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crispybits wrote: Say I made the claim "molluscs telepathically communicate with each other and have an advanced psychic social heirarchy and culture". The rational way to respond to that claim would be to see if there is any way in which it can be tested. If it cannot be tested then the rational position is not to say "well then it is the truth", but to say to whoever made the claim "provide evidence please". You certainly wouldn't go out and start thinking really hard towards any molluscs you could find in an attempt to communicate with them.
crispybits wrote:Did I give away too many of their molluscy secrets?
TA1LGUNN3R wrote:Mollusks, you say?
john9blue wrote:Symmetry wrote:john9blue wrote:symmetry, please, the adults are talking.
Says the manchild with a My Little Pony fixation.
wtf? so everyone who likes my little pony is a manchild? tell that to medefe, you ignorant f*ck.
john wrote:a/theism just refers to whether your strong or weak belief is in god or no god... it's binary
TA1LGUNN3R wrote:Again, you're applying an incorrect, or at least not complete, definition to atheism.
If you don't know god exists or even what god is, then by definition you are an atheist, because you are "lacking belief in god."
If you wanna change definitions or word structures, then you can make a case for that.
waauw wrote:The problem I'm having is that you said atheism is a form of indoctrination. This is the reason why I wanted to mention that atheism does not claim to know about a divine existence. In indoctrination people do make it sound like they KNOW the answer.
crispybits wrote:john9blue wrote:you wanted our society to actively discourage people from becoming religious (make it "rated R" and keep it away). if we do that then people will not want anything to do with religious morals and may actively go against them because they are being encouraged to think that religion is seriously wrong.
I said no such thing about discouraging. I personally want to discourage people from taking up any religion unless they can provide evidence, but I don't want any such rules put in place by society. Freedom of religion is a good thing.
Have you thought that the main problems people have with religion are the way it treats children (not a catholic church dig) and the way it tries to run everyone's lives, not just the lives of believers? Do you not think that if religion stopped doing the two things that secular people have the most problems with then activism against religion would decrease, not increase?
Nobody is suggesting religion is "wrong", just that there's a place and a time for it and that's in voluntary exchanges between adults who are free to follow any religion they like as long as they don't force their religious rules on people that don't believe the same things they do. Or they can come up with evidence. Either way is fine by me.
natty_dread wrote:Do ponies have sex?
(proud member of the Occasionally Wrongly Banned)Army of GOD wrote:the term heterosexual is offensive. I prefer to be called "normal"
john9blue wrote:you could use this definition, but it wouldn't mean anything since the act of labeling yourself an atheist is an active rejection of the concept of god, which requires a conception of god in the first place. if you called babies and other T.N.'s "atheists", they wouldn't even know if that meant anything. so it's pretty pointless to extend the definition of atheism that far.
john9blue wrote:i don't think all atheists are indoctrinated. i think lots of people involved in the new atheist movement are at least somewhat indoctrinated. i hear the same oddly specific arguments over and over from all these different people... it really does sound like some kind of widespread doctrine (i think it qualifies as one, tbh)
john9blue wrote:your use of the words "keep [religion] away" gave me the impression that you wanted our society as a whole to actively discourage it, or maybe even the government itself.
i agree about the "running everyone's lives" part, but there's a thin line here. are we even capable of forcing politicians to ignore their religious beliefs when making decisions? religion and morality are tightly interwoven for many people. sure, ideally they would make decisions based only on evidence and solid facts, but opinions have to come into play at some point since many issues can't be decided with our current facts alone.
john9blue wrote:waauw wrote:The problem I'm having is that you said atheism is a form of indoctrination. This is the reason why I wanted to mention that atheism does not claim to know about a divine existence. In indoctrination people do make it sound like they KNOW the answer.
i don't think all atheists are indoctrinated. i think lots of people involved in the new atheist movement are at least somewhat indoctrinated. i hear the same oddly specific arguments over and over from all these different people... it really does sound like some kind of widespread doctrine (i think it qualifies as one, tbh)
waauw wrote:john9blue wrote:waauw wrote:The problem I'm having is that you said atheism is a form of indoctrination. This is the reason why I wanted to mention that atheism does not claim to know about a divine existence. In indoctrination people do make it sound like they KNOW the answer.
i don't think all atheists are indoctrinated. i think lots of people involved in the new atheist movement are at least somewhat indoctrinated. i hear the same oddly specific arguments over and over from all these different people... it really does sound like some kind of widespread doctrine (i think it qualifies as one, tbh)
Well then you made a horrible mistake in formulating your statement.
The fact that many atheists claim the same things, does not make it an indoctrination. According to the oxford dictionary indoctrination is making people believe things without them questioning it. This is not the case with atheism. Atheists base themselves on science and science does provide them evidence, often even conclusive evidence(for example heliocentrism).
Atheism is also individualistic in it's nature. It does not offer a holy script with all the need to know in it. No, atheism allows people to make up their own mind about the many scientific theories out there. There is a reason why atheism started growing with the birth of liberalism as liberalism is about freedom to believe and think whatever you choose.
In fact it are the religious people who are often indoctrinated, not the atheists. Many religions are based on holy scripts, which themselves have no scientific foundation and are filled with logical conflicts. It are these scripts which are then taught to children. They only learn what they should believe in but do not receive any logical nor scientific foundation on why to believe it. This in it's definition is indoctrination.
crispybits wrote:If you label yourself yes, then it shows you have cognition of the idea. However a baby is not labelling itself anything. By the definition of atheism as "lacking belief in God(s)" then babies are atheists, because it is impossible to have belief in something if you do not have a mental concept for that thing. Whether they consider themselves to be athiests or not is irrelevant. TN is a subset of atheism.
crispybits wrote:There is an anti-theist set of arguments that often get repeated, but there is a difference between that and indoctrination. Indoctrination into an idea by definition does not encourage/allow criticism of that idea. Anti-theism wants debate, it wants people to come up against it, present their evidence or their argument or whatever and have the discussion. Religion (as a philosophy) wants to shut down the discussion, it allows no debate. "This is the word of God" is not allowing for any debate, it is a debate ender, because whoever says it has no way to change their position without abandoning it entirely. Have you ever heard any religious person saying "This is the word of God, but you know what he may have been wrong on this issue"?
waauw wrote:Well then you made a horrible mistake in formulating your statement.
The fact that many atheists claim the same things, does not make it an indoctrination. According to the oxford dictionary indoctrination is making people believe things without them questioning it. This is not the case with atheism. Atheists base themselves on science and science does provide them evidence, often even conclusive evidence(for example heliocentrism).
Atheism is also individualistic in it's nature. It does not offer a holy script with all the need to know in it. No, atheism allows people to make up their own mind about the many scientific theories out there. There is a reason why atheism started growing with the birth of liberalism as liberalism is about freedom to believe and think whatever you choose.
In fact it are the religious people who are often indoctrinated, not the atheists. Many religions are based on holy scripts, which themselves have no scientific foundation and are filled with logical conflicts. It are these scripts which are then taught to children. They only learn what they should believe in but do not receive any logical nor scientific foundation on why to believe it. This in it's definition is indoctrination.
natty_dread wrote:Do ponies have sex?
(proud member of the Occasionally Wrongly Banned)Army of GOD wrote:the term heterosexual is offensive. I prefer to be called "normal"
john9blue wrote:crispybits wrote:If you label yourself yes, then it shows you have cognition of the idea. However a baby is not labelling itself anything. By the definition of atheism as "lacking belief in God(s)" then babies are atheists, because it is impossible to have belief in something if you do not have a mental concept for that thing. Whether they consider themselves to be athiests or not is irrelevant. TN is a subset of atheism.
what if i told you that you didn't believe in "skub".
what is skub? it could be god, it could be your mom, it could be flying unicorns. how would you know whether you believed in it or not? you don't even know what it is.crispybits wrote:There is an anti-theist set of arguments that often get repeated, but there is a difference between that and indoctrination. Indoctrination into an idea by definition does not encourage/allow criticism of that idea. Anti-theism wants debate, it wants people to come up against it, present their evidence or their argument or whatever and have the discussion. Religion (as a philosophy) wants to shut down the discussion, it allows no debate. "This is the word of God" is not allowing for any debate, it is a debate ender, because whoever says it has no way to change their position without abandoning it entirely. Have you ever heard any religious person saying "This is the word of God, but you know what he may have been wrong on this issue"?
i have a hard time believing this, since no atheist i have ever talked to has ever admitted being wrong about any of their beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.waauw wrote:Well then you made a horrible mistake in formulating your statement.
The fact that many atheists claim the same things, does not make it an indoctrination. According to the oxford dictionary indoctrination is making people believe things without them questioning it. This is not the case with atheism. Atheists base themselves on science and science does provide them evidence, often even conclusive evidence(for example heliocentrism).
Atheism is also individualistic in it's nature. It does not offer a holy script with all the need to know in it. No, atheism allows people to make up their own mind about the many scientific theories out there. There is a reason why atheism started growing with the birth of liberalism as liberalism is about freedom to believe and think whatever you choose.
In fact it are the religious people who are often indoctrinated, not the atheists. Many religions are based on holy scripts, which themselves have no scientific foundation and are filled with logical conflicts. It are these scripts which are then taught to children. They only learn what they should believe in but do not receive any logical nor scientific foundation on why to believe it. This in it's definition is indoctrination.
natty_dread wrote:Do ponies have sex?
(proud member of the Occasionally Wrongly Banned)Army of GOD wrote:the term heterosexual is offensive. I prefer to be called "normal"
john9blue wrote: the act of labeling yourself an atheist is an active rejection of the concept of god, which requires a conception of god in the first place.
crispybits wrote:Until I find out what "skub" is, if I ever do, then I have no belief about skub. I neither believe that it exists or that it doesn't exist. I don't assign any probability factor to it's existence either. Now look again at the sentence "lacking belief in X" and tell me that it is not appropriate for that to apply in this case. I lack belief, AND I lack understanding of the concept. If it is possible to be "askubist" than my askubism is stronger than my atheism, because I at least know what we're talking about when someone says "God". You are confusing atheism with anti-theism (which is when an atheist starts challenging religious dogma rather than not giving a crap about it at all). Anti-theists are a subset of atheists, but atheism is not limited only to anti-theists.
jonesthecurl wrote:john9blue wrote: the act of labeling yourself an atheist is an active rejection of the concept of god, which requires a conception of god in the first place.
Seems to me this argument works both ways. How is it possible to believe in "god" if you can't define it? Isn't that meaningless -oh yes, I believe in this thing. Whatever it is...
natty_dread wrote:Do ponies have sex?
(proud member of the Occasionally Wrongly Banned)Army of GOD wrote:the term heterosexual is offensive. I prefer to be called "normal"
john9blue wrote:waauw wrote:Well then you made a horrible mistake in formulating your statement.
The fact that many atheists claim the same things, does not make it an indoctrination. According to the oxford dictionary indoctrination is making people believe things without them questioning it. This is not the case with atheism. Atheists base themselves on science and science does provide them evidence, often even conclusive evidence(for example heliocentrism).
Atheism is also individualistic in it's nature. It does not offer a holy script with all the need to know in it. No, atheism allows people to make up their own mind about the many scientific theories out there. There is a reason why atheism started growing with the birth of liberalism as liberalism is about freedom to believe and think whatever you choose.
In fact it are the religious people who are often indoctrinated, not the atheists. Many religions are based on holy scripts, which themselves have no scientific foundation and are filled with logical conflicts. It are these scripts which are then taught to children. They only learn what they should believe in but do not receive any logical nor scientific foundation on why to believe it. This in it's definition is indoctrination.
how often do you hear about "non-stamp collectors"?
how about the invisible pink unicorn? russell's teapot? how about "you're an atheist for one less god than i am"? or "i'm an agnostic atheist, not one of THOSE atheists"?
how about the rest of the litany of quotes by modern atheist writers that get repeated over and over again?
all invalid arguments, all repeated mindlessly and unquestioned by most modern atheists. (and yes, most religious people are the same way)
so don't give me this shit about how you are all individualistic free-thinkers. i know what a free-thinker sounds like, and this isn't it. in fact, i bet i can guess 90% of your political beliefs, because i'm well-versed in the way people like you think. you are all pretty much the same.
john9blue wrote:on what issues specifically?
feel free to pick positions that you think would surprise me. i like to be pleasantly surprised.
crispybits wrote:So, when we put the "a" in front of theist, what it means is that an atheist is anyone who is not a theist. Given that being a theist involves assigning a truth value to a statement, anyone who cannot assign a truth value to this statement is not a theist, and therefore TNs are, by definition, atheist.
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