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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
Okay, I just wanted to be clear...
While I don't have the hubris to claim "perfection," I'll describe a more rational prescription for life. How about things the way they are without religion. For example, life as we know it without Christianity being the motivation behind:
- banning stem cell research
- creationism in science class
- reducing homosexual rights
People base their opinion on these matters on nothing more than a fairy tale. What the hell is that? |
As an atheist you might prefer communism as a means of not doing some of these things; how well did the reason of atheists work out following the russian revolution?
There are plenty of christians who are okay with gay marriage and plenty of secular justifications offered for its denial. Atheism isn't necessarily the rational alternative. People do fucked up things, regardless of their over-arching belief system.
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Many posters on this board would object to this as well. Obviously not all theists want to control how I live. Many people on this board will testify that they are religious but won't support the listed agenda, above. However, it seems as if the important theists of the US do support them and this is what atheists object to. I find it hard to believe that you don't already know this and this is just a cheap attempt at specious rhetoric...
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Well, the problem is that you seem to speak of theists as one cohesive group. If you stop speaking about all theists as if they all share an identical belief system i'll stop pointing out that you're wrong about it.
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I'm trying to understand what you mean here but I just don't get it. "Blind commitment to rationality?" The imagery I get from this is of you sayinig "Oh, stop it. That makes too much sense. Will you just stop making sense, already!"
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Have you ever done something which at the time didn't make any sense to do, but having done so the situation actually turned out better than it would have if you had done what the prototypical rational person would have done? That's why sometimes acting rational isn't always your best option.
The world is an irrational, unreasonable place, and treating everything as if it makes sense doesn't actually make sense.
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Originally Posted by willravel
The idea is that we came from packs not disimilar to wolves, so they work quite well to illustrate a relatable instance of how man was before theism and before the inteligence that gives birth to conscousness.
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I know why you would defer to the wisdom of wolves, i just think that as far as sociological models go, it's overly simplistic in the context of human societies.
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How do I know? Because the car started. It's that simple. I've helped someone, and that's good enough for me. That's atheist morality. Helping people without the threat of hell or divine retribution of some kind is the only real altruism.
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You're missing the bigger picture. If you help someone who is detrimental to the pack you are actually not helping the pack. For an extreme example, think of the hypothetical good samaritan helping timothy mcveigh change the tire on his truck just outside of oklahoma city.
Helping someone because you think a wolf would isn't "real" altruism.
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Did you miss the wolves thing? Yeesh.
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No, it just doesn't make sense to me. How is the behavior of wolves an example of ethics?
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There is no evidence that god exists, yet people are able to look past that and believe that he exists none the less. That's illogical. It's philosophical dependance on fiction. If I told you that Zeus exists and my proof was that I believe in him, would you convert?
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It's illogical, so what? Most of the things that most people to most of the time involve an implicit absence of logic. Illogical doesn't equate to cop out. If you examine the underlying assumptions on which you base all your beliefs, at some point you will find something that is illogical.
If you told me zeus exists, i wouldn't convert, but i wouldn't automatically presume you to be intellectually lazy. It would depend on how open minded you were.
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I woulnd't be atheist had I been born 100 years earlier than I was. We are a product of our environment. If you are never allowed to question god, then how can you expect to break free? I was allowed to question god, and becuse of that I was eventually able to reason that god is as likely to be real as zeus.
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What if you had personal experiences which to you reinforced the notion that there is a god? There are plenty of people who have been allowed to question god and still manage to retain their faith.
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The church, and thus religion, hinders development. The proof was in one of the men you claimed as your champion. I'll bet you $5 that if Descartes were born today, he'd be at least agnostic, if not atheist. Great mathematicians like John Horton Conway, G.H. Hardy, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Bertrand Russell, and Piergiorgio Odifreddi are all atheists.
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Let me correct that for you. The church, and thus religion, sometimes hinder development. Sometimes they are a catalyst for development, and sometimes they don't to much either way.