Mola Yam posted:

they don't need to even build a spaceship if they're entities from the emotion dimension that you can summon from the sky with greatfulness.

make the leap to woo poo poo, cowards

Bob Socko posted:

They don’t even need to inhibit aging if they have figured out how to travel at close to the speed of light.
(source: I watched Interstellar a few times)

Jazerus posted:

yeah i mean the trick is to have a mind that's both open and closed.

new atheism is sort of like a defense mechanism...you close your mind entirely to the supernatural and religion because you can observe the flaws in what is being believed around you, and observe the way that it hurts people. you address these things on a battleground where you're sure to have victory - picking at details, throwing doubt on this passage or that, essentially subjecting it to reason until you are satisfied that you have no reason to listen at all. this is basically what drives most "new atheist" writers. religious fundamentalism is a similar process of closing your mind, just along a different set of principles...i'm sure you've noticed at some point that the most zealous new atheists are former zealous fundamentalists.

ultimately though, if you retreat fully into having a closed mind you end up looking and sounding like NDT or mick west on UFOs - that is, your "rationality" has led you to a point of irrational dogma, where you aren't actually doing the rational thing and genuinely evaluating evidence. this is really common in more mundane things too, like peer review for grants and papers in science; the number of senior scientists who wholeheartedly believe that something in their field is "impossible" while the folks in another related field routinely observe that "impossible" thing in a slightly different context, such as a different type of organism, is enormous.

it's up to you where you draw the line between reality and woo-woo batshit stuff, but imo if you draw that line too soon you'll end up excluding things that are really part of reality, as well as forsaking any understanding of the symbolic/philosophical layer of religion and the supernatural which informs how a lot of people behave. you will be too busy defending your position and talking about how actually birds make 90-degree instantaneous acceleration turns all the time to contemplate anything that's fringe or metaphysical. this would be fine except valid scientific concepts start out as fringe, or even metaphysical, all the time. atomism was metaphysical, until the atom was actually observed. many many ideas have been fringe and then totally overturned the previous mainstream. being willing to admit to possibilities isn't the same thing as throwing your mind wide open and simply believing in anything.

Zisky posted:

I had no idea Bigelow funds his space stuff with the profits from his chain of extended stay hotels.

Delta-Wye posted:

i like the idea of contact naturally being with the bird equivalent of a mormon because you need to be a hardcore believer to get in a generation ship and make the trip

Jazerus posted:

that sucks for all sorts of reasons tho. you might want to do it for intergalactic travel but it's not suitable for exploration or building sustainable societies in a local area, because you're basically cutting yourself off from the universe for millions of years even though it's very fast for you. either you get there and somebody from your society already did a slow-boat trip that took less "real time" and beat you to it, or you emerge into a context totally transformed from what you left behind due to millions of years of tech development, or you find that you're the last survivors of your species because everybody else died a really long time ago. not that a society wouldn't necessarily want to send a few ships out like that if somebody was willing to go, but it wouldn't be the usual strategy most likely

quote:

Elizondo: I would actually go back to ancient Rome. When I was in Italy, I had the sincere honor and privilege of talking to one of the head academics in Rome, and there they provided a communication — a scroll if you will — between a Roman soldier and a Roman general, and in there he describes what they call a clipeus … the Roman shield from the Latin word … and they described what they call these flaming Roman shields in the sky that would follow them from battle space to battle space. I think for me that would be really interesting because going back that far, if I had the ability to look at a UAP, I could then make a determination knowing what I know now — are these vehicles consistent with what we’re seeing today or have they evolved as well, if it’s like humanity has evolved? Is there some sort of evolutionary process going on with these things, or is it not? Is it fairly consistent?

OK baizuo posted:

We've got pills and triangles these days, not knobby saucers. Maybe all the fakes back then are what created the aesthetic of the time? Maybe they're manifestations of the gesault consciousness and change with technological evolution? Wtf knows

WEH posted:

Saucer reports never stopped.

Log082 posted:

not really though

people keep saying this and it's not true. von nueman probes would easily do it and we can alllllmost build them ourselves, right now.

Jazerus posted:

this is basically what drives most "new atheist" writers. religious fundamentalism is a similar process of closing your mind, 4

Lampsacus posted:

But to say that those who still identify as atheist are losing out for being closed minded to religion is to miss that what they are saying is "i survived a social and family cultural system that supports, promotes and actions child abuse - i disavoy amd must learn to cope with what i was born into for the rest of my life". And to hear, "😄oh mate you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater" is to hear "child abuse is cool and good and i am looking down on you for disagreeing" its gross and disgusting and reprehensible.

Jazerus posted:

hey uh well i'm still an atheist. atheism and "new atheism" aren't the same thing. the main difference is that new atheism has a lot of reactionary poo poo in it and comes at religious beliefs/texts in much the same way that a fundamentalist preacher might - that is, as a bunch of disconnected passages to be thrown out for ridicule or veneration independently of each other. the new atheism lens of analysis is often pretty dishonest and pulls out individual sentences or sections of the bible to "debunk" or make fun of that are intended symbolically or otherwise non-literally, or are from an old/poor translation, or are mocked through a 21st century american perspective imposed on an ancient cultural context, etc. it just doesn't lead to any understanding of the actual content when really it is preferable to be an atheist who understands what exactly you are rejecting, philosophically, and why.

this loops back around to the ufo/paranormal sphere of things in that you should generally be open to hearing things out if they aren't too wacky on their face. look at UFOs and well, there are clearly birds doing things that are not scientifically understood at the moment. someone who assumes a priori that alien visitation is truly impossible as an explanation for bird behavior, and doesn't engage with the possibility, is not really being rational or scientific.

PawParole posted:

do we seriously have someone on here defending new atheism in TYOL 2021?

Lampsacus posted:

I do not know what your definition of new atheism is. I'm defending that people are allowed to be upset at organised religion and want no part in it. It's OK to not be into organised religion? It's OK to not be into organisations which shelter child abuse? It's OK to feel human and tender about these things and it's OK to feel sore and traumatised and horrifically abused by certain religious organisations? It's kind of sick to insinuate if you are, then you must be part of 'new atheism' and therefore aren't allowed to feel these things? I mean, how far do you want to defend organised religion here? Genuinely curious.

Lampsacus posted:

I do not know what your definition of new atheism is. I'm defending that people are allowed to be upset at organised religion and want no part in it. It's OK to not be into organised religion? It's OK to not be into organisations which shelter child abuse? It's OK to feel human and tender about these things and it's OK to feel sore and traumatised and horrifically abused by certain religious organisations? It's kind of sick to insinuate if you are, then you must be part of 'new atheism' and therefore aren't allowed to feel these things? I mean, how far do you want to defend organised religion here? Genuinely curious.

Lampsacus posted:

It's actually pretty disgusting that people would mock somebody who has obviously had a pretty rough time with organised religion for saying they have. I get that you might like to troll and rile somebody up, but mocking somebody's trauma is kind of reprehensible. You are people literally being snarky, mocking and making light about somebody's experience with child abuse.

Lampsacus posted:

You lost me at "are intended symbolically"
What the heck does intend even mean in this case? I'm fairly certain it's been agreed upon that at least some of the stories in ancient religious texts that eventually funnelled into certain biblical canons were viewed at some point as literal by some people. It's not like everybody before x date saw these stories are purely symbolic. We have plentiful religions and cultures today that have adherents that will straight up tell you their stories are literal depictions. How can you prove that these texts were intended to be symbolic? Because many, many theologians throughout history have expressly disagreed with that notion. And maybe, just maybe, it's OK to take these texts down from their pedestal where by virtue of being on their pedestal they have been used to excuse and encourage child abuse. Hell, just look at what's going on in Canada right now. Are you really coming to the defence of those who used Christianity/the bible to justify their actions in those schools? I get that you feel it's really really obvious that some texts are symbolic and have value in their symbolic interpretations. But you have to keep in mind, many, many, many people do not. Many people believe entire texts like their versions of the bible are wholly literal. And I think you are mudding the water by saying the alterative is to be open to hearing things that 'aren't too wacky' when it seems like what you are asking people to be open to is.... organised religion????

Spergin Morlock posted:

I was raised Mormon. also this is the UFO thread

Lampsacus posted:

Endorsing child abuse is never OK.

Lampsacus posted:

Endorsing child abuse is never OK.

WEH posted:

lampsacus is the person that was convinced they were getting gaslit by the thread for no reason a month ago, abort

Lampsacus posted:

And stop gas lighting and acting abusively. To continue to assert that somebody believes something, three times now, when they have said point blank that they do not is absolutely an element of abusive rhetoric.

WEH posted: