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Originally Posted by shakran
Well, we can start by not talking about wanting to eradicate religion. We can start by not saying they're stupid to believe in it.
I'm not worried about offense if the offense is caused by ideas. The Copernican model of the solar system was highly offensive to the church, and I'm fine with that. If Copernicus had, however, danced around yelling "you bunch'a damn jackasses! You're all stupid!" then I'd have looked on him as a social, if not complete, idiot.
If the offense is caused by being a jackass, it's another story.
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Okay, I think I see what you're thinking, here. I still think it's a difficult thing to do. For instance, you obviously want to avoid pejoratives but suppose you say that their religion is a delusion. A lot of people are going to take offense to that. I'm not saying they're delusional and the word is not an insult. However, there's no way to get around the implication that they're delusional and many will take it as an offense, despite that I honestly think they've fooled themselves into believing something that makes little sense. I can tell you that I don't know what your stance on this is going to be...
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You have to understand where the religious people are coming from here. I had the (from my perspective) advantage of having parents who, while they believed in god, didn't make a big deal out of it and never went to church.
But look at it from the perspective of someone who has been raised all their life to believe in god and the teachings of the church. You can have the smartest person in the world, but if they're raised from day one to believe in something, even if it's not true, it's going to be awfully hard to convince them otherwise.
Look at it another way. You have been raised all your life to believe that gravity is keeping you firmly attached to the earth. But what if gravity doesn't exist? What if instead it's electrical attraction at the atomic level that holds you to the planet? If I told you, right here, right now, that gravity doesn't exist, would you believe me? What if I said you're a moron for thinking gravity exists. Would that help to convince you?
Of course it wouldn't. And if you had been raised all your life, from day one, being told there was a god, you'd very likely believe in god right now unless you had at some point gotten around to questioning that belief.
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Why can't "getting around to questioning that belief" start now?
I agree that insults wouldn't help but they wouldn't hinder me, either. Don't worry, I understand that I'm peculiar this way. Another peculiarity of mine is that it wouldn't insult me if you said that the belief in gravity were stupid, rather than simply saying that I am...
I was raised a devout christian, even going to bible school both days of the weekend, every weekend. I understand the power of indoctrination but I'm not sure I understand the offense. My atheist friends in late high school would ridicule religion with arguments that I could not deny. Despite this, it took me a while to admit to myself that I don't believe. I'll tell you what I didn't do. I didn't make shit up. Some of the arguments I've heard for religion are simply lame.
Would it surprise you to learn that if you can show me how my belief in gravity was stupid and present a better theory to me then I would throw out my belief in gravity in a heartbeat. In fact, I would be eager to dispell current notions of gravity in favour of the better one. In case you didn't realize, this has happened, already...
What sets atheism apart from religion is faith, or the lack, thereof. This is a subject that keenly interests both Dawkins and Harris. Faith is the ability to believe what you want despite reality. Is it any wonder that it is touted as a virtue in religion?
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No, not at all, and I'm not trying to establish credibility for any religion here. However, that history speaks to the likelihood that people will believe in it. The flying spaghetti monster wouldn't last very long as a religion because no one believes in it. Unless you're prepared to say that everyone that ever lived who believed in god was a moron (and that, by the way, includes Einstein, Hawking, Newton, Jefferson, Franklin, and most of the other great thinkers of history) then you have to acknowledge that it is *understandable* that people might believe in their religion.
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It's utterly irrelevant to the topic but, since you brought it up, let me point out that your list of religious "great thinkers" is largely apocryphal. By the way, when you say "Franklin," do you mean
Rosalind Franklin?
It's only "understandable" in the statistical sense. I can understand why
Newton was religious for the same reason I can understand why
Lincoln and
Gandhi were deeply racisit. It's because it was exceedingly bizarre to be anything else at the time.
Besides, do you see no difference between saying the belief in religion is "stupid" and saying religious people are stupid?
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And rather than hurl insults at those who believed in a flat earth, intrepid explorers instead went out and proved that it wasn't. That is the challenge I gave to Yakk. Instead of just sitting there and insulting people, either go out and prove they're wrong, or keep your insults to yourself.
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How can I respond to this? You're really hung up on this whole "proof" thing. Let me tell you, I don't need "proof." Proof is too high a burden. Just give me something even vaguely reasonable and I will believe. However, there isn't even that yet people still continue to believe...
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Well here we have millions of people telling someone that if they don't believe in god they're going to be set on fire forever. It is not unreasonable that they hedge their bets and proceed as though that were true until offered direct evidence to the contrary.
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Yeah, I honestly didn't need the highway example. Obviously, popularity lends some credibility but... not much. I suppose if you've never seen a whole swath of people be wrong then it may be more convincing but... surely these people notice the other religious people who believe something rather different? They're not both right so that's a fine example of a great number of people who believe something that's "clearly" false. How is this possible? Apply it to yourself and you will know!
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No, but you're failing to think critically about this yourself. There are very powerful signs that god exists, if you're looking for them and you want to believe in god. I went on a hiking trip in the rockies once with a good friend, and she stopped halfway down a mountain trail, overlooking a valley of aspen with a sparkling lake in the middle, and told me that surely nothing this beautiful could be accidental. I of course disagreed, but I understood why such a sight would be a reinforcing sign that god does exist.
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I've brought this up, before. I think I called it "false association." What does beauty have to do with God? That doesn't follow. Can't a garden be beautiful without there being fairies at the bottom of it, too?
Yes, if you look hard enough then I suppose you can convince yourself of anything. In which case, I would say that you're looking too hard. Again, this demonstrates a lack of critical thinking skills. Instead of looking for what you want, why don't you look at what is? What's with the denial?
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We all do that. We believe something and then search for evidence to prove our belief. The natural tendency is to discard or find fault with evidence that is contrary to our belief. It doesn't mean we're stupid - just that we're human.
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I agree that it is a human trait. However, what is it when someone points out that you are doing exactly this and suggests how you may desist this behaviour and you metaphorically stick your head in the sand and continue the way you were? We have human tendencies but with training and, more importantly, with each other's help, we can overcome this. I'm a computer programmer and if I continued this attitude of only seeing what I wanted to see, I would never get anything done...
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If you want to get into the comparitive jackass game, it's a pretty easy one to play. I can kill someone and claim it's not that bad because at least I didn't pull a Dahmer and eat them.
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Don't "slipery slope" me. Even in our society, if the worst thing you ever do is insult someone with words, that's not too bad.
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We are not in the position to conclusively prove that we cannot travel faster than light any more than Pa Ingalls could have conclusively proved we can't travel faster than the speed of sound.
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I vehemently disagree but this is rather far off topic.
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I already said in this thread that I would jump on them.
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Okay, so I'm beginning to see that you make no distinction between insulting one's religion and insulting them...
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True, but writing a book proclaiming there is no god will create plenty of controversy. Plus, Dawkins doesn't need to sell books - he's quite wealthy from the ones he's already sold.
You may be right, but does he want people to read his book or does he want to convince them to see things his way? Because even I, as an agnostic, was not swayed to his point of view - - but then I quit reading the book only a couple of chapters in because the guy's such an insulting jackass that I lost patience for him.
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You're probably right about the money but his attitude certainly gives him more notoriety. While you, personally, weren't swayed by his protestations, if I were to judge by this thread, you are particularly sensitive to such "insults." Everyone else seem to feel free to debate the issue. Again, no one's behaviour has degenerated to calling anyone here an idiot. All he wants to do is get people thinking. Despite his apparent attitude, he strikes me as optimistic...