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Commentary at Salon!
Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking professional philosophers are theists. As for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.
[...] Now nothing definitely follows about the truth of a belief from what the majority of philosophers or scientists think. But such facts might cause believers discomfort. There has been a dramatic change in the last few centuries in the proportion of believers among the highly educated in the Western world. In the European Middle Ages belief in a God was ubiquitous, while today it is rare among the intelligentsia. This change occurred primarily because of the rise of modern science and a consensus among philosophers that arguments for the existence of gods, souls, afterlife and the like were unconvincing. Still, despite the view of professional philosophers and world-class scientists, religious beliefs have a universal appeal. What explains this?
[...] First, if you defend such beliefs by claiming that you have a right to your opinion, however unsupported by evidence it might be, you are referring to a political or legal right, not an epistemic one. You may have a legal right to say whatever you want, but you have epistemic justification only if there are good reasons and evidence to support your claim. If someone makes a claim without concern for reasons and evidence, we should conclude that they simply don't care about what's true. We shouldn't conclude that their beliefs are true because they are fervently held.
Another problem is that fideism—basing one's beliefs exclusively on faith—makes belief arbitrary, leaving no way to distinguish one religious belief from another. Fideism allows no reason to favor your preferred beliefs or superstitions over others. If I must accept your beliefs without evidence, then you must accept mine, no matter what absurdity I believe in. But is belief without reason and evidence worthy of rational beings? Doesn't it perpetuate the cycle of superstition and ignorance that has historically enslaved us? I agree with W.K. Clifford. "It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Why? Because your beliefs affect other people, and your false beliefs may harm them.
I am checking to see what the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster has to say about all this.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:54PM (41 children)
Yes? How has atheism done this? I, at least, am very interested to hear how you lay said "crap" at the feet of a lack of belief in a god or gods.
Please elaborate.
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Junk - stuff we throw away. Stuff - junk we keep.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 21 2019, @12:02AM (6 children)
Apparition's belief is based on:
Which is the same as saying "I believe in god because the alternative is not believing and not believing is bad".
It also ignores the many ways in which less religious societies are actually better to live in than religious ones. It is a pretty common trope among christians to decry "the modern world" and how everything is worse now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Monday January 21 2019, @12:31AM (3 children)
I'm not seeing it. I see women and non-whites becoming more equal. People with sexual interests beyond the MF missionary position becoming more accepted. Medicine advancing. Science advancing. Technology advancing. Agriculture advancing. Slavery becoming ever more reviled. Superstition backing off. I see society in general advancing... admittedly in fits and starts, and with some trying to drag their heels as much as possible, and the occasional serious regression... yet forward we continue to go.
If I look back, I see more repression of women, of sexuality, of personal choice, bigger wars, more people starving, etc.
So, no, not buying that.
I agree. I'd still like to hear the reasoning of the original poster, though.
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Interested in time travel? Meet me here last Wednesday.
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Monday January 21 2019, @12:40AM (2 children)
Science, medicine, and religion are not diametrically opposed. I know of a great many practicing Christian and Jewish scientists and doctors. So, scientific and medical progression doesn't necessitate atheism, or vice versa. Same for technology and agriculture.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 21 2019, @12:59AM (1 child)
Nobody is arguing that, (well, I'm not anyway).
It is entirely possible to be a competent scientist or doctor and also be religious, but it is less common, as pointed out in TFA.
Also, as society generally has become more educated it has become less religious.
TFA also points out how religion has no real logical basis.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @01:30PM
Only when very narrowly viewed. From a sociological perspective it does have positive value. Whether this positive value is greater than the merits of a contradictory position you're putting on the other side of the scales is another matter.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @05:11AM (1 child)
We have had some good examples of the "less religious societies" in the past century. Soviet Russia, Communist China, Cambodia, all followed the "supremacy of man" route and we saw how that came out.
At the end of the day a society with some Christian/Jewish/whatever is going to need to follow some basic laws or they get to their version of hell. Not killing, stealing, etc. When we decide that there is no higher power than man, it means we get to mess with our own moral code and things start to break down.
I think its possible that a society of only extremely intelligent people could survive without a religious underpinning. But I am unsure I want those 70 IQ rednecks in trailer parks thinking that the only thing stopping them from raping and pillaging the next trailer park over doesn't exist. Its the opiate of the masses and it keeps the more vile parts of our species at bay in exchange for putting up with some stupid. Religion needs to be watched so it doesn't go into the crusades/witch hunt land but other than that it works pretty good at controlling the dumb.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 21 2019, @09:24AM
Snow Crash:
https://soylentnews.org/communityreviews/article.pl?sid=19/01/05/2242237 [soylentnews.org]
And, yes, the story definitely relates to this discussion. A Mormon wrote the story, and he did some research into the ancient religions, which supports the story.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:21AM (24 children)
For starters, it gives a society a more or less unified and much more stable moral code. I very much prefer having many flavors of religion to one or none but if that were not an option I'd come down in favor of one. And not practice it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 21 2019, @12:32AM (21 children)
Not much for the readin' of the history books are you? We've seen over and over what happens when we get only one religion, especially what happens to those who don't practice it. Mark my words, some of the souls of those who suffered and died in the various Inquisitions still linger in the places of their torturous deaths, so hideously traumatized that they are incapable of moving on hundreds of years after the fact. You would join them in short order in a one-religion theocracy.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:40AM (19 children)
History is precisely why I said what I did. It was in the context of a binary choice between one or zero. Stalin and Mao showed us which is the more bloody choice quite effectively.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 21 2019, @12:47AM (7 children)
Oh please, state communism and hard statism in general *are* religions. Remember all those pictures of Dear Leader which you weren't supposed to look directly at lest you go blind? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has rituals like a religion, it's a religious duck.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @12:53AM
How is Ronald Reagan relevant to the current discussion?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @01:24AM (2 children)
Unilaterally expanding the definition to the point that it has no meaning is not going to win you this argument.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 21 2019, @01:51AM (1 child)
Neither is moving the goalposts, carrion-breath. At the end of the day, unthinking obedience to ANY authority, secular or religious, eventually leads to disaster, and it's no surprise that the trappings of religion pop up almost verbatim in dictatorships, because the common aim in both is control of the masses.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @01:36PM
I haven't moved anything and history has ample examples contradicting your statement about unthinking obedience. You're going to need to say something true, relevant, and in opposition to what I've said if you want to win this. There are entirely too many people here that aren't morons and will not fall for elementary rhetorical tricks.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 21 2019, @06:01AM (2 children)
Not only no, but HECK NO, they aren't religions.
You'll have to believe me with this or otherwise experience "state communism" on your own. You can't get it intellectually (yes, yes, you can construct a simplified mental model and say "resembles religion" but you'll have to be aware this is a mental model - as any model, it's a reduced representation on the reality).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 21 2019, @10:31PM (1 child)
Well they've got all the trappings of a religion. Supreme leader? Check. Dogma? Check. Commandments? Check. Hideous punishments for disobedience, very often including torture? Check-a-roony, as the guy in Earthbound reading billboards says. About the only thing they're missing is that the leader-figure isn't supernatural, and even some of that creeps in, like Kim Jong Un's "double rainbow" bullshit or Xi declaring himself a Bodhisattva, which almost made me choke on my own spit after reading it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 21 2019, @11:10PM
The 'congregation' life, however, is a different story. And, bottom line, they are the ones that count.
Personality cults is not a religion-only phenomenon, even if religion may employ it. Two things having a subset of common traits may not (and usually are not) the same - the specific differences count, if you chose to ignore them, you'll get it wrong.
In this case, you are missing the direct life experience to grok it and perceive the differences. This experience is essential, an abstract intellectual exercise is not sufficient
Watch some post-reunification German movies about the period, read some literature about it and you may start to have a hunch how wrong you can be. Try 'The life of others' and tell me how much a 'religious experience' you see in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Monday January 21 2019, @01:45AM (10 children)
Stalin and Mao were bloody abusers of others because they were psychopaths.
Atheism was never the problem. Atheism has no canon, no dogma, no admonitions, no nothing. Atheism doesn't bring about, recommend, or even imply any of the crap Stalin and Mao engaged in. Fundamentally, atheism is a lack of belief in a god or gods, nothing more than that.
Stalin and his ilk used active purging of religion — which is not "atheism" in any shape or form — as (just one more) means to abuse people.
This old chestnut you're throwing out really needs to die. It's a completely backwards interpretation of reality. It's not history. It's agitprop.
TL;DR: You can bet your last shekel that the impulses that Stalin and Mao were following absolutely did not descend upon them from atheism.
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Cats know how we feel. They just don't care.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Apparition on Monday January 21 2019, @01:50AM (6 children)
Atheism may not have caused the actions of Stalin and Mao, but because there was atheism there was nothing to hold them back. A religious set of ideals and morals would have caused people to realize how wrong it was.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 21 2019, @01:54AM (2 children)
Yeah, because as we all know, religion has never ever ever in all of history inspired, instigated, condoned, or encouraged genocide. Nope. Never. No~ope. And no religion has ever said it promises in effect infinite, eternal, endless, deathless genocide against non-believers. Nooooope. So superior. Very moral. Much enlighten. Wow.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @01:38PM (1 child)
Rhetorical bullshit as usual. Try actually making a counterargument.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday January 21 2019, @07:37PM
I'm curious, what would count as an actual counter-argument to a false equivalency? Other than pointing out that it is historically incorrect?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Monday January 21 2019, @02:08AM (1 child)
Nothing held them back because they were psychopaths.
I will simply refer you to Nazi Germany for an example of religion in place, and yet a complete horror of a society that most certainly did not "realize how wrong it was", nor do nearly enough about it (to be fair, in both Stalin's and Mao's societies, exceptions existed, as with Nazi Germany.... but all three went right down the shitter anyway.)
Also: Thriving in the midst, in fact in the very heart of religion we have seen the crusades, witch burnings, pograms, repression of women, vilification of sexuality, scientific repression, blood libel, McCarthyism, torture, jihad, murder of "heretics", theft, pillage, rapine, financial parasitism... I could go on, but, man. Isn't that enough?
Theism isn't the fix you think it is.
People are good when they are good. Not because they are theists. Or atheists. And when they aren't good, we need to deal with them in a concrete manner, not threaten them with claims of angry imaginary friends.
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Some drink from the fountain of knowledge. Others gargle.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @01:39PM
Nazi Germany had nothing on Stalin or Mao. It wasn't even close.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 21 2019, @02:43AM
Oh, absolutely. Because the Inquisition with all of its morals and religion realized how wrong it was to torture and kill so many people. Because the Church leaders who burned tens of thousands of supposed "witches" realized how wrong it was to do so because of their superior religious morality.
No, religion does not provent atrocity. It sometimes causes it. Ideology -- religious or not -- has the power to kill, and morality rarely can stand up to on a mass scale.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 21 2019, @09:30AM
Sooooo, uhhhhhhhmmmmm - it is your position that atheists are psychopaths? Well, I'm not going to argue with you, but others might. ;^)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 21 2019, @09:40AM (1 child)
Alright, I made my smartass comment. Now, more seriously:
You have to understand people. That seemed to me to be a part of Buzzard's posting above. People are fuckign EVIL! That silly old refrain, "The devil made me do it"? Where did that come from?
As a group, we, people, don't want to believe just how fucking EVIL we are. "No person could do those things! He has to be possessed by a demon!" No, not at all. That evil son of a bitch who committed %crime did it, and he's just as human as you or me. No devils, no demons, no Great Satan.
Atheists are free of any need to blame the devil, or to give credit to $deity. Atheists can envision, and carry out the worst evils, and never worry about punishment from above.
Now, take that into consideration, then add in the fact that politicians generally seek power because they are psychopathic sons of bitches, and you have a Mao or a Stalin in the making.
Buzzard said it well, above. Given a choice between a society with zero religion, and a society with any number of religions, I will take the religious society. Like Buzzard, I prefer a society with multiple religions, but I'll settle for a society with only one religion.
Humanism sucks ass, whatever name it assumes for itself.
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Monday January 21 2019, @06:45PM
Speak for yourself.
Ah, that's more like it. The psychopaths are devoid of empathy. Empathy and conscience is enough to keep many people from carrying out such evils. Peer pressure and fear can deal with most of the others.
Humanism does work for anyone that has the decency, intelligence and strength of character to decide that its moral code is desirable and something that they will strive to live by. Sadly most sheeple don't think on that level, so it's back to falling back on peer pressure, fear, and empathy for them.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday January 21 2019, @02:01AM
Huh? Do you keep into account the polytheistic and/or shamanist(/animists) religions? I believe the belief in Karma is also very close to religion, is it not?
Ancient Greeks and Romans [wikipedia.org] didn't practice human sacrifices to Gods (even if their mythology contain such cases), neither conducted wars for "religious conversion purposes" - that is, unless you count "the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health" as the gods the Romans tried to impose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday January 21 2019, @12:39AM (1 child)
Neither stability or unification in and of themselves offer intrinsic value.
The south had slavery, and in quite a stable fashion. Women were uniformly prevented from voting. And vice versa, for both. These were both moral issues. Immoral, actually. But certainly part of the stable, unified moral code of the day.
Having done something for X amount of time, or in a manner like to Y, is not in any way at all an assurance that what is being done is good or even neutral.
People keep screwing up; so we have to keep working on the solutions. And that does not tend to lead to stability. It leads to change. And I assert that change can be good, if we manage to push in the right direction.
I'll also stipulate that once we get to a well functioning society, stability and uniformity would be desirable. But we surely aren't very close as yet.
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Democracy: Where any two idiots outvote a genius.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:44AM
Yes. They do. They keep people from killing each other en masse over conflicting morality. That was demonstrated quite effectively in the 1860s.
Now whether their intrinsic value outweighs a social change you desire is another matter entirely.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Monday January 21 2019, @12:32AM (8 children)
It's done it by taking away any reason for people not to do whatever the heck they want. Now, I'm not saying that everyone needs to be told what is right or what is wrong, nor do they need some method to enforce it. But many people do, and the steady increase of atheism has slowly chipped away at society's core values and the enforcement to keep it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:46AM
Not quite. Nothing is taken away unless the religion is mandated. Voluntarily giving something up is not the same as having it taken. Even those who decide not to volunteer tend to share greatly in the morality of the religion of the majority if there is one though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Monday January 21 2019, @12:49AM (5 children)
That is a patently false assertion.
There are many reasons not to do things that are based on mutual benefit and social benefit that have nothing at all to do with theism.
Theism tends to be a source of "don't do this" because "we said so", rather than "because it is actually bad."
Society has laws that serve to tell people "don't do that because it is bad", and furthermore, those laws tend to have real punishments in the actual reality people exist in (as opposed to an imaginary punishment laid out in a book of apparent fiction.) Real punishment can be a deterrent when people might otherwise be inclined to go off the rails.
What we don't need are a bunch of threats based on who you sleep with, if you're married or not when you do, how many types of fibers are in your clothes, whether you have appropriately proselytized your beliefs today, etc. Not bullshit threats, as in those from books of obvious fiction, and not real threats, as in ostracization and/or worse from the pitchforks-and-torches carrying droolers.
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Don't anthropomorphize my t-shirt.
It hates that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 21 2019, @02:06AM (3 children)
And you blame theism for that?
Do you reckon if the US congress (or any other Parliament) will be made exclusively of atheists they'll stop saying "don't do this because we said so"?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Monday January 21 2019, @02:26AM (2 children)
Yes, I do.
I also blame congress for similar idiocy.
No. But there is a big difference: We can pressure congress to change things, and they will. You can pressure dogmatic theism pretty damned hard and they'll just point at their books and stand their ground. It's been 2,000 years and they're still stuck on a whole bunch of ridiculous points. Congress has shown constant and much greater improvement over a shorter span of time, and that was with the miasma of dogmatic theism creeping around there like a particularly insidious plague. I think it is entirely possible that a fully atheistic congress might do better.
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Kleptomaniacs always take things literally.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 21 2019, @02:48AM
You missed a good part of my point.
The one in which 'do as I say' is not a religious-only phenomenon, but a human (society) one - and religion is only one manifestation.
Missing this point, your prone to think eliminating or reducing the impact of religion will lower the 'do as I say' in this world. Which may be a total illusion: as soon as you'd (by absurd) eliminate religion as a source of authoritarianism, very likely others will pop-up and grow in its place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by redneckmother on Monday January 21 2019, @03:11AM
So many good and valid arguments, so few moderation points!
Thank you.
To paraphrase a certain atheist, "I can be moral without believing in a god. I've raped and murdered all the people I've wanted to; precisely, NONE."
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 21 2019, @09:59AM
It is not all that patently false. There are people who need to be told what to do, how to do it, and when. Visit any prison. You will find bug-fuck crazy people who are violent and abusive all the time, with or without provocation. You will also find "model prisoners" who only got where they are now, because there was no one to tell them what to do, or not to do. Some people really do need guidance, just to get along in society.
Our society today wants to remove all guidance. Remove discipline from the school, remove any reference to religion, remove parental authority - on and on it goes. To cite a scripture, "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: " is enough to bring child services to your house.
It seems to be presumed that young men and women just know naturally how to get along in society. They don't have to be taught. Well - they DO have to be taught, and Sunday School seems to be at least as effective as public school.
(Score: 3, Touché) by cmdrklarg on Monday January 21 2019, @10:39PM
> It's done it by taking away any reason for people not to do whatever the heck they want.
If the only thing stopping you from committing heinous acts is the threat of eternal torture, I question your morality.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.