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Only 10-15% of Americans identify as non-religious, so it's a little silly to think that leftism is correlated with hating religion. Conservatives even have a good chunk of the nonbelievers in the form of libertarians. MLK is probably the most famous American leftist political activist, and he was a preacher. He also preached socialism and economic equality, which made him an enemy of the state in his day. It's a modern retelling that everyone loved MLK because he preached tolerance and equality. The reality was he was seen as inflammatory and extreme, albeit not as much as Malcom X. Non-evangelical and Catholic churches have a long history of helping push progressive causes such as housing/feeding the needy, ending wars, protecting immigrants, etc. Mostly the things Jesus actually talked about more often and of being the utmost importance to Christian faith and being good with God. The right wing media has been attacking the Democrats and anyone even vaguely progressive as hating religion for decades now, so it's seeped into the narrative, but it's absolute bullshit. I'm personally an atheist but I'm not going to push away allies because I think supernatural things are all silly. Protecting LGBTQ people, minorities, immigrants, the environment, the poor, and stopping bombing and shooting people halfway across the world are of far more immediate importance.
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Mar 6, 2017 12:39
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Blurred posted:Hmmm yeah, but that's not really the issue here. The beliefs of individual people, you are right, are largely irrelevant. If someone chooses to believe in the existence of this or that God, or believe that this or that text was divinely inspired, or believe that this or that holyman is a manifestation of God's power, then that is a matter of little consequence. If all you have is a list of someone's theological or metaphysical beliefs, that's not likely to tell you very much about that person's political beliefs or their ethics more generally. Assholes are equally well represented in all religious (and non-religious) traditions. I agree with you in the long term on a global scale, but the US has such high religiosity that they need to be folded in or else we would be rolling back progress like crazy. I feel like any religious bent obscures reality, even if it's something like liberation theology that seems so all around positive. This means people's understanding of what the universe is and what people are is wrong on a foundational level, having a chain effect on perception and decision making. If humans are to make progress towards word peace, then having the vast majority of people be non-religious almost seems like a prerequisite. Religions promoting peace and tolerance for all people in preaching and in practice are historical exceptions, not the norm. We should try to phase out religion from the left, but that's a battle for after we have basic equal rights for minorities and LGBTQ (In the U.S. at least). Spuckuk posted:We aren't all American here, friendo. Hell, most of tye right in my country aren't religious either. True, but the op specifically said he was American so I chose examples he would be familiar with.
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Mar 6, 2017 21:28
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OwlFancier posted:Your demand for secular laws is a religious perspective therefore it makes absolutely no sense to try and claim it as an absolutely correct position, above criticism from an opposing religious perspective. It's a common mistake that people try to link the lack of religious belief to being a religious belief into itself. Material rationalism is not a belief system, beyond the extent that you believed the material universe is a real thing that you can perceive with a reasonable degree of accuracy. There is no metaphysical component to demanding secular laws, so it is absolutely not a religious view. There's no such thing as "absolute moral truth", and secular reasoning admits this and instead comes up with moralities via the human experience. There isn't a "point" to atheism beyond interpreting the world in an accurate way without relying on magic to explain things. It's not immoral, simply amoral. Secular laws use things like empathy, compassion, and reason to deal with societal problems and should be wanted by people of all faiths, because it protects everyone equally regardless of their religious beliefs.
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Mar 7, 2017 06:05
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OwlFancier posted:It also requires a rejection of the idea that there is anything to the world beyond the observable and material. Which is an idea you have been exposed to if you live basically anywhere on earth. It absolutely does not require blanket objection, it just requires evidence. If magic spells were demonstrated to be effective, and even linked to praying to a god or some sort of ether or whatever magical things happened, that would be accepted. It would have an impact on the material world and therefore be observable, but somehow even with millions of cameras all of their world on people at all times, nothing supernatural ever happens that is recorded. Basing your worldview and things that can be demonstrated to be true is not a belief system in any comparable sense to religious mythos and "metaphysics". Secularism doesn't automatically reject anything, it means being focused on the world we actually live in instead of some sort of spiritual life/afterlife. But it helps people arguing for "spirituality" having special value to misrepresent atheist and secular ideas as being close minded.
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Mar 7, 2017 06:24
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OwlFancier posted:It starts from a different set of premises and works from there under its preferred method of reasoning, it is neither particularly more closed or open minded than any other theological position. Evidence based reasoning, by definition, is a more open ideology than any theological position. A theological position requires that the universe has some supernatural component that influences the natural world. It requires that one must reach a certain conclusion, and argues backwards from there. This is more close minded than a secular approach which observes events and then builds conclusions based on that evidence. The equivocation is bullshit and is trotted out by religious "intellectuals" who always cherry pick data and warp meanings to conform to a theological perception of the universe. Secular reasoning starts with premises based on observable reality and uses testable and arguable methods, while theological reasoning assumes a conclusion and devises premises to reach that conclusion.
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Mar 7, 2017 07:25
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Sole.Sushi posted:Honestly, this is a complex question that isn't easy to answer: forgive the train of thought below, I'll try to summarize at the end if you'd rather not read all of it. One of the weirdest ideas people have is that religion is a "choice", in the same way you could choose which movie to watch. Upbringing and environment are by far the two biggest factors in determining people's religions. Most people that grow up going to church through their childhood believe in god in some form because that worldview becomes part of their developmental foundation. Social pressure especially at the community and family level, helps to reinforce this environment that funnels people into a specific religion. Education, especially in physical sciences, is highly correlated with diminishing religiosity. This is the reason why "book learning" is marginalized among authoritarian sects. If people develop an accurate sense of history and science, as well as critical thinking skills, they are much more likely to withdraw from literalist interpretations and be less zealous in general. It always strikes me as odd that the leftists' views of religions are always equated with the right wing's view of religion, just like in politics. Atheist leftists think religious people are stupid/delusional and should get a better education. Also stop denying people basic rights and give them respect and tolerance. Atheists think religious people might be able to enrich their lives in a more productive way that doesn't enable the hateful garbage pushed by millions of people using their same holy texts. Conservative religious people think atheists and people of other faiths should burn in hell, and should maybe be executed. Their ideas are heresy and should not be entertained. Of course these views are opposing, so the sensible middle ground is somewhere in the middle.
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Mar 7, 2017 09:31
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RagnarokAngel posted:Not all religion is centered on the idea that if you don't believe as they believe you go to hell. Judaism for example teaches that the covenant of Israel is reserved for those either born into it or choose to adopt it and has no effect whatsoever on those who dont. I mean, Jews don't even believe in the devil or Hell (second is debatable I guess). The problem is not limited to American evangelism. In India, Hinduism helps to reinforce the caste system. I'm Africa shamanistic beliefs has lead to raping virgins to cure diseases. In Buddhism there are very quietly next to zero female religious leaders, and this is true of most religious sects. In Eastern Europe and Russia the Orthodox Church is very uncool with LGBTQ issues. The Middle East has large gender equality issues directly related to Muslim beliefs and traditions, as does the Jewish population to a lesser degree. Of course there are more reasonable moderate religious people than the hardliners in these regions as well, but pretending American exceptionalism is a thing with religious extremism is foolhardy.
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Mar 7, 2017 12:33
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Patrick Spens posted:In the united states, people who also donate to religious charities also donate an average of $1,001 dollars to secular charities. People who only donate to secular charities donate an average of $651. Unfortunately, a close look at that study bends what "charitable donations" are that gives an edge to religious based donations. Here's a breakdown of why those numbers are misleading. Churches running soup kitchens is definitely a good thing, but donating to them to feed the hungry is a very inefficient use of their money. Churches are notoriously bad with their money. They pay no taxes and have no oversight. That soup kitchen is a generally planned monthly/weekly, and if there is extra money donated to run the soup kitchen most churches don't improve or expand soup kitchen service. Instead the pastor gets a car upgrade, the church gets some fancy drapes, or some shiny new bibles get printed to preach to the poor and vulnerable kids in developing nations. Churches run 12 step programs because they will bring in zealous converts to their congregations. They say "The 'higher power' doesn't have to be God, but we all know its Yahweh and god helped us stay off drugs." It's a hell of a lot of influence on faith when people are at the bottom of the barrel and desperate. The same conversion pressure and indoctrination comes when many churches teach English to the little African kids too. Alternatively you could just donate to Action Against Hunger, the Amy Winehouse Foundation, or any other secular charities that will do more to combat these issues than the church will. But thinking about how the median pastor income is nearly $100,000 and that 47% of church donations go to just salaries, and another 22% goes to the church property, 5% goes to conversion missions, and only 10% of the budget goes to actual programs makes churches much more of a community organization business than an actual charity. (source) But nope giving to a church is equally charitable to giving to Habitat for Humanity.
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Mar 7, 2017 21:52
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Patrick Spens posted:You misunderstand. The numbers I quoted were of religious donations to secular charities. They are not counting church donations. Except that the paper itself contradicts that claim in the next paragraph. The religious people give more to secular causes number was a result from an article from a charity networking group, Independent Sector, while actual researchers at the University of San Fransisco found that there wasn't a difference in secular charity giving. I will say though that higher attendance to church is highly correlated with doing more volunteer work, so that is a good thing.
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Mar 7, 2017 23:27
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Brainiac Five posted:They only found that to be true for Californians, and most importantly, they didn't find that there was no difference, they found that when you controlled for other variables the difference disappears. Which is consistent with the argument of the paper overall that what matters is less the ideology of the particular organization and more the level of social integration and opportunities for charity available. Which neatly explains why this relationship might exist nationally but not specifically in California- there are large parts of the country where religious organizations are the primary means through which exposure to charitable organizations occur, including secular ones, but this is not as true for the most highly urbanized parts of the country. I completely agree. In smaller towns especially, the main church is a focal point for gathering and events that are not religious in nature. They are networking centers for businesses as well. I was just arguing against the narrative that being religious means you are more charitable, that's a disputed claim at best. Brainiac Five posted:I always like the whole "religion is literally magic" line of attack because of how transparently rigged it is. After all, what is "magic", in this context? The inclusion of a supernatural phenomenon? Then science is a religion right now and has been off and on one for as long as it has existed. The veneration of a supernatural phenomenon? That leads into the question of what "veneration" is, and you'd have to create quite the twisted definition to include all religions in it. But perhaps magic, since transubstantiation is magic but not other parts of Catholicism, apparently, simply refers to attributing symbolic natures to objects, in which case magic is everywhere. Now this here is a load of poo poo. Empirical science studies phenomenon, which is not the same thing as supernatural phenomenon. We call it "magic" because outside the context of your own religion, it is magic with no explanation. Converting wine into blood and bread into body is transubstantiation and the mechanism is by god power. Jesus walking on water and doing spontaneous healing and raising the dead is all done by mechanism of god power. Reincarnation is done by magic. Gaia provides life force by mechanism of god power. It's "rigged" because mysticism has no basis in reality and is magical thinking. Saying something is a metaphor for the human experience or symbolism for nature is a cop out. There has to be some level of truth to the spiritual claims that the believer accepts, even if it is just "God exists and I'll meet him when I die. Most the stuff is just symbolic and lesson teaching." Even this level posits, with no evidence, that people have an immortal soul that can leave the body after death and retain the feelings/memories/consequences of their life, and that a singular powerful entity had a direct link to that soul. This is again, all done by mechanics of god power. The problem isn't that "magic" is rigged against religion, it's that literally all spiritual claims are magic. RasperFat fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 00:27
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Brainiac Five posted:Ah, so now we're defining religion as the unprovable. So now a significant fraction of political science and philosophy is now religion. Your definitions are not very good at defining things in such a way as to quarantine religion safely into a place where it can be destroyed at your whim and religious people continue to exist on sufferance. I like how you take commonly accepted ideas, even among theologians, and paint them with a crazy brush. Faith, a core tenant of many practices, requires a lack of evidence. The whole point of faith is believing when evidence points to not believing. Religion absolutely does not offer any real explanations for the world. It's not contemptibly false, it's a statement of fact about how religions define the world. Religion offers comfort and mystical stories, not an actual explanation for how things work. People don't glean natural truths from holy texts, they learn them from observing the real world.
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Mar 8, 2017 06:19
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Brainiac Five posted:This is so incredibly stupid it justifies burning down all law schools and going back to teaching law the way it was taught in the early 19th century, because clearly they have failed, by producing a mind like this. You're playing a semantic game with faith. Religious faith is specifically defined as believing in the face of difficult evidence. Believing that your friend will pay you back that $20 is not the same as having faith that I am going to heaven. Even so, if you believe the universe is moral, and all evidence points to it being random and chaotic, then yes you are operating on faith. It's an unsubstantiated claim, and assuming that is true is acting on faith. I agree religion offers meaning people relate to their own lives, but it also makes empirical claims about the structure of the universe. These are almost universally wrong, mostly because they were written before we knew about atomic/subatomic particles and the astronomical scale of the size of the universe. The claims made by almost every religious sect are based on fundamentally wrong ideas about what humans are and our place in the universe, therefore the meaning that is filtered through religion will always be flawed. I am also a feminist, and I think that religion plays a large role in reinforcing gender stereotypes. But I appreciate the assumption that I hate women and have no emotional intelligence.
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Mar 8, 2017 06:42
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Brainiac Five posted:Oh my god, and there are ethical practices in psychological and biological experiments too. These obviously contradict the point of the article in its entirety instead of being pointless nitpickery to say "religious people must be crushed" without actually saying it at any point. Empirical evidence of an afterlife is completely non existent and based off of wishful thinking. The probability of life existing elsewhere in the universe is essentially 100%, as we have already discovered extinct microbes on mars. We have evidence that stimulus such as lightning can cause the formation of lipid layers, like cells use, when striking nonorganic carbon materials. There's a myriad of other ways that organic materials can be created by natural phenomenon, giving us good cause to think life can form in the right conditions anywhere. The idea that there is probably life elsewhere in the universe is based on testable claims, while the idea of the afterlife is based off of zero testable claims. This is not a difficult distinction. The fundamentally wrong ideas are central tenants to even moderate practitioners. We are beings created in God's image. God created this world out of love. Good works will be rewarded in the afterlife. There is such a thing as sin. In Islam, the idea Mecca has some sort of spiritual power that makes it important in God's eyes, as well as most of the problems of the other Abrahamic religions. In Buddhism, life is defined as suffering. There are correct paths to reach nirvana that will result in enlightenment and nirvana, and allow for good reincarnation. I know not all sects of Buddhism believe in reincarnation, but there are mystical aspects to the overwhelming majority of Buddhist branches. The most problematic fundamental claim in just about every religion is the concept of a soul. This is a core concept that all other arguments are based off of, and there is zero evidence that it exists in any form described by mainstream religions. Religious faith is separate because it can never be proven true. Your faith can never be rewarded, at least not by any god. I'm not taking anything personally, I was pointing out your disingenuous arguments.
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Mar 8, 2017 07:18
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Pellisworth posted:no, I do not, you haven't understood the reading, if I were to summarize: Actually, the religious families I grew up around were largely Catholic and Buddhists. I know most religious people are not literalists, and I wasn't implying that if that's what you were thinking. Lack of gender equality is serious issue in religion worldwide. Not all of it is demanding women be servile, but it still reinforces gender roles in a big way.
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Mar 8, 2017 07:36
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Brainiac Five posted:We haven't actually discovered microbes on mars, dead or alive. There's hints but no proof, as it were. There isn't definitive proof of microbes yet, but hey look there is physical evidence we can examine and explore more in the future. We can get answers if we keep digging. You are tossing out this probability argument like it's a kill shot but it's bullshit. Arguing about the probability of life existing elsewhere is based off of models showing what conditions might support and develop life, and looking for how many places might be able to do that. It involves a lot of conjecture, but the at least some of the claims can be tested and could definitely be confirmed if we ever develop interstellar travel. Arguing about the probability of an afterlife is based off of a binary scenario with no evidence at all, and possibly no way to ever get evidence. There's not a real mathematical probability equation to test it it's plausible, and as of yet seems to have no basis in reality. Back to being fundamentally wrong, I know Mecca is important for historical reasons, but it's also important for spiritual reasons within the context of Islam. The pilgrimage is part of their faith, as is facing towards Mecca during the daily prayers. Don't pretend that it isn't revered as having spiritual significance because that's just ridiculous. Buddhists aren't masochists, but suffering was an integral idea of Sidartha's. Detachment removes the source of suffering. That's the path to enlightenment. It's of course far more complex than that, but Buddhism still has mystic aspects that don't reflect reality, such as reincarnation. I'd be down to know what fascinating implications there are to the fact that souls probably don't exists. Also I feel sorry that you need some sort of brain scan to know that people love you. Most people know based off of their actions and professed feelings and don't assume people are sociopaths who feign emotions. I've not been defining religion in any of the absurd ways you've described. Religion and religious faith by requirement have some spiritual element to them, and trying to say anything we are uncertain about is therefore religion or faith is just stupid. Pellisworth posted:this is mostly incorrect or misleading I'll admit abiogenesis is much more complex then that, and we don't have definite proof of ancient life on Mars. It was an oversimplification for someone who doesn't seem to understand the basics of science.
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Mar 8, 2017 09:11
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Pellisworth posted:we have not I'm sorry it's been a decade since microbiology, I misremembered the specifics. The main point was that naturally occurring nonorganic events can create the building blocks for organic life. Myriad might be too broad, but off the top of my head there is also geothermal heat, chemical reactions, and radiation bursts. By testable claims I meant the processes for abiogenesis can be testable. It is within the scope of reason to explore our own solar system more, which could easily provide more answers. We simply don't know enough about the universe outside our immediate region to be certain, but there is a clear path to finding out if we can overcome the seemingly impossible logistics of space travel. The whole point of this was a bullshit comparison not brought up by me that claiming life might exists in the universe elsewhere is equivalent to belief in an afterlife. I'm not bludgeoning religion with science, I'm responding to BraniacFive's ridiculous equivocations.
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Mar 8, 2017 09:56
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Brainiac Five posted:So now that you've admitted you lie and plan to continue lying out of your sheer contempt for someone daring to disagree with you, is there any point in further discussion? I clearly cannot trust anything you write from this point onward to be honest. Holy poo poo you're insufferable. You never engage any actual arguments I'm making. Why am I a liar? Because I got a detail wrong on something? It seems to be growing more obvious your aren't arguing in good faith. How about you stop saying inflammatory personal poo poo and instead argue against what I said. We have "hints" there might have been life on Mars. We have potential ways for organic materials to be made from nature. This isn't some random poo poo that might exist based off of nothings. What the gently caress do black swans have to do with the existence of the supernatural? When have I sneered at you? Why do you think we can never prove state of mind? You seem terrified to engage even the basic level of my arguments. You take a single phrase and run wild with it, pretend that is the main substance of what you're arguing against, and sit back on a high horse. Do you have a single loving shred of evidence for an afterlife? Do you have any workable models for how a soul works? Do you even know what kind of evidence even could prove these things? For someone who sneers at others for daring to call out bullshit , you seem to have no grasp on what plausibility, probability, or evidence is.
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Mar 8, 2017 16:09
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Brainiac Five posted:You said that your error was caused by the need to talk down to me, motherfucker. Don't whine and whimper when someone hits back. I said that because you keep intentionally using bullshit parallels. The claims about probability of alien life are not analogous to claims about consciousness surviving past death. They are not equatable in the way you keep insisting they are. You then take the idea that we can never be certain in 100% verifying something scientifically and equate that to the idea that you can apply this to spiritual claims. It's misleading at best. Claims of a potential black swan are based off of other animals that have a mutation that causes black pigmentation, and as such it is likely that a black swan can exist. This claim is not equal to any magical claims about spirituality or god, and you refuse to acknowledge this. I don't have to definitively disprove the soul, because the burden is not on me to disprove something that has absolutely zero supporting evidence in the first place. Or do you think we should entertain every idea ever like it could be equally possible?
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Mar 8, 2017 21:20
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Brainiac Five posted:They are, in fact, equatable as claims about reality and your argument makes it clear that you have taken it as a prior that any claims which you process as spiritual are inherently false no matter what. Which is to say that you have designated the truth-value of certain statements as false regardless of evidence. You've been ping ponging between semantic games ad absurdum and false dichotomies so let's define things more clearly. Making a claim about reality based off of physical evidence is not equivalent to a claim about reality based on a spiritual argument. They simply aren't. I'll spell out again why they aren't. Claim based off of physics evidence: All of the data collected indicates that the physical brain receives and responds to stimuli via chemical and electrical signals. Physical changes to the brain, be it chemical or actually cutting into it, alters thoughts, emotions, and even memories. There has never been any indication that stimuli outside the physical environment have ever had an effect on how the brain operates. Therefore, it is with extremely high certainty that we can claim that the human experience is contained within the limits of the organic body. Claim based off of spiritual argument: People have a spirit, or soul, that has a connection to a divine being. We know this because God said so, also because people have believed this for a long time. I can feel God's presence. You cannot completely disprove my assertions, therefore it is with reasonable certainty we can posit that people have souls. Physical evidence claim: We can date the age of the universe and Earth with reasonable certainty, as well as when life began. We have an extremely solid framework for how life developed from early, more simple and smaller life to the diversity we see today on Earth. We have observed methods in nature by which organic building blocks can be created by nonorganic events. We have seen some (shaky) "hints" that life may have existed on Mars. We know with the size of the universe there are literally trillions of planets with a diverse composites and environments. We can therefore conclude with reasonable certainty that life probably exists elsewhere in the universe. Spiritual claim: Life on Earth is completely unique. We have never actually seen full solid proof that life exists elsewhere. We are basing this off of the fact that humans have never been anywhere else but our local solar system. God has made people, even if done through the mechanism of evolution, to be special beings. Therefore we can conclude with reasonable certainty that life probably doesn't exist elsewhere. There's a big loving reason that spiritual arguments are always invalid. They rely on a supernatural aspect at some point. If you want to say that just blanket defines and categorizes them, fine. But if magic is part of any argument you are making then it isn't a real argument. Before you get all pissy about me labeling things, spiritual, by definition it means having to do with the soul (explicitly not physical) or religion or religious belief. Show me a single shred of evidence for anything relating to any kind of mysticism to be real. Just one. Then we can entertain arguments not based off of wrong axioms. It's not unscientific in any way. I'm open to and even hoping that we discover some sort of juju that makes humans, or life, or the universe in general have something more going on. But we don't. And disingenuous people like you keep insisting that we entertain arguments based off reality as being equivalent to arguments based on magic. tl;dr Spiritual arguments by definition involve a supernatural element, and equating it to an empirical physical argument is complete bullshit
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Mar 9, 2017 04:16
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Brainiac Five posted:"Supernatural" is not a meaningful term here, because before the discovery of nuclear fusion the means by which the sun gave off heat and light was supernatural, since the sun could not, by any known means, have given off sufficient heat and light to warm the Earth for long enough to be consistent with the fossil record. Escaping to semantic bullshit again? Supernatural would be saying that God gave the sun power and put it in place to give us heat and light. Not knowing how something works doesn't automatically make it supernatural. We can say we just don't know, without automatically filling the gap with magic. Do we know how quantum physics works? Not really yet. That doesn't make it supernatural. Saying God is intervening and loving with scientists on a tiny level is a supernatural explanation. If we had evidence for anything similar to a god or mysticism I would concede that supernatural things exists. We don't have any evidence of this though. It's unfortunate that secular discoveries continuously contradict every spiritual claim they come up against, but that is the world we live in. Maybe if life worked like an anime or fantasy novel things would be different, but that's not the reality we live in. Lighting, the sun, earthquakes, eclipses, plagues, fire, wind, and life itself have been interpreted supernaturally for the majority of human history. It's very recent that we realized that there are non-mystical explanations for why diseases spread, how combustion works, why the wind blows, how fission works, cellular biology, etc. The history of discovery shows that yes, supernatural explanations for phenomenon are wrong and a natural process can explain and predict these phenomenon better. That doesn't mean that we can never have supernatural things happen, it just means it hasn't happened yet and we don't have any reason to think they ever will. There's a lot of events that any god, from omnipotent to a tiny Shinto yokai, could perform that would clear all of this up. Until that time, we should probably reject any supernatural explanations. It's only a rigged argument because one side has never been able to answer the call for evidence.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:55
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TomViolence posted:To put another slant on things, the scientific worldview used to mean acknowledging all things are possible, these days it seems it's been appropriated towards whittling away the very idea of possibility itself, narrowing our imaginative horizons and banalising the world to promote a paralysing, pedantic sociocultural stasis. For this reason the left should be more hostile to the turgid scientific (or, more properly, science-fetishist) chauvinism of the new atheists and more open to religion, because at least religion posits an alternative vision of the world beyond the stagnant, exhausted cultural landscape of the early 21st century. How... what? You do understand science is more of a process than a philosophy? Science is a way to test how things work, not acknowledging all things are possible. Once we learned how poo poo actually worked, we developed things like medicine and physics and chemistry. We then make use of that knowledge in applications like medical treatments and new technology. The problem is we are leaning so much so quickly that nobody can keep up with every discipline. We double our knowledge in a period of decades. It's impossible to learn everything. At the same time these disciplines are interconnected. The reason why evolution is such a strong theory is because biology, chemistry, geology, and other disciplines all contribute to aging and placing fossils and understanding the cellular mechanisms for how changes take place. With a constantly building mountain of evidence that almost exclusively supports well established theories, it takes some crazy rear end discoveries to make any drastic changes at this point. I agree that narratives are important to society, but we don't have to create new myths, we can just educate better. However, serious assholery is definitely a problem with many public atheists. Dawkins, Hitchens (was), and internet edgelords can be serious dicks. This seems to be an issue of people that are the loudest proponents of anything though, so I'm not sure that's a full indictment of atheism.
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Mar 9, 2017 12:47
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Brainiac Five posted:These are a lot of words to repeat what you've already said, which is that "supernatural" does not actually mean "beyond what is natural/known" but really means "something I have concluded is impossible a priori". You will undoubtedly respond that your definition is actually "anything which involves magic", never defining "magic", placing the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot and other cryptids firmly in the realm of the natural, alongside UFO encounters. What we have here is more or less a fetishized science, where whether you can see yourself loving a test-tube in relation to something is what's really important. You still keep obfuscating the point intentionally. I'm using the regular definition for supernatural, you just refuse to accept that is what the word means. Things that are supernatural: gods, ghosts, spirits, auras, magic, psychic powers. Magic can easily be defined as creation or use of energy via a spiritual mechanism. Healing from a prayer, using Gaia to make plants grow, connecting the "the spirit world", casting a spell that actually does something, a whole poo poo load of things would count as magic. Kooks who believe cryptozoology and UFO abductions are much closer to conspiracy theorists than supernatural believers. People that believe shapeshifting lizards control the mechanisms of power doesn't have anything to do with supernatural, even if it is crazy as poo poo. The lizards are supposed to be aliens or something and use superior technology to fool us all. It's crazy town and horribly wrong, but it doesn't have to be supernatural to be wrong. It can still be unscientific without being magic. How about you stop hiding behind your pedantic definition goalpost shifting and posit why we should treat spiritual claims with the same validity as tested natural claims. You haven't responded to that at all yet. You just keep trying to shift the definitions of spiritual and supernatural to fit your straw man tear downs no one else is actually promoting.
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Mar 9, 2017 19:47
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Please stop getting sucked into B5's endless holy war against perceived threats to his ego. Please, please just put him on ignore, he will go away. This was a not-terrible thread before he showed up and we can turn it around if we believe hard enough. I agree, but they problem is almost everyone mostly in agreement. Don't be assholes to religious people irl, things like liberation theology have a long intertwined history on the left, and that maybe religious claims are all inherently silly on some level. Brainiac 5 takes these ideas and says so you are saying religious people are all crazy, and that we can't just dismiss magic out of hand for *reasons*. Back on topic I think that eventually there will be more conflict between the left and religion. It never has to be violent or involve taking away people's rights, but as we expand our knowledge of the universe it will inevitably start conflicting with religion more. As we move toward gender equality and LGBTQ equality, there will be huge speed bumps in the form of religious pushback, even from non extreme sects. The Catholic Church has never and plans to never, allow a female pope. Never been a female Dalai Lama. Never been a female run caliphate. This a serious issue, and these organizations can hide behind their traditions to keep women from positions of power and reinforce their second class gender roles.
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Mar 10, 2017 05:28
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Shbobdb posted:The real question we should be asking is whether religion is hostile to leftism? People like Francis because it was a shift to a nice old conservative guy from literally the evil Star Wars emperor. He also occasionally pushes good things before reminding us all that no, women are not equal in the eyes of the Church.
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Mar 10, 2017 10:43
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Bolocko posted:LOL Well not only were they strikingly alike in appearance, but also actions. Like Palpatine, he had his underlings use light sabers on children and protected them from legal consequences.
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Mar 10, 2017 12:51
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rudatron posted:It's also weird to bring up black churches as proof of success, when you're dealing with a racial struggle that has also racially segregated religious structures. Had those churches not existed, would that struggle not have existed? I doubt it. But turn it around - what about the role of religious institutions in white oppression? Can you honestly say that, on balance, the existence of quote unquote religion actually helped the situation? I doubt it. People intimating that black churches are proof of success is incredibly strange. They were born out of oppression supported by white churches, and the reason they were Christian at all in the first place was their master's were all Christian. The Bible was one of the strongest defenses for American slavery. Both indentured servitude and chattel slavery are considered a-ok by God, and the plantation owners in the South can use those passages very easily to prove they aren't immoral monsters. It's impossible to accurately partition every one of the millions of variations of religions into neat good and bad categories. However, the overall trend seems to link increasing religiosity with being a shittier person/society. Just take a look at this Pew breakdown of votes by religious affiliation where it seems like religious people vote in asshats. Trump and Bush rode in on a train of highly religious people. They got 79/81 percent of the evangelical vote. Trump got 58% of the general Protestant vote, and 61% of the Mormon vote. He only got 26% of the non-religious vote, and only 24% of the Jewish vote which is a far more secular practice than the overwhelming majority of Christian denominations in the USA. Obviously these numbers aren't a bash on every religious person (except maybe White Evangelicals, yikes), but it does intimate that being less secular leads to shittier outcomes.
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Mar 10, 2017 20:31
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Main Paineframe posted:Are you both seriously saying that all religion is downright evil because white Christians are more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidates? Putting aside the mountain of things you're taking for granted in that conclusion, what about the fact that the data doesn't support it? I notice that "Hispanic Catholics" are just as likely to vote for the Democratic candidate as the non-religious voter, and the overall Catholic lean toward the Republican is largely the result of the fact that "White Catholics" heavily skew Republican. The other religions aren't broken out by race, but the fact that they specifically called out white evangelicals for the heaviest Republican leanings rather than all evangelicals suggests that the trend holds true for more than just Catholics. I never said that religious people were evil. I said increased religiosity tends to correlate with shittier decisions, like voting in Republicans. I agree racism is a huge factor in voting R, and Hispanic voters voting against the party that is literally tearing children from their parent's arms isn't surprising. Hispanic Catholics vote D largely for this reason. If you want to break down more specifics, here's a breakdown of Hispanic Americans by Pew It sure is a wild coincidence that religiously unaffiliated Hispanics have a higher portion of registered Democrats, favor the right to choose, think men don't get the final say in the household, favor same sex marriage more, etc. If you want to look for positive data that secularism has better social consequences, it's pretty amazing that atheists make up .1% of this prison population while representing 3.1% of the total population. I'm not arguing atheism automatically makes people more moral. People that identify as atheist are far more likely to be educated and not poor, making them far less likely to commit crimes in the first place. But still that's pretty striking.
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Mar 10, 2017 23:11
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CountFosco posted:Religious claims about reality are only in conflict to the degree that they are incompatible with reality. I believe that the Universe was created, and this is compatible with the claims of science about reality, vis a vis the big bang. What claims religion makes about human beings is inconsistently in conflict with the social sciences, given that the social sciences give no uniform/universal statement on human existence, and at times I'm sure there can be no agreements. Besides, I can present to you any number of scientists who would laugh at the idea of "social science." Moral philosophy is distinct from religious claims about morality in a similar way. This argument only works because we allow a shifting definition for what religion is. Religion is a hodgepodge of rituals, traditions, community structure, epistemology, and other philosophy. If religion went by the wayside, we wouldn't automatically abandon all of our other ethics and societal structures. Applying science to ethical philosophy actually makes some sense. It can test the implications for philosophical ideas on the real world. Does a karmic interpretation, sin and salvation interpretation, a secular humanist interpretation, etc. result in a more cohesive society with less crime, more equality, happier people, etc.? We can use scientific methods to determine these things. Religion always gets to sit in a special place where it gets to be whatever it wants to avoid crippling criticism. It gets to make materials claims, but those claims are judged based on a sliding scale of how much metaphor it is, directly linked to how much science knows about the topic. It gets to make spiritual claims that can't be challenged because you can't prove a negative. It gets to issue social philosophy based on the merit of it's material and spiritual claims. When the material claims are criticized, the definition shifts more towards a spiritual vehicle that helps push ethical social philosophy. When the spiritual claims are criticized, it shifts more to a social philosophy that promotes morals. When the social philosophies are criticized, it's pointed out that religion is more of a personal spiritual connection. Because religions get to shift what they are focused on, they get to equate themselves to schools of thought, full time charities, and moral social structures, despite not exactly being any of those three.
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Mar 11, 2017 21:01
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Confounding Factor posted:I agree, I think authentic Christianity at its core is radically revolutionary and anti-capitalist. The worst kind of Christianity is one that breeds a kind of quietism when rather it should be about changing the world. When Christianity started it was spread by those who cared for others without any regard for their own safety (or even their family's). If every Christian today took up the same ethos, the world would change in an instant. Christians should die for atheists, Muslims, etc. The problem is that this is one of many equally valid interpretations of Christianity, and there is no way for you to legitimately assert what is "authentic" Christianity. Jesus professed caring for the poor and the sick, loving your neighbors, taking in strangers, and not killing people as the crux of his message so that's all pretty good stuff. He also said render to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, that slaves should be good slaves in their roles and masters shouldn't beat them too much, and that it's cool for husbands to cheat but not wives. Also early Christians had a way, way, way different concept of monotheism and religion in general. Our modern conception of monotheism wasn't really a thing then, as early Jews and some early Christians viewed Yahweh as the overpoweringly strong God that could crush other Gods. Mysticism was a much larger component of early Christian practices as well. So while I think your version of Christianity is a much better incarnation than conservative evangelicals, one has no more validity than the other. Despite professions that you can't lump denominations together, the existence of moderate sects supports the existence of the extreme sects. It doesn't matter that one might be a more progressive influence on society, when you defend your spirituality as a valid mechanism for helping society you enable all the other interpretations that hurt society.
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Mar 11, 2017 22:06
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CountFosco posted:Cite your sources please, in particular that last one there. For adultery, Jesus said specifically: "5:32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery" Conspicuously absent is any mention of the husband cheating, or that wives even have the option to drop their husbands. He also says it's cool for fathers specifically to abandon their families to come follow him, and these gendered differences persist throughout the entire old and New Testament. For slavery: "Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them." (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT) This poo poo is rampant in the New Testament and then Old specifically lays out pricing for Hebrew and non Hebrew slaves, both of indentured and chattel slavery. The render unto Caesar part is explicitly about paying taxes and following the laws of the land. This isn't a disputed interpretation at all. But this means that Jesus specifically told his followers not to challenge the state and they will be rewarded in the afterlife anyways which is more important. That link is an absolutely outrageous argument because Gregory of Nyssa was an anomaly at the time, and the prevailing dogma for over a millennia was that the Bible has no qualms with slavery. Cherry picking like this makes it seem even weaker that Christianity was the motivating force behind ending slavery. I like that Christianity gets credit for "laying the groundwork" for solving a problem it enabled and supported for the vast majority of it's existence. Truly a fair characterization.
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Mar 11, 2017 22:42
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Cingulate posted:This one read more like a weirdly sex-negative thing to me than allowing men to cheat on their wives. That's one of many quotes where weird sex things just so happen to never mention that male infidelity is a also a bad thing. It's bad enough that sleeping with that cheating woman later also constitutes adultery for her new partner. It's almost like women's "purity" was more important than men's, and that theme exists throughout the entire Bible, and still functions in most Christian sects today. Jesus never said that slavery was a bad thing, despite moralizing in most of his sermons. Also the surrounding writings in both Old Testament and New promote slavery as an acceptable culture norm. This was the prevailing theocratic consensus until the 18th century, and it's disingenuous to claim that there was some overarching abolitionist movement from early Christians to the Enlightenment. This also constitutes more of the rhetorical shifting I was mentioning. Jesus was God, and therefore would never do something like accept slavery as an ok norm. He spoke spiritually about the liberation of the soul and God's equal love for all people. So of course it's not fair to say that Jesus was cool with slavery. But when the Bible says slavery is ok, that's just a social structure issue in that the Roman and ancient cultures had slavery all over the place and that was a reality of society. You get to have it both ways every time, and that's why atheists have an issue with religious arguments.
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Mar 12, 2017 01:37
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Cingulate posted:I'm not sure I get what point exactly you're making. I see my argument didn't convince you, but what exactly would you say? That the Bible is pro-slavery? That Jesus was? I was responding to an assertion that Christianity was the impetus for abolition. I was arguing that isn't the case, and it's kind of bullshit to imply that when Christianity was a pillar holding up institutional slavey in the West. I would actually say that the Bible is definitely pro-slavery. There is a mountain of textual and historical evidence that supports this. By extension, Jesus was also an enabler of slavery. He had many opportunities to speak out against the evils of slavery, but didn't. He also supported the traditions of the Hebrew people, despite explicitly changing some practices, like sacrifices. I wouldn't say Jesus was going around promoting the enslavement of people, but he certainly didn't seem to be against it either.
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Mar 12, 2017 02:10
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Cingulate posted:Well that the Bible is not explicitly abolitionist doesn't show the Bible can't have inspired the abolitionists right? The Bible also doesn't mention stem cell research after all, and IIRC it's actually pretty quiet on the abortion thing. It's not that the Bible isn't abolitionist, it's that it explicitly supports the idea of slavery as part of a normal, faithful society. Sure you can say it's a product of its time, but the fact that the Bible is simply not good on the issue of slavery remains. It endorses the monstrous act repeatedly in the Old and New Testament. That doesn't mean that no Christian groups weren't abolitionist, it means the source of that sect or person being against slavery doesn't come from their religion. The Bible is horribly wrong with basically every biological statement it made, it was written millennia before people even knew that cells existed. It's not surprising it has nothing to say on the matter of modern biology nuances. The only time the Bible even mentions anything like abortion, it's nothing like the anti-choicers today. It says the punishment for a man striking a woman and causing her to miscarry is just a fine. Also in Numbers 5 the Bible says priests should perform abortions on fetuses that are the product of adultery. Once again, the problem is that biblical support for abolition can be countered with biblical support for slavery. CountFosco posted:The pillar holding up institutional slavery in the West, and in fact the entire world, is the human desire to have other humans do your chores and work for you. I never said Christianity was the source of slavery, that had been around for thousands of years before even Judaism was a thing. It was a pillar by acting as a an incredibly powerful social structure and moral arbiter that was okay with slavery.
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Mar 12, 2017 07:37
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Bolocko posted:Someone's been digging their mitts through the NIV again, I see. Is there a translation for this that isn't incredibly sexist? That whole section is about removing the tainted purity curse from women who commit adultery. They will be barren and a curse upon their people without the special ceremony with the priest. The passage taken in entirety in its context is pretty terrible, even without the fetus removal part.
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Mar 12, 2017 08:13
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Bolocko posted:Nah, there's major sexual asymmetry here: there's no equivalent of this procedure for a man if he was suspected of straying. On the other hand, if found "guilty" by this procedure she'd not still be sentenced to capital punishment, but only shamed and, likely, divorced. (If CAUGHT in the act of adultery, man and woman alike were due death.) I appreciate that you took a respectful consideration of the intent of my argument. I know I might come off kind of harsh sometimes, so I should reiterate that I don't think religious people are all crazy, stupid, or delusional. I think that they are mistaken about things, but this doesn't mean they are all bad people or anything. My drive to argue against religion isn't a vendetta against an extremist upbringing. My parents are moderately Protestant, and we only sporadically and briefly attended church. I've attended a variety of other services, mostly because of summer camps or hanging out with friends who went to them. I've also taken some classes in religious and literature studies, and I read the Bible in its entirety but it's been over a decade so I'm shaky on the details so I have to google passages, which is how I ended up using the NIV which is admittedly a kookier translation. I argue against religion because it is mostly a distraction and a waste of effort and time. I want humanity to better itself, and more importantly survive. Climate change denial is a creation of the fossil fuel industry, but the main tool they use is religious dogma. Anti-science attitudes are undeniably fostered by religions and mystical thinking, and this leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. The idea of an ethereal soul becomes silly when you look at how the universe is constructed. Sure you can say God started the Big Bang and guided evolution, retaining a spiritual angle while mostly accepting the science. But what we now know to be true about the universe, and biology, does actually throw a wrench into the entire paradigm of spirituality. We know evolution, taking place over billions of years, happened. We are probably more scientifically certain of this fact than we are of any other scientific claim in the history of mankind, including things like gravity. All life on earth developed from single celled organisms, so when in evolutionary history does the soul come in? Does every single living entity have a soul, down to bacteria and parameciums? What about things that aren't exactly living but kind of are like viruses? Does the flu have a soul? Even with just humans this is an issue. Do our ape cousins have souls? What about neanderthals? What about homo erectus, homo habilius, or any of the transitional hominids? These sort of details are never answered, where does the God part come in exactly? And also it's difficult to ignore that humans can literally only live on about 25% of the surface of Earth. On a single planet in a solar system of eight planets, which is one of a hundred billion solar systems in the Milky Way, which is one of a hundred billion galaxies, which could potentially be part of a bubble universe or something we aren't sure on the full scope of existence yet. This massive scale of time, life, and space is absolutely nothing like what is described in religions, and it seems to show that humans and earth are very likely a nothing blip in the scope of the universe. And not some predestined or lucky random one in a billion chance, literally next to nothing. If we don't expand to the stars, it is 100% certain humans will go extinct eventually even if it's billions of years in the future (even though by nature of evolution over that time scale and our self destructive tendencies, lol at humans existing that far out). When this inevitable event occurs, it is extremely likely that nothing will happen. The universe will carry on and humans will have been nothing. An estimated 99% of all species that ever existed on Earth have gone extinct, and there hasn't been any divine intervention yet, so why would humans be any different. With the core axioms of spirituality being wrong, everything spiraling out of it is twisted or vulnerable. There are no real answers to be found through religion. Praying doesn't do much except for self reflection. Prayer healing does not actually heal anyone, and any effort spent praying for a sick person could be spent volunteering, donating, or even slacktivism raising awareness for a disease or a hospital would have actual benefit to people that need it. This applies to almost all aspects of religions where the effort put in would be more effective in a secular execution including feeding the hungry, educating children, and charity work in general. God didn't guide us here, we clawed out way through mass extinction events and chaos. We only get one shot at life, and it is brief and difficult. I want people to have the most accurate view of reality so that they can make better decisions for themselves, society, and future generations. When you realize our tenuous position in the universe, shifting away from spirituality becomes pertinent.
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Mar 12, 2017 12:56
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Cingulate posted:I'm making a very simple and weak point: the Bible isn't explicitly abolitionist, and it tacitly approves of a contemporary praxis of existing slavery. Could have been better, could have been worse (e.g. explicitly endorse slavery). It's not just Paul. Essentially the entire Bible treats women as secondary to men. If that is your point is an incredibly weak one. While it is possible for one to come to an abolitionist interpretation, one has to ignore huge chunks of the text and history that explicitly support the practice. After filtering the teachings through centuries of translations and shifting cultural perspectives, you can sort of argue that metaphorically God wanted people to be free, when you quote passages originally having nothing to do with slavery and say those metaphorical spiritual ideas can be used despite the original text and Jesus himself never doing so. So I would posit, why start from the Christian position from the first place? Why does one have to ignore explicit teachings and ideas to reshape the religion to apply to the modern world? Why does one have to rules lawyer and apologia in order to make Christianity not be a horrendous faith? It's a lot of effort to force outdated and disproven ideas into the modern era.
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Mar 12, 2017 19:33
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Cingulate posted:It does , but most of that is just the Bible coming from an ordinary bronze/iron age society, almost all of which treated women as second class citizens. I agree with this sentiment completely. Paul had a special place in his heart for sexism and promoted it joyfully. He also never even met Jesus so I always wondered why he was given so much importance, besides that he helped spread early Christianity. Cingulate posted:I think passages such as "love your neighbor as you love yourself" are very hard to reconcile with slavery for us. It's certainly possible, but if you took just the Golden Rule as your moral foundations, wouldn't you have to go into some extreme mental contortions to arrive at slavery? I agree as well that the Golden Rule is a pretty solid foundation. The New Testament does repeatedly hammer home that non Jews, the poor, and the sick are all equal in the eyes of God. It would seem that enslaving people would be treating them with partiality, which is also repeatedly decried as going against God's wishes. It's one example of many where the Bible has little internal consistency, making it a suspect source as a moral guidepost. Cingulate posted:Christianity is first of all a part of reality. You can argue about it as much as you want, it's there and a significant factor in 1 billion people's lives. I never meant to imply that Christianity isn't a large part of our political and cultural history, or that it isn't important to a billion people. You've been pretty open and honest in our discussion, I don't feel that you aren't being fair and I hope you feel that is reciprocated. I am actually trying to argue that the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general fall on the side of "bad" things. I wouldn't try to argue for the Bible being evil either, that's not what I'm trying to say. Religion has a lot of positive impact both in communities and individual lives, but ultimately I think that bad outweighs the good. I don't want to crush religion, it is a fascinating part of our culture and history. In a hypothetical, I would want to educate all of the world to have at minimum a lower college level knowledge of history, physical sciences, and social sciences. After a few generations of all children being well educated and have critical thinking skills, religion would slowly fade to historical myths. The trend in countries that have high levels of science competency and education is massively increased secularism. Japan, New Zealand, Scandinavian countries, etc. have been doing far better than the U.S. in education, and they have been more or less peacefully transitioning into agnostic/atheist societies. And while they still have a lot of cultural issues of equality (Japan and LGBTQ people, hatred of Romanian people for Europe, etc.), they overall seem to have better track record with civil rights than both the United States and essentially every nation with high religiosity. Bringing it back to the topic of leftism and religion, being less religious generally makes it easier to enact social progress. This is especially true in America with its diverse population. Ascribing to specific religions creates divisions between people, often carrying historical baggage of hate between the groups (hello, Ireland and Pakistan). The kicker here is converts to a religion can inherit that hate even if their ancestors/living relations haven't been hurt by the conflict. Religions are also by nature conservative. They are based on traditions, and require traditions to continue to survive. This creates a resistance to change on both the structural level as religions hold economic and political influence, and also on personal levels as it's devotees accept and embrace tradition. Traditions aren't always a bad thing, but being firmly entrenched with the backing of God himself means that enacting change in those people's minds will be that much harder for anything they perceive, or are told, goes against their honored traditions. As a society becomes less bound by mysticism, it can focus more on changing social structures and adapting for the future. Moving away from religion is a step towards unity, where everyone can agree on the basic facts of reality and move forward from there. E: for missing quote bracket RasperFat fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 01:29
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Brainiac Five posted:Why is a monocultural society an ideal one? How do you get monoculture out of unity? That's a pretty extreme version of unity they was in no way implied. Why would an atheist from the boondocks of Siberia be culturally identical to an atheist from New Jersey Suburbia or an atheist from Beijing? Unity means we aren't fighting each other and work towards some common goals. Like, you know, the United States where every state is known for being exactly the same. Or the United Nations that is also known for trying to make its member states all culturally identical. Brainiac Five posted:In a world without religion, there's no such thing as Jewishness, since it is the shared relationship to the Jewish faith which binds together the disparate Jewish people. Desire to eliminate religion is of necessity desire to eliminate Jewishness. Please don't do this. It's stupid as hell nobody is trying to argue this Nazi poo poo except for you.
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Mar 13, 2017 05:23
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OwlFancier posted:I think if you're serious about creating a unified group you really do need to go monocultural. Neither of those two examples are especially known for their co-operative nature. Certainly if you're proposing eradicating religion to foster greater unity, you have many, many other targets which are just as, if not more legitimate. I feel like eradicate is too strong of a word for peacefully phasing out, with education, over a period of decades. I would hope we eventually have some level of monoculture, but that would probably just be some Star Trek-esque world government where everyone operates under the same government and laws. This is mostly a fantasy utopia though and I don't see it happening anywhere close to my lifetime, if ever. I've never said that eradicating religion should be a priority or even be part of a political plan, the optics are terrible. At the beginning of the thread I said the need for progressive and protective actions are way more important than alienating religion. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to encourage secular thought over religious thought though. Overall the U.S. and the U.N. have done pretty well internally as far as unity goes. Only one violent transition of power in the U.S.'s 200 year history. No major powers have had direct conflict since the creation of the U.N. Of course there's been internal disagreements and lovely things done, but that doesn't mean they aren't more unified than if the U.S was divided into different nations or the U.N. didn't exist. Our primary focus for leftism, as it has almost always been, is the rich. The greedy assholes at the top have rigged things against the 99+% below them and that's by far the biggest priority target. Religion is just one of the many tools of oppression coopted and abused by the powerful. "Prosperity Gospel" bullshit is a good example, and it is believed by a striking number of Americans. What Americans think about God 25% of Americans believe in Prosperity Gospel, and a whopping 37% of Evangelicals. Also quite insidious that poor people are at 28% and rich people at 20%, which is 40% more likely for the poor. Literally one in four poor people in America believes God will reward them with money for praising him/following his spiritual path correctly. Also only 47% of Americans accept that evolution is a real thing. The opposition is nearly 100% religious in nature. If we can't even get more than half the country to accept basic facts of reality, how are we going to elect sane and competent leaders? This does actually directly tie into politics, because conservative assholes they deny evolution on religious grounds also deny that poisoning our waterways and blasting chemicals into the ground is no biggie because God can fix anything anyways. It might not be the biggest or first obstacle, but it's definitely still an obstacle. A gigantic population of people devoutly believing this nonsense, or being susceptible to similar nonsense, is a deterrent to equality and progress.
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Mar 13, 2017 09:17
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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.