Ah, yes. I believe we have now attained a level of reasoned debate which is unparalleled. Oh, wait, I know:
‘I know you are, but what am I?’
I’ll respond as if you’re actually asking in a genuine quest for information.
A ‘True Believer’, as I understand the label, is somebody who truly believes something…to the degree that facts, and possibly reason, are irrelevent. Typically this designation is reserved for people who are actually annoying about it, as it’s difficult to call somebody on something you don’t notice them doing.
This status is much easier to attain, of course, if what you believe in is actually divorced from reality. Soft atheism, for example, has difficulty attaining this, as it utterly supported by all available facts, give or take other people’s personal opinions that usually all conflict with one another. Similarly, all the people who don’t believe in a suprnatural origin for NDEs.
And you don’t have to be an atheist at all to think that NDEs are crap, by the way. Were you aware of that?
I believe the topic under discussion is NDEs - and nobody starts up “NDEs are crap” threads or arguments. Ever. It’s always a proponent, doing their loud thing.
This isn’t theism vs. atheism, recall.
In which part? The part where you told US to use bullshit emotional appeal campaining tactics OURSELVES?
Read for comprehension.
You go ahead and run with that.
The term refers to persons hired by somebody else to promote a position. So, no.
Actually we fail to convince whole swaths of people at a time. Give us a little credit here.
And of course we fail a lot. It’s an uphill battle to get people to think in ways they’re not accostomed to. It’s lots harder than just getting people to add a few things to the pile of crap they unthinkingly swallow.
And I’m a hobbyist. I debate against the silly opinions when it’s convenient and entertaining, but feel no compulsion to do so when I have better to more entertaining things available to do. G’night, all!
Those terms do describe philosophical differences, but the Neo’s are the fundamentalist slice of the atheistic pie. And absolute fierce certainty they are right and everybody’s wrong ala Televangelists.
Speaking of ad-homineming people, this is a classical case of the pot calling the kettle black. You should think this through a little better before you start pulling the fallacy ticket on others. This thread is riddled with terms like, fool, woo woo, cranks, crackpots, garbage, true believer, etc.
I didn’t make up the word, it’s a neologism that is now part of the lexicon whether you like it or not. This is how people perceive you. Here’s is a really great article that explains it the best: Opinion & Reviews - Wall Street Journal
Also, one of your own:
Neoatheism
"I enjoyed this column by Sam Schulman. While I’m an atheist, I’m embarrassed by the likes of Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, none of whom appears to realize that theism—the doctrine that God exists—needs to be refuted, not explained away. Dennett in particular should know this, since he has philosophical training. With friends like these, atheists don’t need enemies."Log In ‹ Keith Burgess-Jackson — WordPress
To get a better understanding of the concept of you not being able and/or unwilling to perceive yourself through other people’s eyes, I refer you to this site.
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/psy/johari.html
Sweet Jesus, Good Lord, God in Heaven!!! Are you saying that atheists are less inclined to rape, kill, pillage and plunder than a theist? Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. They were atheististic mass murderers. Humans are humans. Most wars are fought for expansionism, greed and strategic geopolitical positioning, not religion.
The few times I’ve ever heard of someone daring to do a study trying to correlate religion and moral behavior, the only group that ever comes out as better than average are the atheists. Which is probably why you virtually never see such studies.
They were COMMUNIST mass murders. It was all about Communism, not atheism; that’s why you keep having to bring them up, and pretend Communism and atheism are the same.
Because one begats the other. Even Hitler only used religion for political reasons. Secretly he hated it. Religion core teachings are love one another. I don’t know what atheists believe when it comes to morality. Another thing religions do most of the charity work done in the world. I have never heard of an atheist organization feeding the poor. I don’t think it is wrong to be an atheist if you wish, and neither is it wrong to be a theist. Being an atheist doesn’t mean you have to bash theists, but if you feel you do, then something is wrong with your belief system.
Why don’t we get back to thread which is near death experiences, then you can bash them instead. Good bashing.
Those are some great links. What is really sad is that we can’t have a “fun” conversation here about these matters. The atheists immediately go into “you are a fucking idiot mode” and that’s that.
They really do enjoy the group pile-on (10-20 atheists vs. the newbie plus a very few supporters), however, so nothing is going to change.
Isn’t it interesting how Aeschines isn’t actually contributing anything to the discussion? We get to hear all about how he’s argued against these nasty skeptics before, and how they do all kinds of mean things, and some other weak word play jokes. But nothing about NDEs. You’d think someone who was so sure they were right would be able to come up with something to challenge us. Some piece of evidence, something, anything. But he doesn’t. He gives us his little song and dance about how we’re all wrong.
So how about it Aeschines, why do you think NDEs have a supernatural cause? I hope the only reason is that you’ve never bothered to look for non-theist NDE stories.
and ala pretty much all other theists, too. (Certainty is not lacking on the theist side - very few people pray: “Oh possibly pretend father who might be in heaven, if heaven exists, hallowed be thy name if I have your name right and you exist to have it…”.) In fact, athests -even the loud ones- are in my observation much more likely to allow a sliver of possibility that they’re wrong. Even Dawkins!
Heck, I’m not even a hard atheist myself, so the fact that you label me a “Neoatheist” makes it pretty clear that the label means nothing more than “atheists who bother to argue their point”. Regardless of the assertions of the ignorant, this is not an ideological difference; atheists of any ideology can argue their reasoning.
But don’t let that slow you down in pretending that atheists that speak up and argue their position, to the degree of daring not to grant religion its customary shield of undeserved respect, are some kind of strange creature never before seen by man. It’ll make it easier to tell you don’t understand the people you’re railing against.
I do concede that you weren’t the first to use this retarded term.
And I do concede you’re not the only thin-skinned theist to react in terror now that it’s become alightly more socially acceptible to criticize the popular mythology.
Two concessions! What more could you want?
That grid is missing the square for “stuff people imagine they know about you, but they don’t, because they’re filling it in from their own imaginations”. After all, I’m not a prostelyting atheist. I just will occasionally respond to prostelyting theists. (Some of whom immidiately decide I’m some sort of new breed of fanatic for daring to do so, apparently.)
And I’ll also respond to prostelyting NDE-believers - which is an entirely separate question from atheism/theism anyway. So, shouldn’t you be calling me a “Neo-a-NDE-er”, in this thread anyway?
Atheists and theists both fight wars for expansionism, greed and strategic geopolitical positioning; the theists are not exempt from these motivations. Theists, however, also fight wars for religion, and also (alternatively) use religion to justify their secularly-motivated wars to themselves and others. Therefore, theists are indeed that much more inclined to rape, kill, pillage and plunder than an atheist.
However, that wasn’t even what I was talking about. Religion is an extra and unnecessary point of ideological and demographic fracture, on top of the usual ones like race, nationality, class, gender, political party, etcetera. The removal of this fracture would undoubtedly reduce levels of strife and argument.
Out of curiousity, what is a “fun” conversation to you? Do you prefer mutual back-patting sessions? When the thread turns into that, I leave. I have no need to have my opinions validated by strangers.
I like debates that challenge the mind, where both sides bring out the big guns of evidence and solid argument in an attempt to obliterate the opponents position. I like the insults to be clever and varied. I like the sparks to fly.
Unfortunately, the anti-science types rarely “bring it”, leaving us nothing to chew on but stale assertions and flavorless anecdotes. Which is expected at least somewhat from somebody new to intelligent debate, but I’d have to be a fucking idiot to keep banging that drum after it’s been repeatedly pointed out how uncompelling those arguments are.
Or more commonly, to slaughter unbelievers, or convert them by force, or to hate gays, or to oppress women, or to do any number of other things. Religion, if anything is anti-love, since love requires that you acknowledge that other people matter.
There are plenty of secular charities. And “charity” by the religiously motivated is seldom real charity; it’s simply advertising. They care about souls, or membership lists, or contributions; people and their welfare are expendable.
Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod documents 1763 wars, of which 123 have been classified to involve a religious conflict.3
I don’t think you’re getting my point. I didn’t say it was because of Communism, I said humans are humans regardless of philosophy. There are evil motherfuckers out their that always have grabbed for power and tried to imposed their world view on others, atheist are no different. If an atheist commits murder, it’s because he is a murderer, not necessarily because he is atheist. The same can be said for theists except for abortion clinic bomings.
Totally irrelevant, since I wasn’t talking about wars. And as I said, I don’t trust the honesty of that book anyway.
Garbage. Religions DEMAND tyranny, slaughter and stupidity due to their dogma. As does Communism, whether you regard it as a religion or not. Atheism doesn’t, since it lacks any dogma.
Citing the Agnostic’s Prayer isn’t bashing; it’s comedy.
And I do wonder why you defend religions; correct me if I’m wrong, but you think they’re all wrong, right? All that matters is feeling the Love. (Which may or may not require yourself to near-kill yourself to do it.)
As far as my wanting to actually discuss NDEs here: not really. I came in to save Jake some stress. I did my arguing about NDEs and psi and whatnot about five years ago here and then quit, because the behavior of my opponents was absolutely atrocious. Just not fun to participate. Pretty much any discussion of the paranormal has been wiped from the boards.
In the meantime, I have continued to live my life, moved to Indy, started hanging out with fellow New Agers and simply have experienced my beliefs more and more. Psi is something very tangible and useful to me, so if people say “It can’t be so, motherfucker!” I just laugh. And 95%+ of the people I meet on a daily basis believe in spirit, so it’s like–huh?! Doctors, scientists–just about everyone. I am curious who these scientists pissing on theism are, because I don’t meet them. Atheism is a lost cause–people experience psi and related things and get results. You can’t argue that away.
what specific psychic abilities do you claim are very “tangible and useful” to you? 'Cause I really, really wish I had telekinesis*. No lie. That would be so awesome.
By “tangible and useful” do you mean “repeatable on demand”?
I think you can still make a buttload of money with tangible, useful, repeatable psychic abilities, if they actually are real. Do you like money?
enough TK to float around a sack of flour, I mean. I don’t need to twitch feathers or bend spoons.
I would gladly recant everything I have ever said against paranormal claims if you can show an unambiguous cause and effect relationship between psi and and any measurable result.
It’s that whole “no evidence and contradicts physical law” thing. The “paranormal” thrives among the gullible, and among people who don’t ask awkward questions.
Competent scientists. As opposed to the ones you supposedly meet who actually buy that garbage. And just because you surround yourself with the ignorant, delusional and gullible who actually believe in “spirit” doesn’t make it real.
And if you think that “psi is something very tangible and useful” to you, then either you are deluding yourself, or being conned.
Yes, I can. It doesn’t happen. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or a fool. You could of course prove me wrong if you had any evidence - but being utterly wrong, you don’t.
You are also ignoring the tiny little problem that atheism has absolutely nothing to do with belief or disbelief in psi powers in the first place.
jakesteele was doing that too. I think it’s the result of a desire to compartmentalize all their percieved enemies in one place under one label, with the added bonus of letting them pretend that everyone who isn’t a hardline atheist actually agrees with whatever their pet theory is, be it NDEs or ghosts or psi.
I have noticed a tendency in this thread for the believers to talk about “skeptics” and “skepticism” as if they were some sort of ideology. The idea apparently being that they don’t disbelieve in ghosts or psi or NDE-as-a-mystic-experience due to a lack of evidence, but because it violates some sort of dogma of their own.