I can tell, zid, you compose carefully and deliberately. That you write beautifully is apparent. You write what you want people to read. Light when you want to be, heavy when you don't. Sometimes I scratch my head but I scratch my head with other very bright people in here, too. Many of whom have contributed to the thread.
Nickolas
JoinedPosts by Nickolas
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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Nickolas
That's really interesting, designs. How'd you get there?
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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Nickolas
My brain had already been wounded by the immediately previous observation. Your brain is obviously tougher than mine.
Which may explain, bohm, why He is so cranky.
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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Nickolas
Very good links, bohm, I've just now had an opportunity to visit them (got lots to do that doesn't involve sitting on my ass in front of this computer screen). In particular the first one.
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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Nickolas
Pffft, zid. You're forgetting about magic.
This is just so rich and juicy it demands repeating:
The word "bored" would take on a whole new meaning, as one would conceivably have reached the point that one has seen more than enough super-novas to - well, to last a lifetime... And still the experiences would keep coming... And coming.... And coming.... And coming...
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Is There ANY Religion That You Would Feel Comfortable Being A Member Of?
by minimus ini know that most of us here despise the witness religion.
are you soured on all all religions?.
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Nickolas
Heh. Gotta get me a six pack for the bar.
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Migraines?
by skeeter1 inso, i get a migraine a few times a year.
i usually take some advil and i'm fine.. but, this past month, i've had about 4 migraines.
one is coming on right now, and i'm about to take an advil.
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Nickolas
I came back into this thread because I noticed you had just posted into it, talesin. I am, you see, interested in what you have to say.
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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Nickolas
[searches Amazon frantically for "Exclusion Dynamic for Dummies" and "Deceiving those who have evolved the means to detect such deceptions and thereby minimise the effects of it"]
I'm merely extrapolating from what I have read so far in Dawkins' treatise, SBC.
Or are you saying that the altruistic ones... are the ones willing to leave, send off, even kill... the weaker... for the benefit of the remaining group? Is THAT the definition of altruism? ... I am just trying to understand...
Yes and no, Shelby. Remember that we are discussing this in the context of billions of years of evolution, but that is a big hump to get over. I might be able to provide a small inkling of understanding, or what I understand to be understanding. I am not expert and I could be quite wrong but I will hope I am directionally right. Consider first familial selection. A mother will tend to be very altruistic toward her babies, to the point in some species (like humans) where she will actually sacrifice herself for them. In nature, not all mothers are altruistic in this way but for the sake of this discussion we can ignore them. But in nature altruistic mothers are oftentimes faced with a Sophie's Choice of sorts. I had a hound dog when I was a boy. She was a bluetick cross and a reasonably good hunter. When she had her one and only litter there were 7 pups, which was larger than average. As with many large litters there was a runt in this one who did not compete as well as his littermates for access to their mother's teats and who after only a few days had grown noticeably weaker. Still, the mother seemed to be trying her best to keep it alive. But that meant that her limited supply of milk was being wasted on a pup that just might not make it. Sometime between points of me checking up on the litter she ate the runt. Whether or not it had died before she had done so, I do not know. But her behaviour, no doubt genetic else we are ascribing sapient thinking to a dog, could be construed as altruistic, not toward the pup she devoured but toward the sixth most robust littermate who might have perished along with the runt had she not done so.
I think, to elevate the discussion to the modern human species - and by modern I mean over the past several thousand years, since genetic selection takes a very long time - one could conceivably equate the coda of the OT as a written example of societal selection favouring altruistic individuals. The altruism, however, was codified within the tribe to the detriment of individuals who were outside the tribe. It was not ok to take the wife, or the life, of a fellow Israelite but it was perfectly ok, even encouraged to visit such selfish behaviour upon those who were not of the tribe. Such selfishness extended even to killing wholesale the innocent livestock and children of those others. But within the tribe of Israel there were laws that encouraged the killing of children whose behaviour was perceived as negative, of women who willfully went against the wishes of men, and of men who likewise behaved in such a way that the society judged to be objectionable - in the case of homosexuals, whether the Israelites were aware of it or not, they were attempting to eradicate individuals from their society, almost all of whom were more likely bisexual and therefore capable of passing on their genes to subsequent generations, and thereby eradicate homosexuality. The altruism in all these examples is not toward the individual, but toward the society itself or, more specifically, toward what the society has established as "good" and worth preserving.
If so, is it Mr. Hawkins'
Dawkins, my dear. Hawkins Dawkins. Murrah Murrow. Oopps. Wrong thread.
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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Nickolas
I've read his The End of Faith...scrutinizes the tolerance of religious fundamentalism, takes Islam to the woodshed.
I rather enjoyed it. (Not one of Paul's faves, though).
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207
On becoming atheist - the tug of war
by Nickolas inperhaps, if you are a theist, you might not want to read this.
if you are nevertheless curious about how an atheist thinks, then please read on.. i don't think there are any active members of this board who have been atheists all their lives (are there?).
i think virtually all of us transitioned into non-belief from a religious beginning.
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Nickolas
I used to have a moustache just like that. I grew it when I was 18 and my wife, who I met when I was 19, had never seen me without it. I was away on an extended business trip and decided to shave it off because as I aged some of the individual hairs in the moustache turned white while the rest were dark brown. Trouble was, all the white hairs were in the right side of the moustache and it was only while I was walking past a great mirror at a considerable distance and caught sight of myself that I noticed that it looked like I had something hanging out of the right side of my nose, which is also appreciable. Off it went. When my wife picked me up at the airport, unawares, she spotted me, smiled and then took on a puzzled look. She said she was trying to figure out what the stupid look on my face was all about.
Ok, back to the thread....