Then you clarify that you’re only talking about ignorant atheists who behave in certain ways, but later revert to the simple statement that ignorant atheism is vile and repulsive. This is not productive.
Gobear wrote:
While I completely agree with your opening post and even the intended gist of what I’ve quoted here, I would like point out for those who might misunderstand that Christianity and science are not in any way opposites or mutually exclusive; nor ought it to be in any way surprising when a person embraces the tenets and teachings of both Christ and Popper.
I would reword the quoted remark along these lines: “I’m an atheist, so I’ll make sure I never learn anything about religion” is as wrongheaded as “I’m a Christian, so I’ll never learn about materialism.”
At any rate, thanks for this great thread, Gobear. As always, your intellectual integrity makes you stand out as a superior thinker among peers.
Sexcuse me? The error is in demanding that I redefine my terms in evert post, and I wqill not cater to people who are too lazy to read the thread. I have repeatedly, repeatedly, said that it is not the state of unknowing is not the problem, it is the spiteful refusal to know from sheer anti-religious bigotry. I don’t care if people lack interest in religion or don’t care enough to learn, but it the pointed determination not that I am railing against. if people haven’t figured that out by know by, oh, reading the thread, then I’m jolly well not going to be made to summarize the entire thread in each and every post.
I have already stated the definition of ignorant atheism for the purposes of this thread. The people making bald pronouncements about what Christianity believes when it is clear that they don’t know the first thing about the nature of Christian belief amply illustrate my point. The radio host who does not want to learn about Christianity but enjoys condemning it all the same, wishes to debate a Christian but backs down when one pops up who does not meet her willfully uninformed viewpoint, is the person I’m talking about.
Twirs like Quixotic78 are arguing for the sake of arguing, and I won’t waste any more time on someone who is reading only his own posts, and not mine.
You’re quite right. It was certainly never my intention to draw that comparison, but to skewer the people who do. You and I know that knowledge of both science and religion are not inacompatible, but a hardcore fundamentalist who fears to learn for fear her faith will be tarnished or an atheist who dismisses all faiths as being fairy tales for children and thinks a UU shares the same beliefs as a Pentacostal would disagree.
Aside from the “he said-she said” bit, where is there a debate? It would seem that Gobear’s central ideas of not slamming something one is ignorant about and not being pleased about willful ignorance are really not something that can be debated. Who would defend being proud of ignorance?
To carry it a step further though. How long does one have to study religion before deciding that this is crap and going on to learn something else? Must one invest the (large) quantity of effort required to become an authority before deciding that religion isn’t worth the time? After all, the first few chapters of Genesis are sufficient to figure out that this isn’t meant to be taken literally.
Secondly, having dropped religion and moved on, does one then forfeit the right to a (publicly expressed) opinion? Gobear, you and Polycarp (among others) seem very knowledgeable about religion in general, you from the student’s point of view and Polycarp more from the believer’s POV. I OTOH, grew up in a religious household but rejected religion utterly as soon as I became an adult. I know something about religion, enough to resent its effects on the human race and regret that it was ever invented but I certainly don’t know as much as either of you. So, since my religious studies were more of an osmotic process than rigorous study, should I simply abandon any debates on religion?
Regards.
Testy
[quote]
I know something about religion, enough to resent its effects on the human race and regret that it was ever invented but I certainly don’t know as much as either of you. So, since my religious studies were more of an osmotic process than rigorous study, should I simply abandon any debates on religion.
[quote]
No, because as you said you know something about religion. Now if you had said “I know nothing about religion, but I reject it utterly,” then that would be an example of what I’m talking about.
I don’t in any way maintain that one must be a relgious scholar in or der to express an opinion on relgious matters, but one ought to know at least the bare rudiments of what a particular religion beleives before you go bashing it.
In re the OP, I think a general knowledge of religion is useful and beneficial to understanding other branches of learning, and clearly other people disagree. For example, if only thinks of the Pilgrims as people who like to wear funny hats, one misses the entire point of their arrival in the New World and the significance of their contributions to American culture, IMO.
Gotcha. I understand your point and thank you. I’m not sure how anyone could argue it. It would indeed be difficult to understand history and art (to name just two) without understanding something about religion.
I think the reason many people refuse to learn anything about religion is that it seems so nonsensical. I still remember being in high-school (a Looog time ago) and being told that the Inca chopped people’s hearts out with obsidian knives.
Me: “Wow! They must have been really pissed at those people!”
Teacher: “Nope. Religious observances.”
Me: “Oh, I see.”
Regards
Testy
You’re thinking of the Aztecs who offered hearts to the their gods in great public ceremonies. The Inca also believed in propitiating the gods with human sacrifices, but they sacrificed children at the summit of mountains by drugging and strangling them. No heart surgery was involved.
You are probably right about the Aztec/Inca thing. Now those were religions with teeth in them. "Don’t worry about the hereafter boy, offending the gods will get you hurt today! S
It does illustrate my point about the nonsensical actions mandated by various religions though. (Hijack, I know. Apologies for that.)
Regards.
Testy
Not quite, Chief. Why am I still in this discussion, instead of enjoying a truly beautiful day outside?
Is it because, despite the fact that I’ve quoted my original post two or three times now, you continue to assert that I held up Jack Chick and His4Ever as representatives of religion? No, I can let that go. Anyone who has read this thread can see what I wrote – that I called them representatives of Ignorant Fundamentalism, not of religion in general. Furthermore, if said reader is savvy, they can note that you’ve never even attempted a rebuttal. You’ve made the assertion a number of times now, without any clarification as to why you’re reading something which isn’t even remotely there. But I said I’m willing to let that little bit go, and I hereby do so.
Am I still in this thread to refute your continued, self-martyring claim that you’re attacking ideas and not specific people, so why can’t people just see that? (Cue sympathetic violin music). Naw. I mean, again, I’ve pointed out a number of times that I am not merely an idea but rather a person, and you’re attacking me. That puts the lie to your claim. But yet again, you’ve never offered a rebuttal. Even an unconcerned party like ntucker, without mentioning my name specifically, offered a rationale as to perhaps why people (e.g., me) were getting defensive as you attacked them. It’s obvious that, while you maintain in the OP that you’re “attacking ideas, not people,” you’ve moved past that, so to continue to trumpet this slogan is wrong. But that’s not important to me.
So, why am I still in this thread? It’s because you called me an ignorant atheist – “on the same level” as His4Ever, the quintessential ignorant Fundie, and you’ve never offered one hint of retraction despite the fact that you are wrong. You based this on the fact that I showed, apparently, no effusive religious knowledge in my original post. You clearly conflated absence of “religious knowledge” evidence with evidence of absence of the same religious knowledge, and I want you to take it back. I don’t want a fucking apology – I’m not that thin-skinned. I mean, in calling me an ignorant atheist, you called me “vile” (see the title of this thread), but I can shrug that off.
But no, I will NOT shrug off you calling me something that is antithetical to who I am. I went into undergrad as pre-med but quickly changed to chemistry and biochemistry, the former of which is my current career path. However, simply due to my own interests, I added a religious studies major (and a Spanish minor, but that’s neither here nor there). So although I entered undergrad with enough credits to be a second semester sophomore, thanks to AP tests in high school, I still took 20 credit hours a semester (sometimes) just because of my passion for religious knowledge. I still, as a graduate student (translation = busy person) find time to enhance my knowledge of religion, despite the fact that I wholly reject the concept of a higher power.
And you think I’m gonna let some dick-for-brains call me an ignorant atheist on the basis of absolutely nothing? Not a chance in hell, Chief. Own up to your mistake.
Testy wrote:
Fascinating — a red herring within a red herring.
Some religions indeed mandate actions that are nonsensical from the point of view of our culture and zeitgeist, granted. However, some religions do not mandate any actions, and some religions mandate extremely sensible actions. It so happens that Christianity mandates an impossible action. The moral imperative from Jesus is “be perfect”.
That (first red herring) aside, it is also true that various entities other than religion mandate nonsensical actions, even from the modern Western frame of reference. There are mandates from government, business, and yes even science that are patently absurd, ridiculous, or otherwise nonsensical. Examples: some governments mandate that farmers destroy crops when their output exceeds a bureaucratic ceiling; some businesses mandate limits and restrictions on customer service calls that serve only to infuriate customers calling for service; and science mandates that all theories be falsifiable when its own dearly beloved falsification principle is itself not falsifiable.
Nonsense is abundant. And it ain’t just religion.
We’re getting a long way from Gobear’s OP but never mind, I think it was about dead anyway. If you want to start a new thread or Gobear wants us out of this one, I’m up for it.
I believe your examples of “nonsensical actions” from the world of business and government are false. There is a demonstratable purpose behind the actions you mention. The purpose is not necessarily nice and the actions may or may not fulfill that purpose, but there is one.
The destruction (or incentives not to grow) crops is an attempt to keep the price of the remaining produce higher. From a supply & demand POV this will obviously work.
The customer-call limits are simply an attempt to save money. I don’t think this is nonsensical in the sense that there is no purpose behind it. It is stupid and short-sighted by the company but that is a different issue.
As far as the science example goes, you’ll have to go into some detail on that one before I could really respond.
Despite my statements above, I agree that many people and organizations do things which in retrospect seem nonsensical. Generally though, the organization goes bankrupt or is otherwise gotten rid of. People who persist in doing stupid things will eventually die.
Only religion mandates weird and nonsensical actions and manages to survive. The Inca and Aztecs Gobear and I mentioned were propitiating their various gods by strangling children and chopping the hearts out of people for centuries, and there were no divine results. More modern religions mandate similarly nonsensical but thankfully less blood-thirsty actions to propitiate their various deitys and the results remain nil.
When persisted in, the attempted propitiation of a deity that never answers or responds in any way is nonsensical.
One thing the “Ol’ Time Religions” that Gobear and I were talking about DID do was keep a firm control on the local population. Likewise the Middle Eastern worship of Moloch/Baal. Christianity and other modern religions have also used similar tactics in their history.
After having said all that, I realize you may have a point, and a very good one. If you wish to argue that the purpose of the weird and nonsensical acts mandated by religions is to control the populace and maintain/grow the religion, then I have no argument with that.
All the best.
Testy.
We’ve all read the thread. The thread in which you repeatedly use imprecise language that is too inclusive for what you really mean and expect us to mentally translate “ignorant atheists” to “gobear’s special subset of ignorant atheists.”
It’s like you started out by proclaiming that “dogs have three legs,” and when someone took exception to that, you said, “well, of course I’m only talking about three-legged dogs” and then later made the “dogs have three legs” claim again and expected everyone to go along with it this time.
And frankly, someone shouldn’t have to read the whole fucking thread to make sense of your latest statements. They should stand on their own. Try saying what you mean all the time rather than just occasionally.
Bullshit. I defined what the idea I was talking about, I was clear from the get-go, and I am not responsible for willful misreadings of what I write.
Once again, I am not going to redefine my terms in every post. If epople can;t keep up, that’s on them, not me.
Anyway, you people are more interested in vilifying me than in acvtually having a discussion, so I’m done. You and Quixotic78 can continue to jack off on each other in this thread if you want.
Oh, please. Responding to your vilification of others counts as vilifying you now?
Oh, look, we’re in the third grade! Quixotic78, I’m afraid he’s won the argument; he called us gay!