if christians derive their logic from the bible, then there's a lot of them doing a piss poor job of following it, judging by the religious right's "let 'em die" rather than socialize the medicine
rather be in hades
JoinedPosts by rather be in hades
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
lol you said logos
i had to look that up
i take it you didn't like the answer?
Philosophical logic
- (see Philosophical logic)
Philosophical logic deals with formal descriptions of natural language. Most philosophers assume that the bulk of "normal" proper reasoning can be captured by logic, if one can find the right method for translating ordinary language into that logic. Philosophical logic is essentially a continuation of the traditional discipline that was called "Logic" before it was supplanted by the invention of mathematical logic. Philosophical logic has a much greater concern with the connection between natural language and logic. As a result, philosophical logicians have contributed a great deal to the development of non-standard logics (e.g., free logics, tense logics) as well as various extensions of classical logic (e.g., modal logics), and non-standard semantics for such logics (e.g., Kripke's technique of supervaluations in the semantics of logic).
____
was that what you were looking for?
how about this...
can you prove it? surely you don't expect to take me at your word x, y, and z do you? i want proof
do you have data? really this is the same thing as, "can you prove it?" i'd like to see the data to verify for myself
is it replicable? basically i need to know it wasn't some one off phenomenon. i used to ask god to make a leaf blow in two seconds after i said amen to prove he was real. southern cali isn't very windy tho. i eventually started asking to make it sunny and somewhere between 75-80 to prove he was real. that was better but every so often it'd rain...
you know, really "is it replicable?" is another way of saying "can you prove it?"...
so i guess what i'm saying is, can you prove it?
let's keep it simple...
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
are they abstaining from blood? hahahahaha
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
Still, if you ask a Christian, for example, by which standard they determine reason, they will quickly tell you that it's the Bible, or the 10 commandments, or Jesus' teachings, etc. I am simply asking what the atheist equivalent would be.
aren't a lot of those christians not exactly following that book?
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
NewChapter, let's go with Plato's universal application of reason (logos) and not the all-too-used Enlightenment understanding of the concept...for the sake of argument.
Under the Platonic idea, what is the standard by which atheists determine reason?
In rhetoric, logos is one of the three modes of persuasion (the other two are pathos, emotional appeal; and ethos, the qualification of the speaker). Logos refers to logical appeal, and in fact the term logic evolves from it. Logos normally implies numbers, polls, and other mathematical or scientific data.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logos#Ancient_Greek_philosophy
i think you might be in trouble mate...
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
I've already stated that god can't be proven now, god can only be experienced. It doesn't make a believer's point of view worthless. You're setting a standard for what constitutes proof, and I'm saying that is the reality you choose to live in.
i didn't set any standards for proof. it either is or it isn't. that's not a reality i chose to live in, that's the reality we all live in.
1+1= 2.
if a two lines are bisected bisected by another line and the same side interior angles = 180 degrees, the two lines are parallel.
these are factual things. we have proof for this and can use it in the real world. more importantly, anyone can use it.
Not everyone lives in that reality, and it isn't better than anyone else's. By implication, you are saying you are right and I'm wrong (or ignorant, or that if I studied this I would know that).
everyone lives in this reality. unless we are not in the same universe somehow, but it seems we are in the same state. this is every bit your reality as it is mine.
now if you want to say that you chose to believe in god without proof, that's cool. as an agnostic who wants there to be a god, i can understand this. i chose to hope this for personal reasons, but i won't ignore the fact that there's no evidence for it to be true. over the past 4-500 years, science has been dismantling a lot of previously held beliefs about life and the universe around us, beliefs that previously required the presence of god. it is what it is. that doesn't make me not hope any less...
but it doesn't make it real.
if you did study this stuff, an entire world of coolness opens up to you. i have been learning how to selectively breed plants. the knowledge and skills i've gained from studying engineering makes me confident enough to go cracking open broken electronic equipment to fix. the things i've learned in statistics and math help shape my view of politics, and so too has biology. even as a jw, i was very much a pro-choice person, but after leaving, and eventually after taking some bio i solidified my opinion as to why abortion should be a right. i should say, i've never liked biology until leaving the jws. not only does blood and the thought of dissection disgust me, but i admit a tiny part of me did not know how, or want, to deal with evolution and the conflicts it would cause on exams. how do i mark evolution as the answer when i believed in a creator named jehovah?
that little anecdote isn't proof of some sort that all believers are like that. just me. i speak for no one but myself on that.
if you studied this stuff, perhaps you could be the one to find the fatal flaw inthe argument. i absolutely am not kidding with that. that is part of science and if we're wrong, someone has to point it out. i'd much rather learn the truth than keep believing a lie.
It's only a logical fallacy to those who are promoting something or dissuading someone from something.
actually it is a logical fallacy. the are multiple problems with assuming that there is a god for a starting point. the first one is observational bias. the second has to do with a bit of human nature in trying to force the facts to fit the narrative. i'm sure there's more. i wouldn't know 'em all. i remember being something like 12, and i regret this because it set me back a long way, but i remember thinking to myself that i better come up with logical reasoning to prove god's existence because, if i'm somehow going to make it through the great tribulation, i better know for damn sure or i'm not gonna make it (i dunno how you were taught about that, but we watched the holocaust video a few times for family study as i didn't care to actually study the literature :P, plus i was interested in ww2). so i set about trying to mathematically prove god's existence. that was my first mistake. and then of course, at twelve just how much did i know? lmao. i might have been in accelerated learning programs, but looking back, i didn't know the first thing about basic chemistry or physics, and especially biology. had i known, i never would have bothered getting baptized, pioneering or throwing away some really good opportunities for school.
There's nothing wrong with having god as a starting point. That's what makes a believer a believer.
there's nothing wrong with god as a starting point, if god is the starting point. if god is not the starting point, then by definition, that would be wrong. now if you were to say that there's nothing inherently morally wrong with god as the starting point, i'd agree. as you pointed out, science can be used for good or for evil. so can god. there's been some good and some bad. it all boils down to the individual wielding the power.
The history you are referring to is that of mainly western civilization, and religion alone wasn't the villain of all those things that went horribly wrong.
i do not believe human sacrifices were apart of western civilization. at least not modern (christian) western civilization. it might not be the fl reason, but it cannot see how anyone can argue that religion did not play an overwhelming part in starting the crusades, or the witch trials, etc.
of course they are. again I stated my reply to the question at hand is based on experiences with people who are atheists. And upon peeling back the layers and layers of explanations, I find a common theme among the one's I know: they've either become angry at god, or they hate the lifestyle they think belief imposes upon them. this wasn't a theory I created. this was told to me, and then this is something I also observed in people who haven't said anything, but their behaviours give it away.
and i'm once again going to point you to statistics and observational bias to explain why that opinion is what i've been saying. does it play a part for some? sure. an overwhelming part? i don't know but i doubt it. i could come up with plenty of personal anecdotal evidence "proving" the opposite. is that enough to state whether this is the case? nope. that would require a comprehensive study. i do not hang around many people who came out of a religion. in fact, none of the people i hang out with came out of a religion. i'm the only one. ok, one friend is "jewish" but by blood, not so much culture. he couldn't care less about that, so i wouldn't count him inthat. so observationally, i'm in a prety nice little bubble that would allow me to believe that atheists were simply straight up logical people who came to their conclusions peacefully. having studied SOME statistics, i know that i'd be making a pretty big mistake in simply taking my observations as fact without studying this in depth, comprehensively with a large and diverse sample size. i also know that the questions i ask have to be structured in such a way to minimize errors. that's just one example of why i say opinions and observations are bs without hard data to back it up. clearly i could be wrong, you could be right, we won't know without a comprehensive study. given the spreading of knowledge, especially with the internet, i suspect a majority of atheists came to their conclusions peacefully without too much turmoil. that's just my guess, wouldn't put my stamp of approval on that without data and you shouldn't either.
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
why? because you say so? and then atheists say believers are arrogant
nope. it's simple statistics. arrogance would be me saying your opinion is wrong and mine is right. instead i'm saying both of our opinions are worthless without proof. i can't help it if you don't understand these principles.
well, yeah...a belief in something (tangible or not) is needed in order to take a stand either for or against something. What is believed in can vary depending on where you live. But it starts somewhere.
belief in god is what i mean. it's a common logical fallacy to think that starting point has to be with god. not only does it not have to, be history clearly shows that might not be a good thing...
again, making assumptions about what I study, don't study, know or don't know. Not a poor choice of words, you simply don't know me, but you presume to school me on subjects that are of interest to you. Arrogant to the extreme. Borderline narcissistic. Is that what you have to do to assert your point of view?
you're over there asking the questions, if you don't want the answers, don't ask the questions. simple. as for schooling you, nope. not my fields of study, but i do find those examples very interesting and thought they were great examples. if you've ever watched "a beautiful mind" you'd see russel crow following pidgeons around and turning that into an equation which eventually became applicable in a wide variety of subjects such as economincs, for which he (the person he was protraying i should say) won the nobel prize.
Who's setting the standard for what's proper? You? Why? And where have I dismissed anything?
me? of course not! i surely didn't contribute to the development of math. just learning it. here ya go:
no science can conclusively explain a lot of people's behavior
you say this and yet you can't wrap your head around why opinions are like assholes. now if you studied neuroscience, biology, psychology, etc...then you'd at least be able to understand that part because you'd have taken statistics. statistics is an INTEGRAL part of those fields. it simply can't be studied adequately without it. why? because opinions based on observations aren't worth a hill of beans unless you take the time to prove it with statistical analysis. why is that? because eventually we came to realize that observations are subject to biases.i pointed this out earlier in regards to homosexuals, but how about all those lovely observations about slave behavior? without a proper study and statistical analysis to prove those observations, people were free to go about believing their bigoted nonsense. observational bias. it happens to everyone, including scientists. that's why they put their work out there for review and everyone examines the evidence put forth to determine whether it's right or wrong. frankly, i find it narcissistic and arrogant to simply assume someone can say something that's false and then being angry when someone points out the flaws in the logic and then not taking the time to understand the evidence put forth...
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
Oh I get it. your reality is better than everyone else's.
my reality? i live in the very same reality that everyone else lives in. i simply chose to study and understand it.
You're making assumptions about me that aren't true. I never declared anything unknowable or magical.
poor choice of words, but if we're not going to bridge the gap of knowledge with facts, there's nothing left to bridge it with.
let me rephrase: what presented evidence here in this thread? I wasn't referring to outside resources.
you expect someone to type up and walk you through A DECADE'S worth of learning in math, physics and chemistry, just to get to quantum mechanics? are you serious? this is why atheists tell believers to go educate themselves in these fields. that's asking way too much. this is the barrier of understanding. either you take the time to try and understand it, or you can ignore it. i don't see how anyone can affirm their faith without challenging it though.
I didn't arrive at a conclusion about atheists from a clinical or mathematical perspective.
i know. that's why i keep saying personal observations of this nature have a value of stinky cheese. my observations as well.
I say it again: based on what I observed in people I personally know (not acquaintences, not research subjects, not survey takers) and based on what many have told me. That's it. In that sense, my oberservations ARE very trustworthy.
no they aren't trustworthy. point blank.
Did I apply it to everyone?
yea you kinda did...
The issue to me is YOU probably don't trust YOUR OWN perspective on this matter which is why you need some scientific discipline to help you out.
statistics PROVES what i'm saying to be true. this is why people collect data and do formal studies. because what we see can deceive us.
These are moral challenges, not scientific ones.
sounds suspiciously like you're saying that in order to decide on proper morals, we need belief. continue governor...
Science can prove that homosexuals, women, people of color aren't in any way inferior or whatnot, but things only change when the status quo feels threatened enough to change, and usually that involves economics.
and science proving all of that has helped start the change in morals. it's nto left up to "personal observations" otherwise, we'd be basing public policy on morons who "observe" homosexuals to be morally inferior and legislating against it.
Alabama bus boycott? Those bus companies felt the pinch of so many folks not riding the bus in those days. Enough people become outraged at injustice to stand up and do something about it. Noone needs a science to do that (but interestingly religion can and has played a strong role in promoting social justice).
and it also played an extremely large part in entrenching bigoted views, slavery and discrimination in the country. thankfully we eventually had a supreme court not staffed by jackasses and it was rather cool of them to step away from belief in order to give women control over their reproductive rights.
Yes, believers are part of the problem. Big time. Religion is a made made egoic structure. A structure of the mind which is limited.
that we can agree on.
I agree the topic title is loaded, but some of the replies are also ridiculous and unnecessairily nasty.
funny, why is it believers never say a word when a fellow believer decides to shove their stuff out there, but comes running and complaining when the tables are turned?
One of those replies came from Qcmbr which you felt a need to defend, and then you claimed that I'm upset, a mind reader, whatever. Not that I care.
perhaps i missed it, what exactly did qcmbr say that was nasty?
stop playing the victim card. believers by and large control gov't and laws and oppress the civil rights of those licing a lifestyle they don't agree with
Where am I playing victim? Show me.
the very nature of the question: "why are atheists being mean to me???" victim mentallity. you yourself keep asking this question.
If believers control government and oppress civil rights, do something about it then. I don't believe that they should.
i do, i vote.
yes I have (why would you suggest otherwise?). What I said was that no science can conclusively explain a lot of people's behavior. Pick an explanation, stick with it, fine. But something else could be a factor too.
well, if you really wanted to know why people do what they do, study those things. it's fascinating. especially the cross discipline stuff like applications of biology in traffic patterns. did you know that the behavior and movements of ants (i think it's ants, maybe termites) are described in equations that are used by airline industries and public transportation planners? or how chemical equilibrium describes some of our behavior? before dismissing, try learning it, at the very least so you can refute it properly.
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
why should any one god be truer than another?
well i think it's rather cool that we don't still go witht he ones asking for human sacrifices...
issue is, why do atheists feel the need to mock or scorn others who do believe in something (or many things)?
why do so many believers feel the need to legislate their beliefs into secular law?
why do so many believers feel the need to look down upon nonbelievers' morals?
they turn to science, history, logic....etc. Stuff written by people who eat sleep and poop just like they do.
yup, except we get to take that science and examine the evidence for ourselves and call the other person out if they were wrong. there's a reason why we don't teach aristotle's model of the universe anymore...
Hogwash. Living a godly life (or whatever you wanna call it) requires some degree of sacrifice, no matter the path chosen, and few are willing to do that.
how is a "godly life" any different than not being an ass to other people while still being an atheist?
Others are hurt (understandably so) and reject god from a place of anger and pain, not from a place of rationality.
and some people turn to god because they are angry, upset, hurt, whatever, not from a place of rationality.
And again, I'm not saying this is true in ALL cases.
step in the right direction
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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rather be in hades
There is, and I believe there's a whole branch of science that looks into this. That you favour math, statistics and physics to bridge the gap is your preference.
a preference based on reality. i wonder if people made that same argument when trying to justify believing the sun went around the earth
It's not a poor excuse, it's a question. If the universe is made of laws and facts then what is the universe made of?
Can statistics answer that for me?
no, but luckily quantum mechanics can and if you really truly cared to know, you'd study it. otherwise, you may continue to throw up your hands and declare this all unknowable. i'm very thankful though, that scientists didn't do that and let it all be magic from "god"
And what presented evidence are you referring to?
oh chemistry, biology, astrophysics, you know...science?
you need math and physics to validate your observations because...why? they aren't trustworthy? sample size isn't large enough? how large should it be? how diverse?
for godssake yes! your observations are NOT trustworthy at all. that's the whole point. the larger the sample size and diversity, the better. i assure you, if you were to try to apply statistical methods such as confidence intervals, statistical correlations, etc, to your "data", you'd begin to understand the point.
you could spend the rest of your life trying to prove something mathematically, arrive at what you are looking for, then have it all crumble in a matter of seconds when someone else jumps in and says "nope! I have a different answer here."
what then? bash them over the head with "well that's your irrelevant opinion, and everyone has one?"
no, either i'm right, they're right, or neither of us are right. so we go over the evidence to sort all that out. that's how science and proofs work. otherwise, how is progress made if we just go off of opinions which have a value of...? if no one challenged anything, we'd be way further back than we should be. would women still be burnt at the stake? homosexuals still don't have basic civil rights in the us, if it wasn't for science challenging the ignorant views of bigots with facts, who knows how much further behind their struggle for civil rights would be?
my point is, again, when asked the question why do atheists scorn believers, the reasons are more subjective than objective. and yes, based on a sample size of zilch.
once again, have you considered that believers could be a large part of the problem? have you considered the possibility that there are so many believers shoving their stuff (to be read in a joe biden sense) into secular law might be a large part of why atheists ridicule you guys? the very title of this topic was a loaded question and loaded answers came back.
stop playing the victim card. believers by and large control gov't and laws and oppress the civil rights of those licing a lifestyle they don't agree with
because what we are really asking is why do people behave the way they do. and that is something that no branch of science can conclusively answer.
have you heard of psychology, neuroscience, biology and math? they ABSOLUTELY attempt to explain why people do what they do. heck, it explains why organisms do what they do. not just humans.