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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Even if you say personally shaming someone is 100% ineffective for changing their mind -- do they have no value as an example to others? I'd argue it isn't personal shame that's moved societal acceptance, in fact most has been a 'dragged kicking and screaming' and having to argue legally that black people, then women, then gays and finally lgbt are equal. Which in itself is pretty disgusting. Being a white straight male I can't even begin to imagine having to 'prove' in a court that yes, I deserve the same rights as someone like me. People are still misogynist racist homophobes and are still trying to fight for their right to legally discriminate. Hobby Lobby, Chick Fil A, Gay cakes. The people who do change their minds tend to be when its personal (mostly this applies to homosexuals). Once people started feeling safer coming out and people realized their family member or friend was gay they usually change their minds. Even someone like Dick Cheney the hate golem. Even then there are still people who come out and end up getting disowned or ostrizied, usually children. Public shaming really has just beaten in to them that they can't publicly say niggger and human being but they drat sure still do privately (I'm related to some of them) and are still trying to fight legal battles to be able to keep doing it. Conversely look at PETA and extreme pro-lifers. PETA decided on the public shaming route and are widely disdained for their tactics while those (I think) ASPCA commercials showing suffering animals I can't watch because I'd have 17 pets by now. They aren't 'shaming' per se, they don't even talk but showing you those sad looking abused animals does motivate people to want to help. Pro lifers screaming, showing aborted fetuses just drives people away. Standing outside abortion clinics trying to shame the women by calling them sluts and baby killers doesn't work. Toasticle fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Mar 7, 2016 |
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Mar 7, 2016 14:07
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LLJKSiLk posted:If, as a child you wake up in the middle of the night, tiptoe downstairs, and see your father eating the cookies you left out for Santa Claus - and placing presents under the tree with labels "From: Santa" is it then a "choice" to continue believing that Santa Claus really visited your house when you open those very same presents the following morning? I agree with you almost completely, but the "God = Santa Claus" line has always bugged me, not only for its pithiness but it's just not entirely accurate. With Santa Claus you're answering the question of "Who is it that brings me presents on Christmas Day?" When you find out Santa isn't real, the answer to that question goes from Santa Claus to Your Parents, Idiot. But there is no such transition with God. The origins of time and space are not God's will, fine, but where are the parents? What is the solution now? There may be one someday but I don't think we'll be solving the ultimate mysteries any time soon. The reason we're asking if atheism is a choice is because the choice seems to be a binary one of 'God' or 'something else'. Maybe atheism is a choice. The choice of knowingly rejecting the only game in town and choosing to wait on empiricism or philosophy to come up with a novel idea. And this is something newborn babies can't do, meaning atheism is not something you're born with. So no, God is not like Santa Claus. Let's all agree to stop that.
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Mar 8, 2016 07:10
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Which god do newborn babies believe in? If I come up with a new god every day do you have to seriously consider them before rejecting them? The default state isn't reasoned rejection, it's just a lack of existing belief. Furthermore, you don't have to know the right answer to reject incorrect answers. If you don't get any presents then you probably won't continue to believe in Santa even if it doesn't immediately lead you to the actual explanation.
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Mar 8, 2016 07:53
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FrensaGeran posted:I agree with you almost completely, but the "God = Santa Claus" line has always bugged me, not only for its pithiness but it's just not entirely accurate. With Santa Claus you're answering the question of "Who is it that brings me presents on Christmas Day?" When you find out Santa isn't real, the answer to that question goes from Santa Claus to Your Parents, Idiot. "Don't know, don't really care" is a valid answer. And a very natural one at that. Where things come from is interesting academically but somewhat practically irrelevant when the earth and the universe has, for all intents and purposes, always been here, and doesn't show any sign of stopping being here soon. Atheism can simply be a rejection of the immediate need for an answer to that question on the grounds that the answer given seems more silly than no answer.
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Mar 8, 2016 08:36
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Toasticle posted:I find the topic just mental masturbation over the definition of words. From my point of view >99% of people are atheists. I've met one person who I'd call a theist and aside from people like pope Francis and Jesuits in general I've never seen or talked to anyone claiming to be religious that actually practiced what their faith is. The more theist a person or group claims to be the more they tend focus on the words and less on the message. The religious version of people like Scalia who care only what the words say and ignore the intent behind those words. In a thread about atheism you went from taking drugs to defending pedophiles and somewhere along the way the point you never seems to have been misplaced
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Mar 8, 2016 20:56
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The OP's question is quite interesting to me. I was raised in a Christian house with all my extended family also being Christian. I went to Sunday school and church up until I was in my late teens. I now identify as an atheist but am not militant or really care about the issue. As a child I never believed in any of it; I went through the motions as I was instructed as a child does but never "got it". Like there was never any emotional or mental connection; I just went and did the things for the free pizza or breakfast later. So I guess personally when I developed consciousness my brain just unconsciously rejected it. I wouldn't say I was born atheist but I suppose it's a close approximation. Perhaps I was always mentally satisfied, everyone was explained, the knowledge was provided, there was never a reason to turn towards the spiritual for answers.
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Mar 8, 2016 23:31
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OwlFancier posted:"Don't know, don't really care" is a valid answer. And a very natural one at that. "Don't know" is agnosticism, and yes atheism is a rejection but it's not necessarily natural in any sense of that word. In fact not knowing something and then accepting that ignorance rather than trying to fill it with gods or other superstitions is counter to our "natural" desire for order and explanation. It has taken science and scientists time to come up with a reasoned argument as to why God and divine creation are absurd. But Dick Dorkins points out that before Darwin it was absolutely natural and reasonable to believe in some creating influence, because the silliness then would be to reject the obvious (now absurd) answer. Yashichi posted:Which god do newborn babies believe in? If I come up with a new god every day do you have to seriously consider them before rejecting them? The default state isn't reasoned rejection, it's just a lack of existing belief. Furthermore, you don't have to know the right answer to reject incorrect answers. If you don't get any presents then you probably won't continue to believe in Santa even if it doesn't immediately lead you to the actual explanation. Babies don't believe in any gods, obviously. I'm tempted to throw out the word ignosticism for newborns or for some person who has been hermetically sealed from the concept of god, rather than atheist, which I still think is an active choice made by an informed individual. I know ignosticism is designed to refer to those who just think god is undefinable, but its take on god as "meaningless" seems to fit the bill better than atheism.
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Mar 9, 2016 00:47
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FrensaGeran posted:I agree with you almost completely, but the "God = Santa Claus" line has always bugged me, not only for its pithiness but it's just not entirely accurate. With Santa Claus you're answering the question of "Who is it that brings me presents on Christmas Day?" When you find out Santa isn't real, the answer to that question goes from Santa Claus to Your Parents, Idiot. Saying "god did it" isn't really an answer at all. You're still left with the question of why god exists rather than nothing existing.
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Mar 9, 2016 01:16
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FrensaGeran posted:"Don't know" is agnosticism, and yes atheism is a rejection but it's not necessarily natural in any sense of that word. In fact not knowing something and then accepting that ignorance rather than trying to fill it with gods or other superstitions is counter to our "natural" desire for order and explanation. I think agnosticism is somewhat more than that. Maybe more like "I don't know, and neither does anybody else, because such knowledge is impossible." It's a substantive epistemic claim, rather than just a profession of ignorance.
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Mar 9, 2016 02:13
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Blisster posted:Saying "god did it" isn't really an answer at all. You're still left with the question of why god exists rather than nothing existing. The routine usually goes Theist: Well God has always existed Atheist: Then skip the God part and just say the universe has always existed. And there's the choice, between an eternal God providing comfort and purpose or an empirical view of an eternal but unconscious universe. It's a preference of aesthetics, a choice of worldview that is made after introspection and deliberation. Saying atheism isn't a choice is almost an insult to atheists. It's a claim that no work was required to look at a seemingly ordered universe and conclude the lack of any orderer. Religion or mysticism of some variety is the natural choice, atheism is not.
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Mar 9, 2016 02:26
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FrensaGeran posted:The routine usually goes but the universe is not 'seemingly ordered' and making something out of the chaos requires some sort of framework
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Mar 9, 2016 04:52
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a god being eternal, or even the concept of a god or multiple gods is not some innate quality to religion or mysticism either buddhism does not have a conscious god figure, nor do many flavors of paganism. in ancient greek mythology and all that is based off of it, the gods may have provided purpose and been conscious, but they were not eternal. nigga crab pollock fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 05:03
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FrensaGeran posted:Babies don't believe in any gods, obviously. I'm tempted to throw out the word ignosticism for newborns or for some person who has been hermetically sealed from the concept of god, rather than atheist, which I still think is an active choice made by an informed individual. I know ignosticism is designed to refer to those who just think god is undefinable, but its take on god as "meaningless" seems to fit the bill better than atheism. Ok, see, I both do and don't understand why some people are so adverse to calling themselves atheists that they're willing to just make up whatever jumbled-up pseudoword they can come up with on the spot. Like, ok, yeah, Dick Dorkins and his ilk kinda shat the bed a bit and associated atheism with being an rear end in a top hat, but "ignosticism" sounds ten times worse for completely different reasons. Chiefly because it makes you sound like you're going out of your way to be ignorant, and that's never a message you should want to send.
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Mar 9, 2016 06:44
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Who What Now posted:Ok, see, I both do and don't understand why some people are so adverse to calling themselves atheists that they're willing to just make up whatever jumbled-up pseudoword they can come up with on the spot. Like, ok, yeah, Dick Dorkins and his ilk kinda shat the bed a bit and associated atheism with being an rear end in a top hat, but "ignosticism" sounds ten times worse for completely different reasons. Chiefly because it makes you sound like you're going out of your way to be ignorant, and that's never a message you should want to send. there's a whole boatload of fundimentalist christians that have been taught that atheists are satan worshiping baby eaters. like yeah people who dont believe in our lord and savior jesus H christ are going to hell but there is a special place waaay down there for atheists
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Mar 9, 2016 08:58
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FrensaGeran posted:"Don't know" is agnosticism, and yes atheism is a rejection but it's not necessarily natural in any sense of that word. In fact not knowing something and then accepting that ignorance rather than trying to fill it with gods or other superstitions is counter to our "natural" desire for order and explanation. It has taken science and scientists time to come up with a reasoned argument as to why God and divine creation are absurd. But Dick Dorkins points out that before Darwin it was absolutely natural and reasonable to believe in some creating influence, because the silliness then would be to reject the obvious (now absurd) answer. I don't like the idea of calling myself an agnostic because there are many different forms of "don't know" (for example "there's a 50/50 chance of X" vs "X is merely not impossible") and agnosticism seems to imply that there's a reasonable possibility of there either being a god or not being a god. While I certainly won't claim that there definitely 100% isn't a god, I consider the possibility negligible. While that is technically agnosticism, I feel like it's more accurate to call it atheism.
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Mar 9, 2016 09:16
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Ytlaya posted:I don't like the idea of calling myself an agnostic because there are many different forms of "don't know" (for example "there's a 50/50 chance of X" vs "X is merely not impossible") and agnosticism seems to imply that there's a reasonable possibility of there either being a god or not being a god. While I certainly won't claim that there definitely 100% isn't a god, I consider the possibility negligible. While that is technically agnosticism, I feel like it's more accurate to call it atheism. this is a problem with your inferential system being incoherent. "don't know" is not equal to "can't choose between the options of which I can subjectively conceive." you've just moved the real inferential work back out of sight one step to where you define those options, here. in these statistical terms, coherent agnostics say that the likelihoods and probabilities for claims related to the divine are currently, to the best ability of the reasoning agent to determine, undefined (Ø). atheists and theists say these are either both 0 or 1, respectively. deists usually fall between 0 and 1, and may not have a meaningful naive interpretation depending on brand and epistemology. Zodium fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 09:44
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Who What Now posted:Ok, see, I both do and don't understand why some people are so adverse to calling themselves atheists that they're willing to just make up whatever jumbled-up pseudoword they can come up with on the spot. Like, ok, yeah, Dick Dorkins and his ilk kinda shat the bed a bit and associated atheism with being an rear end in a top hat, but "ignosticism" sounds ten times worse for completely different reasons. Chiefly because it makes you sound like you're going out of your way to be ignorant, and that's never a message you should want to send. I happily call myself an atheist. Sorry if you got the wrong end of the stick on that one. I was just trying to argue that atheism is not exactly the default stance for those ignorant of the concept/debate, like newborns and people who for whatever reason have never thought about it before. Also I didn't make up ignosticism, I googled that poo poo and everything to be sure. Ytlaya posted:I don't like the idea of calling myself an agnostic because there are many different forms of "don't know" (for example "there's a 50/50 chance of X" vs "X is merely not impossible") and agnosticism seems to imply that there's a reasonable possibility of there either being a god or not being a god. While I certainly won't claim that there definitely 100% isn't a god, I consider the possibility negligible. While that is technically agnosticism, I feel like it's more accurate to call it atheism. Agnosticism is pretty useless, I agree. Mainly because unless you have actual empirical evidence of god (no one does) then you're an agnostic. It's like going around saying you identify as carbon based. Yeah, me too buddy. Endless Trash fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 11:25
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It's a useful identifier if your primary view on the subject is that it's kind of a daft question because there is no way to give a satisfactory answer to it.
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Mar 9, 2016 12:23
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FrensaGeran posted:Agnosticism is pretty useless, I agree. Mainly because unless you have actual empirical evidence of god (no one does) then you're an agnostic. It's like going around saying you identify as carbon based. Yeah, me too buddy. Many people claim to have direct, personal experiences of God, which is just what 'empirical' means. That they can't demonstrate it to others is something that doesn't usually bother them. Additionally, people like Aquinas and Descartes thought that they could give satisfactory rational (read: non-empirical) demonstrations of God's existence. Agnosticism involves coming up with reasons to show that both groups are wrong, which is not a trivial or vacuous project.
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Mar 9, 2016 13:33
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whoflungpoop posted:In a thread about atheism you went from taking drugs to defending pedophiles and somewhere along the way the point you never seems to have been misplaced Was it really that hard? -I agree with the philosophy but not the dogma. -How I got to that point. -An example of how it's changed my views on things. Yes I picked an extreme example but did it for a reason. I don't think anyone should be cast aside as a lost cause. There is no clause that everyone should be helped except the ones you deem unworthy. -Arguing over definitions of words is pointless if you don't actually practice what you proclaim to believe and instead focusing on trying to prove an unprovable you're missing the point. To expand on the second point, if the only reason you follow (or pretend to follow) your religion is out of fear of reprisal then if you do believe in a god and judgement, do you really think he/she/it would judge you favorably? You do it because it's right, if you still want to commit 'sin' but don't because you don't want to be punished it's pretty clearly explained that it's still sinning.
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Mar 9, 2016 15:59
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Zodium posted:this is a problem with your inferential system being incoherent. "don't know" is not equal to "can't choose between the options of which I can subjectively conceive." you've just moved the real inferential work back out of sight one step to where you define those options, here. in these statistical terms, coherent agnostics say that the likelihoods and probabilities for claims related to the divine are currently, to the best ability of the reasoning agent to determine, undefined (Ø). atheists and theists say these are either both 0 or 1, respectively. deists usually fall between 0 and 1, and may not have a meaningful naive interpretation depending on brand and epistemology. I can't tell if you're just using really esoteric sources or just being deliberately obtuse but your definitions don't line up with common usage. What is the connection between "God exists with probability 0<p<1" and deism?
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Mar 9, 2016 19:12
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Yashichi posted:I can't tell if you're just using really esoteric sources or just being deliberately obtuse but your definitions don't line up with common usage. What is the connection between "God exists with probability 0<p<1" and deism? I am. at least for a definition of "really esoteric terms" that means "basic statistical terms." they "don't line up with common usage" because most people are statistically illiterate, so they might systematically make terribad inferences like "in the absence of evidence for the divine, we should infer that the probability of divine claims is 0" when really they should be ending up at Ø. go ahead, i'll wait for you to run, using any statistical theory, your most severe test, of any divine question you like, and tell me what comes out when you put zero observations in each condition. common usage is  atheists believe God does not exist (P(God) = 0), and the other way around for theists (P(God) = 1). deists are a little more interesting in theory because they believe we can make inferences about god based on objective observations (P(God) = X), but in practice it just means they set up special ontologies that let really long sentences count as evidence, not that they actually work with evidence in any meaningful sense of evidence as observations that contribute to the severity of an inferential test. agnostics are too cool for sunday school and ignore divine claims (P(God) = Ø). (you can use other taxonomies of course, but this is how it looks statistically, so if you're going with the language of probability, that is the lay of the land.) inferentially, in principle (a)theism and deism/agnosticism is not really a choice, it's more like an incidental/emergent feature of your underlying inferential/epistemological system; the garbage collectors of your psychology. in most people, it's really more of a "waste management consultancy" situation where the garbage collectors start getting fairly nasty with the rest of the village. principled, coherent reasoning is the best defense. hth Zodium fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Mar 11, 2016 |
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Mar 11, 2016 07:53
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This seems relevant: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/...=alumnewsletter
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Mar 15, 2016 17:37
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Seems to me like accepting the real world hypothesis as opposed to applying Cartesian doubt to everything that is known a posteriori would allow someone to believe or not believe in god depending on what they view as evidence. Whether belief or disbelief is a choice really depends on how much thought someone's willing to put into the subject for themselves. Blaise Pascal would say belief in general is not a choice, and that we are compelled to believe one way or another, and that rational argument plays no part in the ultimate acceptance of something's existence or non-existence. I'd agree insofar as what I'd call a true Belief, and most people (lowercase) believe that for many things without absolute proof. Evidence, sure, but not proof beyond a dipshit's endless questioning. I'd say atheism can be a choice made after consideration, or one could be compelled to believe, or one could think they Believe but they actually are just leaning on the answer they'd like to have. I think most atheists are just de facto atheists though, not True Believers. I think this question could be applied to all beliefs, and the answer depends on the school of epistemology that you adhere to.
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Mar 15, 2016 22:08
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I was raised and schooled in a fundamentalist evangelical community. I have had many religious experiences, including two visions, and intended to become an apologist for the faith. Over time, my studies toward that end instead led me to a rejection of Christianity, and ultimately a dismissal of the supernatural in general. I did make a conscious decision and effort to stop believing. It required work to realign my responses to events and stimuli, similar to my later efforts to control my alcoholism.
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Mar 16, 2016 03:22
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Flambeau posted:I was raised and schooled in a fundamentalist evangelical community. I have had many religious experiences, including two visions, and intended to become an apologist for the faith. Over time, my studies toward that end instead led me to a rejection of Christianity, and ultimately a dismissal of the supernatural in general. I did make a conscious decision and effort to stop believing. It required work to realign my responses to events and stimuli, similar to my later efforts to control my alcoholism. I'd love to hear more about this, if you don't mind sharing.
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Mar 16, 2016 03:23
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Do babies believe in god? Hell , do babies believe in anything? Is it nihilism? Are babies nihilist? Are babies even real?
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Mar 16, 2016 20:17
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A zen master went to a small child and asked, "what is your ethos". the baby didnt react and two hours later it had a poop. The zen master nodded, satisfied the baby had the buddha nature, and continued on his way.
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Mar 16, 2016 20:19
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Control Volume posted:Do babies believe in god? Hell , do babies believe in anything? Is it nihilism? Are babies nihilist? Are babies even real? Controversial opinion: Babies aren't people.
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Mar 16, 2016 21:21
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The Kingfish posted:Controversial opinion: Babies aren't people. Non-persons might still have beliefs, depending on your theory of mind.
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Mar 16, 2016 22:44
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Zodium posted:this is a problem with your inferential system being incoherent. "don't know" is not equal to "can't choose between the options of which I can subjectively conceive." you've just moved the real inferential work back out of sight one step to where you define those options, here. in these statistical terms, coherent agnostics say that the likelihoods and probabilities for claims related to the divine are currently, to the best ability of the reasoning agent to determine, undefined (Ø). atheists and theists say these are either both 0 or 1, respectively. deists usually fall between 0 and 1, and may not have a meaningful naive interpretation depending on brand and epistemology. I said "I don't like the idea of calling myself," not "I'm not." Because most people associate the word agnostic with people who think there's a reasonable, or at least non-negligible, possibility of a god existing, I feel like it misrepresents my actual feels on the matter (that it's unknowable whether a god exists but negligible since there's no reason to think one does).
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Mar 17, 2016 00:34
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I read somewhere about how agnosticism isn't itself a belief or disbelief in God, because it and theism are like two different axes on a chart. So there's whether or not you personally believe that there's a god (atheist-theist), and then whether or not you believe that it can be proven that god exists/doesn't exist (agnostic/gnostic). So you could have a gnostic theist (I believe that God exists, and that it can be proven), agnostic theist (I believe that God exists, but it can't be proven for sure), agnostic atheist (I don't believe God exists, but can't be sure), and gnostic atheist (I don't believe God exists, and it can be proven that he doesn't). Might have mucked it up a bit, it's been a long time since I read it. Of course, common usage is theist-agnostic-atheist, and refers purely to belief in God, so  I don't believe, but I don't fault anyone who does.
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Mar 17, 2016 07:04
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Lprsti99 posted:I read somewhere about how agnosticism isn't itself a belief or disbelief in God, because it and theism are like two different axes on a chart. 'Somewhere' being every page of this dumb thread?
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Mar 17, 2016 11:22
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grate deceiver posted:'Somewhere' being every page of this dumb thread? Like I read every page. The first couple were just people trying to own the idiots who don't believe like them and people arguing nature/nurture, so I skipped to the end.
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Mar 17, 2016 18:28
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Lprsti99 posted:Like I read every page. The first couple were just people trying to own the idiots who don't believe like them and people arguing nature/nurture, so I skipped to the end. WWN posted it here early in the thread. Who What Now posted:In general there are two parts to the question of one's stance on god(s), what you claim to believe and what you claim to know. A/Theism addresses the former while A/gnosticism addresses the latter. In this instance knowledge being defined as "beliefs held with maximal reasonable certainty" or "justified beliefs".
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Mar 18, 2016 00:43
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(Pointless post)
Monglo fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Mar 18, 2016 |
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Mar 18, 2016 04:29
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Lprsti99 posted:I read somewhere about how agnosticism isn't itself a belief or disbelief in God, because it and theism are like two different axes on a chart. So there's whether or not you personally believe that there's a god (atheist-theist), and then whether or not you believe that it can be proven that god exists/doesn't exist (agnostic/gnostic). So you could have a gnostic theist (I believe that God exists, and that it can be proven), agnostic theist (I believe that God exists, but it can't be proven for sure), agnostic atheist (I don't believe God exists, but can't be sure), and gnostic atheist (I don't believe God exists, and it can be proven that he doesn't). Might have mucked it up a bit, it's been a long time since I read it. I honestly have no idea why so many people object to this as a commonsense update to the terminology.
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Mar 18, 2016 17:29
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A Terrible Person posted:I honestly have no idea why so many people object to this as a commonsense update to the terminology. Because it's not common sense.
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Mar 18, 2016 17:58
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The Belgian posted:Because it's not common sense. So... "nuh-uh" on your part again? Okay.
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Mar 18, 2016 18:12
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A Terrible Person posted:So... "nuh-uh" on your part again? You're the one who made the positive claim that it's common sense without any argument.
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Mar 18, 2016 18:30
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