Will, i still respect you too.
The crux of my position is that while it may be irrational from a scientific perspective to believe in things without objectively verifiable proof, this kind of irrationality isn't necessarily that important when concerning questions whose answers are fundamentally impossible to prove.
Furthermore, while a belief system based on a commitment to rational decision making does not in and of itself require any faith, the decision to embrace that belief system does. There is no reason to believe that an unwavering commitment to only rationally explainable ideas and endeavors will make you, or society in general, better off in the long run. Unless of course, you define "better off" as being more rational.
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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
I've noticed that your arguments are becoming increasingly more outrageous. Are you seeing this as one of your "better to be irrational" instances of your life? If so then we can simply desist our conversation right now...
If atheism dictated a doctorine then this might be a point. However, you don't have to be a communist to be an atheist. You can be a communist and a christian and, thus, object to the list of the previous post. Your argument makes no sense. Again, what's with the empty rhetoric? Have you run out of meaningful things to say?
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I was just pointing out that atheists do fucked up things, too. Also, that attempts to discredit all of christianity based on the actions of only a portion of christians are lazy.
Also, you should be aware that christianity doesn't necessarily dictate a doctrine either, beyond a commitment to acknowledging the importance of christ.
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Atheism isn't the only thing that will change these attitudes but it certainly is a reasonable one. People will always do fucked up things but the hope is that reasonable people won't be fooled into doing fucked up things by their religion and, thus, less people will be doing fucked up things...
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Seems like a faith-based position to me. People don't need religion to be fooled, and they can do so quite spectacularly without it. You should try to see religion as more of a symptom than a cause.
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Theists are one cohesive group in that they all believe in fairy tales. They're not all a problem if that's what you mean. Dawkins isn't attacking religious people, he's attacking religion. Orthodox christianity is very clearly against homosexuality. Thus, it can be argued that self proclaimed "christians" that support homosexuality aren't really christians. Regardless, it is not these christians that Dawkins condemns or, indeed, any christian but the motivation behind their beliefs. The fairy tale that tells you what's wrong or right...
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Yeah, i'm saying that dawkins misses the point, that any system of morals or ethics necessarily is based, at some level, on completely subjective judgements which may as well be based on fairy tales.
Tell me why being strictly rational all of the time will make the world a better place. First, though, you ought to be able to define "better" in a way that is strictly rational. Good luck.
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Okay, let me ask you something. If you did something stupid and it serendipitously turned out better than if you had tried to do something reasonable, would you then conclude that you should do more stupid things?
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I would probably breathe a sigh of relief, get angry at myself for doing something stupid, decide whether maybe the "stupid" thing to do might actually be the "smart" thing to do and then be thankful that it all worked out.
I may be wrong here, but you seem to think that there is always a rational solution, and that that rational solution is always the one that should be pursued.
What do you do when you don't have a rational solution to pursue or you don't have time to come up with one? How can you be sure, in any given situation, that you have enough information to actually make a rational decision? In short, how can you have so much faith in rationality?
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People can be irrational and unreasonable and you should know this when dealing with them. The rest of the world is perfectly rational and reasonable and it does make sense to treat it as if it makes sense...
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You're right, the rest of the world, the parts without humans, are pretty rational (electrons aside). I don't know where you live that you can so casually dismiss the human element's relevance in shaping the world around you. Where i live i have to constantly deal with the actions of people who aren't doing the things that i might expect them to.
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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
Maybe he feels this need because the church won't keep its faith out of our "faces?" More and more laws and public policy is being enacted based on "faith" and that's simply ludicrous and deserves a lively debate. It would also be nice if people didn't indoctrinate their children and, instead, let them make an informed choice when they're older...
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Actually, at least in the u.s., fewer and fewer laws and public policy are being enacted based on faith. We are an increasingly secular country, despite what dawkins might have you believe.
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We can't prove that there is a god. We can't prove that there isn't a god. By your reasoning, we should believe both theories!
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodinger%27s_cat