You know, Ive been thinking...

[DossarLX ODI]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Of course, telling people that they need to learn more / get educated in the underlying subjects is seen as arrogant. So in many ways, it's a lose/lose. You either have to explain a huge collection of complex frameworks to people who have little exposure to that kind of thinking (and have it fall on deaf ears), or be labeled arrogant for telling them that they are not educated enough to understand why their arguments are poor.

I would definitely see that as an insult rather than an explanation because it doesn't tell that person anything. Saying "get educated" literally does not add any useful information whatsoever. If you asked me a question and I said "get educated", not only am I not giving you information, I'm insulting you.

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

So, in using the analogy, it's a lot like dealing with someone who thinks the Earth is flat. There's just no polite way to tell them that their stance is untenable, especially if they're heavily invested in it emotionally. Some people simply don't care. Even if they can understand the counter-arguments on a rational level, sometimes it's just easier to keep on believing in a higher power like they were before.

You could say the same thing for people who sell drugs. Most of them don't care if peoples' lives are being ruined from selling said drugs, but some do it because it's much easier (and in their case, more satisfying) than trying to get into a technical profession where professors say to solve everything yourself and basically say "fuck you" from this. Or you could also just say that selling drugs would be better than interviewing at companies and not getting any positions. There are many factors to consider.

If someone rarely ever gets explanations and is just told to "discover for themselves" it makes sense that people will rather just go to other alternatives than reinvent the wheel. People who say they don't believe in evolution never say "discover for yourself". Notice how for other superstitious beliefs, there is never that "discover for yourself" aspect. They just flat out say it's true.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI

I would definitely see that as an insult rather than an explanation because it doesn't tell that person anything. Saying "get educated" literally does not add any useful information whatsoever. If you asked me a question and I said "get educated", not only am I not giving you information, I'm insulting you.

I don't necessarily mean to use that as an actual response.

What I mean is that it's really hard to debate someone when their level of understanding is so far outside where it needs to be. If you don't understand the basics of, say, math, physics, biology, chemistry, logic, statistics, etc -- that's a shitload of intuition that you simply won't have yet.

So, in some cases, it's just impossible to get someone up to speed on all that intuition, because that's what years of education is for. It's much harder to make someone understand why your argument is convincing if they don't even understand the argument. You'll notice that a lot of creationists fail to understand how evolution operates, hence all the common quotes you hear which are marks of ignorance ("If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" "Doesn't the second law of thermodynamics disprove evolution?" "Something as complex as an eye can't evolve from nothing because if you remove any one part, the whole thing stops working", etc).

[Spenner]

A lot of faith wielding people allow themselves to be a bit too open minded, the brain starts to leak beyond reason, and likes it. That mentality is very toxic and it's actually sad for me to see someone glancing over the marvels of the empirically observed world. A lot of people seem to be reading life like a fantasy fanfiction, and the delusion is exciting to them, and from there on the snowball keeps rolling.

It's very hard to debate with someone who just doesn't really understand the means of your evidence, and I've been there myself before, and it's hard to wrap your ego around at first and admit that you don't know. I now say it with pride, I like learning :B the thought of maybe being able to help people better understand the world as it seems to really be makes me want to study what's already well known, and see if I can find a new idea. I can't let myself stick with old/retired ideologies, which is why religion is not for me.

[3lijah]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

How would you feel if I told you that I adamantly believed that the earth was flat? And that I think your kids should learn flat-earth theory in the science classroom? And that I should be free to enter public office and divert funding away from important things to support flat-earth projects and promotions? Or that, for some reason, because the Earth is flat, it means I can mistreat and legally discriminate against certain kinds of people?

You'd think I was utterly insane. We all know the Earth is not flat, so this example is easy to understand.

However, as you extend the analogy further, it gets into areas that are less well-known. Everyone understands the Earth is round, but not everyone understands how evolution works. Not everyone knows how our Earth was formed, or how basic physics work, or that we are all born out of stardust, or what statistics and logic imply in various contexts, etc. It becomes less intuitive, but plenty of people do still understand all of this.

And so imagine how frustrated these people are to watch everyone around them believe in things that are either outright wrong or incredibly improbable, especially when better explanations exist for all of it. Hearing people say "it's just my opinion!" is frustrating because at some point, it's not your opinion if your opinion is, frankly, wrong.

Of course, telling people that they need to learn more / get educated in the underlying subjects is seen as arrogant. So in many ways, it's a lose/lose. You either have to explain a huge collection of complex frameworks to people who have little exposure to that kind of thinking (and have it fall on deaf ears), or be labeled arrogant for telling them that they are not educated enough to understand why their arguments are poor.

So, in using the analogy, it's a lot like dealing with someone who thinks the Earth is flat. There's just no polite way to tell them that their stance is untenable, especially if they're heavily invested in it emotionally. Some people simply don't care. Even if they can understand the counter-arguments on a rational level, sometimes it's just easier to keep on believing in a higher power like they were before. This is especially easy to do since unfalsifiable beliefs are, well, unfalsifiable. But an atheist would say that if your belief is unfalsifiable, why are you believing in it in the first place? There are infinitely many unfalsifiable beliefs to hold -- so why this one?

I guess what I'm really trying to ask is at the end of the day, why does it really matter what we believe in when science and technology will continue to advance in time, and religion will continue to spread?

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by 3lijah

I guess what I'm really trying to ask is at the end of the day, why does it really matter what we believe in when science and technology will continue to advance in time, and religion will continue to spread?

1. Religion is not likely to survive in the long term. Over time, people are generally getting less religious as education/knowledge/technology expands. Most people largely appeal to God of the Gaps (consciously or not), and these gaps get smaller over time.

2. In short, the general mindset (from a strident atheistic perspective) is that the others are holding society back, especially on a sociopolitical and educational level. If people are being taught that faith is a good reason to accept something as true, then it makes it much harder to develop critical thinking. It means we get a lot of blind bigotry, ignorance, abuse, and opportunity cost. We get a lot of people who are satisfied with "God did it" and they develop no curiosity to actually pursue the real answers and ask the hard questions. We get people who have been taught to distrust science who could have otherwise become brilliant engineers to help carry us forward.

3. A lot of religious people with political power also tend to push religion into the law -- people who are backed up by lots of money and plenty of constituents who share the same religious beliefs. To everyone else, it's hugely offensive, damaging, and unacceptable. What's worse is when initiatives are taken that cause a lot more harm than they're worth simply for the sake of ideology.

So it all matters because we all live in the same society. Atheists would have no beef with religion if people kept it to themselves. But this isn't what we see in practice. On the contrary: many organized religions teach you to spread the word and proselytize/convert others/etc. And in many cases, a refusal to assimilate can have strongly negative consequences.

[Reincarnate]

I disagree with many of those points (and think others miss the mark of what the previous discussion was about) but honestly don't care enough to respond -- these conversations rarely go anywhere useful.

[Funnygurl555]

I think the point that Reincarnate was trying to make is that religion has the potential to slow scientific/socioeconomic progress. He has already demonstrated his stance, and to him that is enough to justify why religion is detrimental to our advancement. If you want a personal anecdote to corroborate this point, I was born religious but am currently agnostic, and I still live with my religious family members. Sometimes we do argue about “controversial” topics, and they often turn to religion to back up their claims, which then makes the entire argument impossible to continue.

Though religion has many positives as well— if you look at many of the popular faiths today, you will realize that the purpose of the religion was to not only explain the unknown but also keep society in check. Religious people are encouraged to perform good deeds because of their faith and are asked to be tolerant of those who do not share the same beliefs. Also, many religions challenge their members to become knowledgeable, so religion has played a role in advancing human kind on a scientific level as well.

Though that does not exactly tie back to 3lijah’s original comment about the derogatory comments directed toward those who do believe in a higher being. Regardless of what one believes in, it is uncalled for to lambaste other’s beliefs. Believing in religion also does not make one more ignorant or unintelligent than one who has no faith. No one knows the circumstances of our existence with absolute certainty, so no one has the right to judge another’s faith.
--
Derp -noms on cookie and leaves-

[Crazyjayde]

Originally Posted by Funnygurl555

I think the point that Reincarnate was trying to make is that religion has the potential to slow scientific/socioeconomic progress. He has already demonstrated his stance, and to him that is enough to justify why religion is detrimental to our advancement.

And I think this is also the basis theory of this thread.
Relevant:



(I do not know about the validity of this graph but it sure makes you think)

[foop101]

Religion will not effect progress if one's beliefs aren't forced onto others. What one thinks on their own time will usually not negatively effect society, however pushing others to adhere to beliefs based on faith instead of reason (sharia law, mandatory study of the bible in schools or the refusal to teach evolution) is what most atheists or humanists are trying to argue against. The problem is most atheists end up just attacking religious people themselves, instead of what is truly wrong with religion, sick people using its power with nonsense reasoning or for personal gain.
I'm atheist myself, if that matters.

[Reincarnate]

"Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion."

-Stephen Weinberg



If you want a modern day example, just look at same-sex marriage / homosexuality, for starters. This argument that somehow it's not religion that's the problem but rather "evil people who abuse religion" -- I think this could not be more incorrect.

[Mollocephalus]

Originally Posted by Funnygurl555

Though religion has many positives as well— if you look at many of the popular faiths today, you will realize that the purpose of the religion was to not only explain the unknown but also keep society in check. Religious people are encouraged to perform good deeds because of their faith and are asked to be tolerant of those who do not share the same beliefs. Also, many religions challenge their members to become knowledgeable, so religion has played a role in advancing human kind on a scientific level as well.

I have a friend in saudi arabia and while she is atheist, she has to undergo all the religious traditions and shit. She spoke to me about them, and some of them were actual excercises to promote thinking, cultural involvement, charity and other supposedly positive things.

However, when you look closely at the set of values and activities a religion requires you to do, it becomes very clear that we're no longer in a historical period where that's our only alternative. On the contrary, our alternatives are nowadays much, much better, making the entire religious institution very outdated as a tool of social advancement. It is only marginally useful for people who live in very specific conditions, and is bound to naturally disappear over time. At the end of the day, its contribution to human society, progress and improvement definitely goes into negative.

[reuben_tate]

I'm going to try to focus back on the OP's original intent for this thread.

So, one may argue that many religions, as a whole, keep society from progressing. I would even say myself that that is probably true, but I digress.

The point of the matter however, was that the OP was asking about the ethics/morality of an atheist ridiculing a theist in a way that the OP described. Now this is highly dependent on the situation, but in general, I would find that behavior non-respectable (however, in certain circumstances I would go as far to say that the theist "had it coming"). However, if the situation is as follows:
Atheist: "So what's your religion."
Theist: "Oh, I'm _____. Why did you ask?"
Atheist: "LOL, YOU'RE ****ING RETARDED!!!!1"
then clearly the atheist is the one preventing society to progress by acting immaturely and lowering the theist's self esteem (making them less likely to accomplish something that could be worth while to society).

Although religion, overall as a whole, may be keeping society from progressing, you can't assume that that is the true of each and every single individual.

[rushyrulz]

You can't really cite one hypothetical example and then go on to say that the dickhead atheist is inhibiting an entire society from progressing, especially when you see real-life examples every day of how religion is actually holding us back. I don't even need to provide an example, just listen to the news.

EDIT: Ok, if you insist.
Galileo
Stem cell research
ECC 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. (need I say more?)
The Dark Ages (guess so)
And uh.. gay marriage, anyone?

[Izzy]

There is always going to be circumstantial evidence supporting either side.

If I had to guess though there are probably a lot more cases where an outdated or religious based decision negatively influenced progress.

Despite there being some annoying non-religious people they are probably more likely to make decisions based on actual reasons and maybe even logic/testing.