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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
...are just as bad as religious zealots. Keep all your extremism away from me.
Anything can sound ridiculous if you use the right words for it.
This "space god" business is exactly the same tactic the religious Right uses on evolution. "Do you realize how ridiculous it sounds that we used to be monkeys? If we used to be monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"
Despite never actually having seen one ourselves, we trust some scientists we've never met that there are millions of little creatures swimming around in our bodies, some of them good and some of them bad.
This is generally a belief. Why? Because you probably haven't actually seen them. You're trusting the authority of someone else that they're there. They would sound, if we'd never heard of them before, ridiculous. And yet being ridiculous is not proof that something is untrue.
Of course you can't prove a negative. But if my belief system isn't harming you in any way, the burden of proof is on you to actually come up with some real evidence that it's a problem. If you want to say that religious extremists are a problem, I think there's ample evidence that you could provide for that. But where's the proof, Bill, that moderates are doing any harm at all?
If you're going to argue that the chief problem with religion is that religious people are not rational, it would behoove you to approach the problem in a rational way yourself.
This is why I am an athiest. The word "God" is meaningless. When I ask people what "God" is, I either get a ridiculous answer (He's an an omniscient superman) or one so vague as to be meaningless (He's a universal spirit).
Belief in "God" is, in my opinion, selfish. Those who do simply cannot comprehend that the universe was not created for Man, must anthropomorphize the universe in order to put Man in the center.
Forty years ago I enrolled in a Catholic seminary to study for the preisthood - a marvelous cult of idealists who would transcend sexuuality and become magicians. I left the seminary, and the faith, because the deeper I delved, the more I knew it was time to be an adult.
Religion's "God" is institutionalized superstition, and the human adherence to religion stunts the growth of humanity, which overwhelmingly sits and waits for "God" to do something. We saw how the nation's prayers saved Katrina victims, and the whole diminishment of our nation is in part an example of compassionate conservatism practiced by an alcoholic who has been redeemed by a higher power.
My question is: how "high" is this power, and what's he/she/it smoking? Will it be available in heaven? The government grows the best stuff on Earth - imagine what The Great Sugar Daddy in the Sky Can Do unfettered? I'll take some Maui Wowie any day over a bunch of virgins, but recall I almost was a priest, so I have some sort of inner demon to exorcise.
It is possible to graduate from kindergarten and move on to first grade. Spirituality is a whole different thing - a serious, personal search for the truth - if it exists.
The idea that there are only two options, religion or nihlism, is flat-out false, as noted by an earlier poster. Implying that atheists have no ethical standards and that any such standards can only come from religion is utter bullshit. My non-religious belief that it is better to be nice to people than mean is based on logical self-interest. It can be overcome by stupidity such as yours however. You fucking moron.
"But what I'd really like to see is a really strong argument about human behavior that wasn't grounded in superstition."
Better to ground it in something real, right? There's great work on the evolution of the moral faculty; Marc Hauser recently wrote a book describing current findings in the field of evolutionary psychology, called "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong". The rough argument is: humans are the product of evolutionary processes; humans are social and moral creatures; there's good evidence that our ability to socialize has helped the species survive; so socializing and a moral sense are quite likely evolutionary adaptations.
There's a growing body of scientific evidence that supports conclusions like these. Pretty darn cool, I think!
I've spoken about this before however, this is the best place for this true story.
I have several elderly customers who ctually cannot afford to have an appliance repaired, etc.
This is what my business is~~appliance repair.
I have one certain customer like this for whom I've done several things and have never charged her.
The last time I went there, as I was packing up my service truck, one of those two axe handle wide hausfrau neighbor ladies waddled over to tell me that she knew what I did for her neighbor and that I would surely go to heaven as, I was so "xtian" like.
I looked her in the eyes and told her that I am an atheist.
With wide startled eyes, she looked at me and actually said, "You're going to go to hell."
It was all I could do to not crack up laughing in her face.
90% of the American public is beholden to witchcraft that is defined as "religion".
Jesus wept.
Sometimes he makes me laugh out loud; mostly his fratboy humor makes me cringe. Maher's living proof that I would still dislike Bill O'Reilly even if I were stupid enough to agree with him.
He attacks straw men: "Or they say, "Jesus will be there sitting at the right hand of the Father, wearing a white robe with red piping. There will be three angels playing trumpets." I mean, come on. If you want atheists and agnostics to answer your rallying cry, then at least acknowledge that most christians don't say things like that.
Straw man 2: "I mean, 60 percent of Americans believe the Noah's ark story to be literally true." He said that on The Daily Show too. Actually, he did most of this "routine" verbatim there too. In all due respect, I have some problems with the numbers from this particular poll. 29% of non-believers say they believe in Noah and his ark also. Why? Because the wording of the question included those people who believe that there was a flood sometime in the Middle East and that there was a family who made it through on a raft/boat of some sort - and that this story was sung around the campfire for many many years (and exaggerated, like most oral histories) until someone wrote it down. That isn't quite so ridiculous.
Strawman 3: "I said, "We don't even know for sure whether Jesus lived," and he said, "We have eyewitness accounts." And then the 40-70 years debate. I'd agree that it's not an "eyewitness" account, but Collins wasn't really making that point. He was arguing that we have pretty good proof Jesus existed based off of these accounts. I'd agree with Collins here; I "rationally" find it to be unlikely that disparate groups of people gave accounts (in different languages) of a purely fictional character. Bill doesn't acknowledge that point. He attacks the use of an unfortunate word.
"You can't pull your punches, and you wouldn't be respected if you did." I actually agree with most of the points you make. I think this is a dialogue we certainly need. I think the way you go about it is childish and undermining to your actual argument.
"Prejudice comes from the words "pre" and "judge," and I don't think I'm prejudging." Except for how you really are. Why is he surprised that Foster said, "They're just stories" out loud? The Catholic church has been saying this for years! There are books and books. The official Catholic line supports evolutionary theory, for goodness sake. They have nothing to hide. They just don't require Catholics to accept evolution. They don't require people to accept that the world is round either. Does that mean the pope still believes in (and teaches) that the earth is flat?
"I don't use the word "atheist" about myself, because I think it mirrors the certitude I'm so opposed to in religion. What I say in the film is that I don't know." And then he demonstrates - repeatedly, in many different ways - how clearly disingenuous this statement is. In fact, he contradicts himself immediately: "When people say, "You're going after extremists," I say, well, to be religious at all is to be an extremist. It's to be extremely irrational.
I'm an actual agnostic in that I don't think it's provable either way. Dawkins thinks we can disprove the existence of a god through science and reason; Bill Maher thinks he can do it through mocking people. Personally, I don't think either one helps the people who are combating the rise of religious extremism.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
