by defender of truth 193 Replies latest members adult
A key reason why some atheists challenge religious beliefs
I keep my gob shut and let people speak but I get annoyed when I have a belief foisted upon me. I do not believe in god. I do not wish to discuss it as I see little point because we all have our confirmation bias. We all believe that which fits us better quite often. I'd love to believe in god but see no evidence to make it logical to. I used to believe in god so I know how it feels and makes one feel good.
I am the same as you Punky, gob shut a lot of the time, why open it and confirm I really am a fool ?
I also now understand what the Householder's really mean't when they said "I am not interested", what they were really saying was, " I can't be arsed to discuss such nonsense".
But I am determined to challenge silly beliefs, especially of JW's, when they insert them in to a sentence, talking of "the truth" for example, I will just have to mutter "You can't call it the truth" or something similar.
With normal people, (normal=nonJW) if they say something that sounds like they are a believer, I just make a jocular comment that shows I am not, no discussion ensues, we both respect each other.
But as Cofty said, (paraphrase) " Silly beliefs should be ridiculed mercilessly".
A lot of the extreme religious violence that we see today is based in poverty, bitterness over disadvantage, and racism. If you took a typical radical Islamist and separated him from his group, gave him a home and job in a first-world society, and gave him a nice flatscreen TV and an iPad loaded with Angry Birds, you might see a new man. More realistically, it takes generations for societies to improve and for extreme ideologies passed down from earlier generations to mellow out, but maybe this helps you get what I'm saying.
Unfortunately the facts prove this thinking to be incorrect. Radicals are coming from wealthy, priviledged educated backgrounds, radicals are coming from western countries where they and their families have been settled for generations. It is not just poor people who become radicalised, look at Osama Bin Laden for example. If you look at where people get whipped up into a frenzy it is after they have been manipulated into doing so by media. That media is owned and controlled by people who want to create conflict and you dont get to own media if you aren't wealthy.
Not that I disagree that a fairer global economy would be a good thing but it is simplistic to think that being more charitable would solve these issues.
I consider myself an anti-theist not to gain some kind of fulfillment by 'converting' believers but because of the tremendous harm faith based thinking causes. Billions of people have taught absolute gibbering crapulence to their children and to naive uneducated people and have held mankind in a rational dark age since records began. All the hours spent worshipping Ra, Wotan, Jehovah etc. all the animals sacrificed, all the people killed, all the wars, the wasted resources and so forth need to be addressed, accounted for and intellectually fought against. The strength of a belief in the irrational does not garner my respect but antipathy. My respect for your right to choose does not extend to your perceived right to spread your beliefs to your family, friends and to a society that should be reaching for the stars but instead builds more resources and intellectual effort on pointless churches and temples.
We could have cured cancer by now.
We could have moon bases.
We could have social equality and harmony.
Yet we are still arguing about the infantile imaginations of faith based belief and brainwashing. Every committed believer knows deep down that all other believers of different faith streams are teaching drivel. The Muslims and the Christians can't both be right so at least one entire community is teaching untrue, society damaging idiocy. I just don't find any distinctions.
Individual people are awesome though.
"Every advance in science came from someone willing to be a heretic"
I'm not sure how common it is that a wealthy person becomes a radical. Certainly it happens, as with OBL; sometimes well-to-do people decide to become monks and live a life of scarcity. Some people just have a built-in dissatisfaction with the way things are. But the average person really adheres to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and is mainly just concerned with making a living and raising a family.
It's when a man's existence seems threatened (by way of repression, violence against his tribal group, or denial of opportunities) that he seems to develop a tendency towards extremism and terrorism. Here's one example of a psychology article discussing this subject. So, logically, the answer to those problems is freedom and more economic opportunities.
The assertion that the media creates conflicts needs some citations. Certainly media sometimes tends to sensationalize, but I'm not clear on who would be running the media that would benefit from creating conflict in some major way.
Qcmbr + designs:
This notion that science and religion are at opposite ends of a spectrum is a total canard and most science historians no longer advocate this view. You can start off by reading about the conflict thesis on Wikipedia. As the article's intro says:
Events in Europe such as the Galileo affair, associated with the Scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, led scholars such as John William Draper to postulate a conflict thesis, holding that religion and science conflict methodologically, factually and politically. This thesis is advanced by contemporary scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg and Carl Sagan, and proposed by many creationists. While the conflict thesis remains popular for the public, it has lost favor among most contemporary historians of science.
Unfortunately it's a popular meme among science enthusiasts because it pits them in an "us vs. them" battle against "dumb" people and makes them feel better about themselves. The reality is that the facts do not support this black-and-white view; it's not even shades of gray so much as a needless extrapolation from isolated, misunderstood events.
Religious beliefs have hardly had any effect on scientific curiosity throughout the ages. This cannot be repeated enough. Most scientific discoveries in history were made by theists (there were hardly any atheists in existence for most of history, so this follows naturally). We would not have cured more diseases and established moon bases by now if there were no religion.
Humans are animals who scarcely use the brains they have to get by. When their belly is full they are complacent and lazy. Furthermore, the average person has not the slightest capacity for scientific work. Scientists are the intellectual "1%". They have always been psychological outliers due to their "strange" obsession with understanding things that don't seem to be particularly relevant to putting food in one's belly for the next week.
The only limiter on scientific advances, therefore, is the bell curve of intelligence. People born without a lot of intelligence do not have a yearning to use what intelligence they have to contribute to the sciences. Those who are born with it know what they have and naturally want to use their talents just as an athletic person naturally enjoys using their physical abilities. The upper 3-5% of the IQ range is where scientists lie, and religion has nothing to do with this IQ dispersal. It's just what evolution has set for us. For most of human history it was not very useful to be brilliant, when the main concern of the group was bringing in enough of a harvest to last through the winter.
So don't blame religion; blame the fact that, as animals, we are designed to meet our basic needs and little more. Evolution has experimented with our species by making us intelligence specialists (dialing up our IQs and lowering our basic physical toughness), but since the goal was simply to give us a survival advantage, we shouldn't expect that we will automatically all have a yearning and ability to accomplish incredible scientific feats. Our entire civilization is built upon the backs of a few outlying freaks with exceptional minds. Without them we'd still be living in caves or huts, or maybe primitive villages at best.
You are correct, I should have included my references
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/uk-isis-extremists-most-vicious-iraq-syria-expert
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/mar/02/muhammadcartoons.religion
If you look at the time line of when the violence started in 2005 it was months after the publication of the cartoons.
I would clarify I mean certain media not all, it would be stupid to suggest that all media is in the business of creating conflict.
As another example american media is used to create conflict by inciting right wing christians to acts of violence. See Sarah Palin and her media campaigns and some of the acts of christian terrorism like killing doctors for providing abortions.
Too true Apog, too true. I often think about the internet and how amazing it is that millions of people now have access to all the knowledge in the world, yet most people use use this fantastic tool to view porn and play candy crush.
I am also always astounded that people can see the logical fallacies and the ridiculousness of other people's religion, but are completely blind to the same in their own. When I was a JW, I thought the Mormons were so crazy and felt superior to them because I had "the truth", now I see that both religions are cults and believe silly fairy tales as fact.
I see what you're saying, Caedes, I had misunderstood what you were getting at before. I can't deny that when religious leaders stir up passions using the media, it creates conflicts that would not otherwise exist. It's a tricky problem to solve.
