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CommieGIR posted:.....but isn't that the point of the outrage over White Nationalism and Populism rising again? Arguing that because its entrenched that we should accept its existence is rather a disgusting proposition, it follows that by that same logic we should accept sexism and other -isms just because they are culturally entrenched. Progress depends upon us throwing out entrenched ideas. My bad, I phrased that poorly. I wasn't trying to equate religion with racism, more to point to the idea of race still being a huge part of a person's identity even though that idea of race is largely bogus. I am a white guy (shocking, I know) so I've never felt any pride of importance with my "race" Religion is something far more substantial to me, even if I'm not part of any religion.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:10
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NikkolasKing posted:Religion is something far more substantial to me, even if I'm not part of any religion. Explain. How is religion substantial but you are agnostic?
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Mar 13, 2017 13:35
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NikkolasKing posted:How can you change a person's self-definition? This reminds me of a video I saw of a fellow speaking at the UN, praising how young people today will no longer be held down by the myth of race. Because even older and wiser people like himself, who understand racism is wrong, are still shackled by being brought up in a culture that places such an emphasis on it. Programming. See conversion therapy and 'boot camps'. It doesn't work very well, but if you don't care about the suicides then you can get a person who can superficially fit the shibboleths of a given society until the PTSD eventually cracks them.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:51
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CommieGIR posted:Explain. How is religion substantial but you are agnostic? History, tradition, philosophy. I love reading up on history, especially cultural history, and an understanding of religion obviously helps with that. I like Japanese history for instance so at present I'm reading up on Buddhism because I hope it will help me understand that history better. And I've heard Jesus credited as the most important man in Western history. Him or Alexander or maybe Aristotle. But my point is just that, religion has been so integral to everything we know, that I can't imagine just shrugging it off as worthless, even if there is no God or afterlife.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:51
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NikkolasKing posted:And I've heard Jesus credited as the most important man in Western history. Him or Alexander or maybe Aristotle. But my point is just that, religion has been so integral to everything we know, that I can't imagine just shrugging it off as worthless, even if there is no God or afterlife. Easy. We can shrug it off right now. Its not integral, if it was, you wouldn't be agnostic. You are making the very argument that religions and Evangelicals make right now: "We need religion, its our moral center, without it, everything is chaos" but that's not true. Jesus is hardly the most important man in Western History. Its the people who acted in his name that are important. He's just a motivator, not a cause. History and Philosophy is not dependant upon religion, c'mon now, that's a bold claim if ever I heard one. Has religion contributed to these things? Sure, no denying that. But to claim that these things are DEPENDANT upon religion? No.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:53
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CommieGIR posted:Easy. We can shrug it off right now. Its not integral, if it was, you wouldn't be agnostic. You are making the very argument that religions and Evangelicals make right now: "We need religion, its our moral center, without it, everything is chaos" but that's not true. I'm really off this morning I guess. I wasn't trying to say those things depend on religion, merely that I find religion to be a useful tool to "get closer" to them. I dunno, I'm not good at this. I've been interested in several religions and I've rejected just as many because, as you correctly note, you don't need a religion to have morals. Too many religions preach ideas about morality that I find completely disgusting. There's pretty much nothing I hate more than the Religious Right.
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Mar 13, 2017 14:01
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rudatron posted:The loss of religion is a necessary stage in achieving real self-awareness. That's a difficult thing to do, because illusions are comforting. Yes. Now go the next step and realize that the self-awareness you feel from abandoning illusions is yet another illusion. What Max Stirner would call a "spook." Also realize that the value religion provides, to help provide meaning, is now something you can create on your own, because any meaning is actually an illusion. If you're being really honest with yourself.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:10
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Bolocko posted:Of course because we're coming at this from different sides, with different perspectives and goals, we'll disagree on the preliminary matter of whether doing religiousy things has any worth. That's fine. But first, I'd draw this criticism out a little more, to add that contemporary American/Western society is filled with time-draining diversions. We're a people who often celebrate time poorly spent! I should clarify that I don't think people wasting time is an evil or necessarily bad thing. People need entertainment and distractions, be it movies, reading, video games, hiking, whatever they enjoy. I don't think we should make humans into efficiency machines or anything. The issue with wasting time and effort in prayer is the intent and excepted outcomes of the action. When you are playing video games, you know you are just doing it for fun. It relieves stress. If people want to pray for that reason it's fine, but the issue is that people think prayer constitutes a charitable or helpful act when it is solely a personal act. If someone wants to help the children in Africa, or your grandparent with Alzheimer's, praying for them won't help them at all. The effort that could have been spent doing almost anything else to help other people was instead spent helping one's self feel better. And an hour or two a week adds up a whole lot actually. If they volunteered at say, Habitat for Humanity or UNICEF or a local soup kitchen for a couple hours a week, that would result in so much more actual charity work being done. 100 hours of labor/year for these organizations is a big help. 12 Step Programs probably deserve a thread of its own. They are also a mixed bag and while they help many people battle addiction, there's definitely some coercion of the vulnerable going on in some of the programs. There have also been studies that show that 12 step programs are no better than secular counterparts. Overall probably a good thing we have them though as addiction programs are severely lacking. As for deconverting people or telling them they should drop God, that should be limited to discussions like these. I don't go around IRL arguing religion with anyone who says they'll pray for me or that Jesus helped them. I will engage in discussion in places like here where it is a nerd forum debating intellectual ideas, or if someone asks me about my atheism directly, but I wouldn't go around telling strangers they are wasting their energy and being narcissistic because they pray. Prayer in its nature is an attempt to reach out to the divine. Sure you can pray quickly while walking or cooking or whatever, but stretching out the definition of prayer to include acts of work and charity is kind of reaching. The longstanding theological interpretation is that prayer is a petition to God to intervene in the course of nature or world events, or a praising and thanking of God for his works. I've already conceded that charity focused work is definitely a positive part of religion. It's good that some people feel divinely inspired to be saintly, but that's a double edged sword. Being godly in the Westboro Baptist Church will have a much different incarnation than in the Catholic Church, or a nondenominational liberal church. The call from God for most people takes the form of whatever their priest/specific dogma says it is, and the consensus of their personal network. Your segment at the end there falls pretty flat for a non religious mind though. I don't agree with the concept of humans being born as sinners or that violence is never ok. Fighting the Nazis off with tanks and guns and bombs was a necessary task, and I'm basically a pacifist. I do think we are unique and lucky to have our little corner in the universe, but I think imagining ourselves as specially radiant and vibrant, especially loved by the cosmos, is hubris. We are animals, and that's not a bad thing. It's just what we are. We're bipedal apes that developed complex communications, cognitive skills, and tools that have given us the ability to understand more about ourselves and the universe than any other creature we know of. Our unique biology makes us special, but to think the universe favors humans or even life in general is self aggrandizing. Our ancient, ancient, ancestors were like slime molds or parameciums, and none of the life that branched out from that is inherently more holy, divine, protected by cosmic forces, or whatever than their simple ancestors and living relatives. And I'm always phone posting as well so sorry if there are autocorrect errors or editing issues.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:26
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) our whole relationship to the world and each given moment changes.
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CountFosco posted:Yes. Now go the next step and realize that the self-awareness you feel from abandoning illusions is yet another illusion. What Max Stirner would call a "spook." Also realize that the value religion provides, to help provide meaning, is now something you can create on your own, because any meaning is actually an illusion. If you're being really honest with yourself. Another example of the religious reducing all thought to nothing in order to defend themselves. If everything is equally meaningless, then belief in an omnipotent creator is just as reasonable as belief in witches or gravity. How do you people make it in daily life? Every day must be a nightmare of inexplicable horrors (or you're not being sincere!).
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Mar 13, 2017 23:04
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Cingulate posted:I mean, the bolded part any catholic would sign too, even the ones who think homosexuality should be suppressed. In principle I agree this would probably erode the basis for most of religion. But one question is, should it be championed under that banner? Should you tell people this story, "religion divides us, education decreases religiosity, we should educate everyone, partially so they stop being religious and divided"? I guess not - you don't want people to choose between education and religion, because a lot of them will come down on the wrong side. Like I said, you don't make education increasing secularism part of the political platform. You can sell it purely on competence and bettering society. "Hey look, educating everyone makes our economy better! People have better jobs, are more productive, make new inventions and new discoveries!" It's an added side bonus that good education increases secularism, and the former is all you need to push politically. I'm arguing this on D&D where like half the people are socialist or farther left and likely half agnostic/atheist as well. For the public at large, I agree it's a divisive narrative that should probably be avoided. The fact that we can't argue fairly against religious interpretations is exactly the problem, which is why we should be transitioning towards more secular interpretations that can be argued based off of actual evidence. The making your own mistakes and diversity argument are also an issue, but I'm not supporting a ban on religions in any way. We give people better cognitive tools, and hope the rest falls into place while limiting conflict to the religious right's heinous teachings and actions.
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Mar 13, 2017 23:40
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Nude Bog Lurker posted:Poor people, women and minorities of all colors and creeds should lie down in the street and die, peacefully. FTFY
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Mar 14, 2017 00:54
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Don't you get it, you can only apply the principle of self-defense when the holy ghost deems it appropriate, which is curiously only when it doesn't threaten capital.
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Mar 14, 2017 01:06
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zh1 posted:Another example of the religious reducing all thought to nothing in order to defend themselves. If everything is equally meaningless, then belief in an omnipotent creator is just as reasonable as belief in witches or gravity. How do you people make it in daily life? Every day must be a nightmare of inexplicable horrors (or you're not being sincere!). He's still right though. Arguing that delusion is inherently wrong and must be opposed for its own sake either leads you to absolute nihilism or you're not applying it consistently.
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Mar 14, 2017 01:08
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zh1 posted:Don't you get it, you can only apply the principle of self-defense when the holy ghost deems it appropriate, which is curiously only when it doesn't threaten capital. Please, the Christians prefer the term "non-aggression principle." *tips fedora*
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Mar 14, 2017 01:12
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OwlFancier posted:He's still right though. Arguing that delusion is inherently wrong and must be opposed for its own sake either leads you to absolute nihilism or you're not applying it consistently.
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Mar 14, 2017 01:13
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Bolocko posted:Suppose some woman has traded in three hours of, for example, playing video games each week, and instead uses that time to attend religious service and pray regularly: even if you think these acts are pointless I hope you'd at least agree this is just a lateral move. This is a particularly challenging example for me, since my my normal rebuttal would be, "Does [hobby] seem to teach or at least correlate with deeply reactionary views?" But, welp, thanks to Gamergate here we are.
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Mar 14, 2017 01:32
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Shbobdb posted:This is a particularly challenging example for me, since my my normal rebuttal would be, "Does [hobby] seem to teach or at least correlate with deeply reactionary views?" I'm not sure that's fair because Gamergate assholes are probably like 1% of gamers. Sexism in the gaming industry is definitely a thing though, especially with all the busty female models they can't not use. Also nobody uses video games for life guidance or philosophy except a vanishingly small subset of turbonerds. A significant portion of the population does have their worldview influenced by their religion, though.
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Mar 14, 2017 02:24
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For me, they are similar. The individual never matters. It's too small for any real action. Groups, on the other hand, have real power. Christians, as a group, are clearly evil, as measured by their voting patterns. The more involved they are with that group, the more evil they become, as measured by correlating church attendance with voting patterns. Gamers follow a similar pattern. If you want to play games on your own time, who cares? It's not a good thing, so it's enough to raise some flags, sure. But once you start identifying as a "Gamer" the baggage that comes with that is seriously bad and it gets worse the more one identifies with being a "Gamer" until you reach "Gamergate" level where being a "Gamer" constitutes the majority of your identity and that identity is poo poo.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:01
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zh1 posted:Did you just repeat my own argument back to me? Try and say something meaningful, with words that mean things. You're not really making an argument as much as saying you don't like the aesthetics of the one you're presented with.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:07
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CountFosco posted:Yes. Now go the next step and realize that the self-awareness you feel from abandoning illusions is yet another illusion. What Max Stirner would call a "spook." Also realize that the value religion provides, to help provide meaning, is now something you can create on your own, because any meaning is actually an illusion. If you're being really honest with yourself. You should know that I'm probably the last person you should be talking to about the lack of objective meaning, since that's exactly what I've been saying this entire thread.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:16
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Shbobdb posted:For me, they are similar. hosed up to claim anyone who ever votes differently than you is evil.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:36
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rudatron posted:What are you talking about? Self-awareness is not something you feel, it's something you learn, over time. Like any other knowledge. It's not a state, it's a process. There is no possible way that you can know whether or not you are self aware, nothing can comprehend its own nature as it would need to be more complex than itself to do so. So believing that you have achieved self awareness is entirely an article of faith.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:38
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It's the same as any other piece of knowledge, the exact same rules apply. You can't ever really be sure of anything, but there's going to be a better/worse set of knowledge, given a particular set of evidence.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:41
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For material things I can buy the concept of better or worse knowledge starting from the premises that the world operates on predictable cause/effect and there is free will and knowledge can allow you to better effect particular changes. From starting premises we can repeat observations and we can all observe the same repetition, that gives a basis for a common concept of reality if nothing else. But, like, self awareness is literally in your head. It's got absolutely no bearing on the world whatsoever, it is completely, literally immaterial. The concept of better or worse knowledge makes no sense in that field because you're literally trying to argue that your own internal fiction is objectively correct or incorrect when neither you or anyone else has any way of knowing that.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:46
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What? It can only be immaterial if you think the mind is immaterial. Since the mind is not, you can study it, even if you can only do it with high error.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:52
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It's immaterial in that it runs up against the chinese room problem, observation of a mind cannot tell you whether it is self aware, merely that it responds suitably to stimulus. The difference between a self aware intelligence and a sufficiently expert system is, literally, immaterial. Or at the least, unobservable. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 14, 2017 05:55
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Sinnlos posted:hosed up to claim anyone who ever votes differently than you is evil. 1) Why? 2) There are plenty of people who vote differently from me that aren't evil. But once you've crossed the Rubicon into "voting Republican or further right" I don't have a way of contextualizing that beyond pure evil. Ignorance only goes so far. Republicans and what they stand for are evil.
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Mar 14, 2017 05:59
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Shbobdb posted:2) There are plenty of people who vote differently from me that aren't evil. But once you've crossed the Rubicon into "voting Republican or further right" I don't have a way of contextualizing that beyond pure evil. Ignorance only goes so far. Republicans and what they stand for are evil. Then you lack information.
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Mar 14, 2017 06:03
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OwlFancier posted:Then you lack information. Enlighten me. How are the Republicans not evil?
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Mar 14, 2017 06:08
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Shbobdb posted:Enlighten me.
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Mar 14, 2017 06:15
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Shbobdb posted:Enlighten me. You commented on republican voters, in consequentialist terms every individual voter owns a rather limited amount of responsibility, likely capable of being offset by simply being otherwise generally alright, far from pure evil. And in motive-based terms I think you simply fail to appreciate that it is very possible for other people to have a completely different context for decision making than you do, allowing them to make decisions they believe to be right, good, and which remain entirely wrong. In neither case is pure evil an apt descriptor.
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Mar 14, 2017 06:17
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twodot posted:I think ignorance remains an explanation. Particularly in this thread, which is about people who think literal magic exists. It's hard to overstate the extent of which false consciousness has permeated American thought, the "American Dream", belief in a 'just world', etc. America's nickname as THE GREAT SATAN is one apt cherry I love (from a line of leftism I mostly don't), I feel like we're uniquely in the history of the world a capitalist society the likes of which would have been Marx's nightmare final boss for the prole revolution.The conditions of our founding, expansion, the restructuring of the South IN A BIG WAY all have created this hellbeast of class blind angry exploited people who can't imagine or reach for much beyond vague tribalism and faith based reflexes
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Mar 14, 2017 06:20
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Shbobdb posted:Enlighten me. how the gently caress can anyone prove that a definition that you are holding in your head is wrong? it's a stupid gotcha. Famethrowa fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 14, 2017 06:25
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OwlFancier posted:You commented on republican voters, in consequentialist terms every individual voter owns a rather limited amount of responsibility, likely capable of being offset by simply being otherwise generally alright, far from pure evil. And in motive-based terms I think you simply fail to appreciate that it is very possible for other people to have a completely different context for decision making than you do, allowing them to make decisions they believe to be right, good, and which remain entirely wrong. I'm not a consequentialist, so your whole premise falls apart pretty quickly. "Evil" doesn't really make sense from a consequentialist perspective anyway. I do agree that people have a different context for decision making. In the case of Christians, I think their decision making process has been deformed by improper moral cultivation which has made them evil. They may think they are "good" but so what? Dylan Roof wrote about how hard it was to shoot up that black church because the people were so welcoming and nice but he had to do it because it was the good and right thing to do. Dylan Roof thinks he's a good person who did a good thing. Does your moral relativism allow for Dylan Roof being a good person (or at least "not an evil person") because his framework for decision making was so terribly wrong?
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Mar 14, 2017 06:32
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Question. How does one embrace moral absolutism without the presence of a higher authority? What is evil now wasn't evil a few short centuries ago. Would you judge every racist or slave owner in history as evil when they could not possibly know any better?
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Mar 14, 2017 06:38
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Why don't you kill everyone you see? Is some higher power holding you back?
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Mar 14, 2017 06:40
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Shbobdb posted:Why don't you kill everyone you see? No, the culture I was raised in is holding me back. But since culture changes quite a lot, I don't see how moral absolutism works without the presence of an unchanging force like God or whatever. I'm not philosophy major, maybe there is a simple answer to this which is why I asked.
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Mar 14, 2017 06:42
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Easy, culture does change. So what? Would culture changing make it OK to gently caress a baby until your dick breaks the child in half? You are probably tempted to write something like "yeah, that'd be OK if I was raised in that culture" just to be contrarian but despite infanticide and pederasty being a thing throughout human history you won't find that practice. Also, as you start to type that "Yeah, that'd be OK" there is probably a really bad feeling in your gut. Listen to your innate moral grammar. We've all got it. It's certainly not rational and not ideal. It's especially bad when it comes to in-group/out-group distinctions. But construct Republican policies as Trolley problems and they fail spectacularly every time. There are five people tied to train tracks. There is a train coming on a parallel track. You can pull the lever to make the train run the five people over. This will make the people on the train be five minutes late to their appointments. Most of them are not serious but some are very important. However, you will be awarded a substantial insurance sum for killing those people and making those people late. Do you pull the lever? What if it wasn't you being awarded that money. What if it was someone else who you didn't know but they are fantastically wealthy? What does your innate sense of the good tell you to do?
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Mar 14, 2017 06:55
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RasperFat posted:I'm not sure that's fair because Gamergate assholes are probably like 1% of gamers. Sexism in the gaming industry is definitely a thing though, especially with all the busty female models they can't not use. It's way higher than 1% and gently caress you for minimizing how bad it has become. CommieGIR posted:Explain. How is religion substantial but you are agnostic?
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Mar 14, 2017 07:12
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If you're arguing that I should suspend ethical reasoning and just go with whatever my instinctive reaction says then I proclaim the highest morals to be spending as much time as possible asleep and scratching your balls a lot in public.
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Mar 14, 2017 07:18
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