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It’s been ages since I’ve seen a religious debate thread, so I think we’re due for one. I’m pretty staunchly atheist myself, and have been since middle school. I wasn’t raised particularly religious or non-religious, just attended church sometimes and my parents stopped having me and my brother attend when we said we didn’t want to go. So there’s no abusive or oppressive personal history to make me hate religion. It just always seemed like bullshit to me. I didn’t realize that Biblical stories were supposed to be any more real than bed time stories, I thought it was supposed to be purely allegorical until I was 6 or 7. As I got older, the plausibility of anything supernatural seemed more and more farfetched. Both the history of civilization and the discoveries of science made the idea of any god, gods, or spirits existing dwindle into an infinitesimally small probability. But why does that matter? Who cares what people’s religious beliefs are? It matters to me because I want my fellow people to be able to make informed decisions for themselves and their loved ones. Including the supernatural in your perception of reality will always distort the truth. This can lead to extreme examples like prayer healing obfuscating actual medical care, but the more mundane effects seem to be mostly negative as well. There’s also a huge problem in that the major organized religions almost all catalyze authoritarianism by design. Making a framework of a powerful creator willing humans, life, or even the universe in general into existence is not only hubristic, but sets up unbalanced power dynamics as good and normal. Ultimately I think religion is bad for modern society and should be discouraged. The way to do this though is through education and media, not through any oppressive or violent means, just in case anyone wants to lump this perspective in with assholes like Hitchens or Dawkins. I’m always open to good religious discussions. I’ve had some good conversations with pantheon worshippers and liberation theology advocates, even if we never end up agreeing at the end.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:36
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Rest in peace, James Randi.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:44
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Animal-Mother posted:Rest in peace, James Randi. poo poo I hadn’t heard that he died it just happened yesterday  Unless he was one of those douches that got into anti-feminism, which was a depressingly high number of the old white men involved publicly with atheism over the last few decades. Then gently caress him.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:49
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american protestantism is an actual, literal, cult of moloch that delights in suffering and cruelty otoh, liberation theology is pretty cool in conclusion, religion is a land of contrasts
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Oct 22, 2020 19:53
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RasperFat posted:poo poo I hadn’t heard that he died it just happened yesterday he came out as gay at like 86 or something, I dont think he turned into a dick dorkins, seems like he just spent the last few years being a very very old man and probably napping a lot
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Oct 22, 2020 19:57
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TheDon01 posted:he came out as gay at like 86 or something, I dont think he turned into a dick dorkins, seems like he just spent the last few years being a very very old man and probably napping a lot That’s a relief. I hadn’t followed any of the YT atheists in like a decade plus, but I remember being disappointed recently when I heard that Aron Ra was apparently being a douche about trans people. He always seemed like one of the good ones.
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Oct 22, 2020 20:02
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RasperFat posted:Aron Ra wow that takes me back anyway all you need to know about atheism as a movement is that Rebecca Watson went from being the premier lady atheist online celebrity to dumpster tier vlogger for the crime of telling men to maybe not follow women to their hotel rooms unprompted past midnight
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Oct 22, 2020 21:27
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james randi shifted his goalposts regarding what counts as "supernatural" or "verifiable through experiment" numerous times. there have been some pretty compelling studies done on things like telepathy and psychokinesis but since they weren't flat out "people moving chairs with their minds" he refused to give away the money. his shtick was a bit of a gimmick imo. sad he died though, dying is sad unless you're a monster.
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Oct 22, 2020 21:38
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TheLemonOfIchabod posted:james randi shifted his goalposts regarding what counts as "supernatural" or "verifiable through experiment" numerous times. there have been some pretty compelling studies done on things like telepathy and psychokinesis but since they weren't flat out "people moving chairs with their minds" he refused to give away the money. his shtick was a bit of a gimmick imo. Do you have a link to the studies that say telepathy and psychokinesis are possible? Because that would be pretty cool. Regardless even if those abilities were demonstrated there’s a very small chance it has anything to do with the supernatural. To move objects around requires interacting with the energy in our universe, which means it should be measurable and have a mechanism that works with our physics. It’s the same thing with telepathy. Our brains work via physical cells, thus communication via telepathy must also act on those cells with some sort of energy.
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Oct 22, 2020 21:45
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RasperFat posted:It’s been ages since I’ve seen a religious debate thread, so I think we’re due for one. we're mostly poisoned by the combination of the roman state religion (a set of religious ceremonies which are obligatory for participation in the state but only later exclusive with any other worship) and second temple era jewish nationalist monolaterialism (of many available gods this particular nation should only worship this god and establish a common national state for itself on this basis) into imperialist monotheism that isn't really the definition of religion outside of the west (ie, has its cultural roots in the areas influenced by egypt, mesopotamia, greece/rome, and judaism) japan tried it and general seems to have reacted to the result on a moral/spiritual level with a sort of recognition that it twists everything holy into an abomination. however, that doesn't get rid of it, because it is inherent in the nation-state model and the attempt to step back into feudalism only strengthens it because it is simply the perfection and resolution of feudalism so yeah what we call religion has to die, but mostly our idea of this one spiritual truth embodied in a small cannon of texts (the literal disagreement with which is explicit in the bible but easily obscured if it remains a distant mysterious text; one of the many notable ironies of the situation). the "smart people arguing with god in socratic dialogue" model on the other hand, is cool, and also good.
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Oct 22, 2020 21:50
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TheLemonOfIchabod posted:james randi shifted his goalposts regarding what counts as "supernatural" or "verifiable through experiment" numerous times. there have been some pretty compelling studies done on things like telepathy and psychokinesis but since they weren't flat out "people moving chairs with their minds" he refused to give away the money. his shtick was a bit of a gimmick imo. i don't know what these compelling studies on telepathy and psychokinesis would be, but iirc, to get randi's money, you just had to demonstrate your thing in a controlled environment with conditions that both you and randi agreed to in advance any genuine telepath could have taken him to the cleaners
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Oct 22, 2020 21:51
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RasperFat posted:Do you have a link to the studies that say telepathy and psychokinesis are possible? Because that would be pretty cool. There is one notable experiment regarding psychokinesis but I am forgetting the name. The most famous experiment that is cited and debated regarding telepathy is the Ganzfeld experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment Obviously, you'll see the disclaimer there that it's never been "consistently" and "independently replicated", but I resist the idea that something like telepathy, which inherently requires the involvement of energies below or at the threshold of conscious perception, can be consistently measured and replicated in a laboratory setting. I have seen enough information regarding the various forms of the Ganzfeld experiment to feel, personally, that there is something there, even if it is not at the point of people broadcasting entire speeches to each other. I agree completely with your materialist interpretation of how telepathy or psychokinesis would work. But I think a lot of religion and spirituality just puts a name to that which can't yet be verified through experiment, and I think people like Randi make a mistake just dismissing that field of inquiry entirely. Then again, I also think there's a possibility that ghosts or something like them are real, which I know gets me called nuts offhand by a lot of people, so take what you agree with and dismiss the rest.
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Oct 22, 2020 21:56
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RasperFat posted:Do you have a link to the studies that say telepathy and psychokinesis are possible? Because that would be pretty cool. This is putting a lot of faith in physics
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Oct 22, 2020 21:56
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Hodgepodge posted:we're mostly poisoned by the combination of the roman state religion (a set of religious ceremonies which are obligatory for participation in the state but only later exclusive with any other worship) and second temple era jewish nationalist monolaterialism (of many available gods this particular nation should only worship this god and establish a common national state for itself on this basis) into imperialist monotheism I find the same problematic aspects of Abrahamic religions to exist in the unconnected Asian religions as well. Both Hinduism and Confuscianism explicitly endorse imbalanced class structure and gender roles. Even Buddhism has some weird stuff. Like, The Dalai Lama is basically kidnapped from his parents as a toddler because he happened to pick the right toys. While it’s entirely possible that illuminating dialectics could be born from spiritual experiences, I’d always be wary because the foundation for those discoveries is so unrepeatable and ambiguous.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:02
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Also, skeptics should keep in mind that a lot of supernatural or occult phenomena are just reframings of things that everyone agrees are possible. For example, it can be difficult to draw the line between "seeing or divining the future" vs. "logically extrapolating where things are going" vs. "focusing on a conscious intention or fantasy and then acting in such a way as to bring it about."
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Oct 22, 2020 22:03
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Dustcat posted:i don't know what these compelling studies on telepathy and psychokinesis would be, but iirc, to get randi's money, you just had to demonstrate your thing in a controlled environment with conditions that both you and randi agreed to in advance it really depends on what precisely is being claimed and how good the experiment design is randi being the guy with $1m on offer gives him a lot of extra weight in negotiating experiment design. that's fine in that there are a lot of cranks out there who are incapable of being honest about methodology. on the other hand the actual point is not to formulate a means by which to test some interesting but implausible hypothesis, but to demonstrate through spectacle that akira is not a documentary. good job yeah you proved that a real telepath in the sense we like to dream about wouldn't need to prove poo poo after they gave you a swirly and stuffed you into a locker with their powerful bodymind. but instead he, with his rationality, is the alpha. because of the rationality. we are not here because he has a million dollar carrot to lead us around with. it's the powerful rational mind for sure.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:05
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Dustcat posted:i don't know what these compelling studies on telepathy and psychokinesis would be, but iirc, to get randi's money, you just had to demonstrate your thing in a controlled environment with conditions that both you and randi agreed to in advance my problem is with the entire concepts of a "controlled environment" and "genuine telepath." when you are talking about things that are inherently "extrasensory" then your typical means of relying on your senses aren't really going to work to prove their existence, augmented through technical instruments or otherwise. Perhaps we can come up with instruments that prove them someday, but we don't have those yet. i don't want to be too hard on randi, since people like uri geller are obvious frauds, and i also haven't read enough about randi recently to speak with a ton of authority, but from what i know there were some ambiguous cases where the question of what counted as "supernatural" seemed to change depending on his mood.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:07
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Zongerian posted:This is putting a lot of faith in physics Physics might not be the best word exactly, but the basis of telekinesis is that matter is moved/directed to move by a conscious mind, and however that happens it requires energy to be exerted in our dimension that would have a measurable effect. TheLemonOfIchabod posted:There is one notable experiment regarding psychokinesis but I am forgetting the name. The most famous experiment that is cited and debated regarding telepathy is the Ganzfeld experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment Thanks for the link. I don’t fully 100% reject that ghosts and spirits exist, it’s just that there’s no evidence that’s been yet discovered. I lean towards them not existing because it seems extremely unlikely that humans have souls or any coherent energy that persists beyond death, so the idea of poltergeists seem pretty implausible. The ghost stuff gets especially weird if we try to include them in tandem with the facts of evolutionary biology. Like, could our Homo Erectus ancestors become ghosts? What about our Bonobo cousins? Do viruses and bacteria contain the same supernatural energy? We share a common ancestor so it would be weird for them not to.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:11
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RasperFat posted:Thanks for the link. I don't really think of ghosts as stable entities or souls that retain consciousness after death and maintain a continuous eye on the living, no. But I think the possibility of matter and energy combining in such a way as to reproduce the trace of a once-living consciousness shouldn't be dismissed. And even if it's "just" a reproduction, would it matter if that recreated "spirit" could come into contact with the memory of its former life (for example, a memory that a surviving loved one retained)? I don't think ghosts really exist without people who would interact with them and perceive them as ghosts. For that reason, I think animals or other life-forms could absolutely come back as "spirits" in the sense that I mean here, but they would be unlikely to be recognized as such by us (except maybe in the case of a pet or something).
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Oct 22, 2020 22:27
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RasperFat posted:I find the same problematic aspects of Abrahamic religions to exist in the unconnected Asian religions as well. i'm not sure that's the same. like christians have obviously kidnapped kids from their parents, but not to make them the pope. like think about the class concerns instead of noting that other religions are scary and bad. thinking about the dali lama case is incredibly dishonest in terms of kidnapping because the dali lama has the position in the tibetan class structure of "king." no sane parent in a feudal society would object to their kid being taken to be raised as the single most priviledged and powerful member of their own society. this is simple material analysis: that child gets the very best life possible in your society, your other kids have more to eat. calling it "kidnapping" makes a certain sense from our perspective, but only on an ignorant level, which we might call racism but used to be more specifically bigotry or prejudgment. for contrast, the life of a stage kid inflicts all the abuses we imagine might occur in this case, but occurs due to our deference to the parent-child bond in the face of obvious abuse as long as there is a personal profit, rather than because of what we imagine to be the inherent horror of breaking it even if there is immense profit to the child. the caste system of tibet itself was a horrible nightmare in many respects however. this is the primary justification for colonization by china. china also had a horrible caste system. can this be explained? blaming religion is very much in the spirit of liberalism, because liberalism itself obscures material analysis in spiritual terms. by telling ourselves that the problem is religion, we ironically are saying that the problem is merely a spiritual illness to be exorcised from our minds, not a product of social relationships with a material basis. marx was disappointed in religion, but his diagnosis would be clear: all the religions we are discussing all exist in cultures have recently emerged from long periods as feudal societies. caste systems are a feature of feudal societies, and in such societies the role of religion is to make life tolerable. this is a defining feature of the medieval era (to which europe was very late): caste systems of various shades of horror replace outright slavery as the organizing relationship between classes. not even snarky when observing the rick avatar. the fun thing about rick is that he doesn't believe in gods. rick is also a literal god. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 22:31 on Oct 22, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2020 22:27
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TheLemonOfIchabod posted:my problem is with the entire concepts of a "controlled environment" and "genuine telepath." when you are talking about things that are inherently "extrasensory" then your typical means of relying on your senses aren't really going to work to prove their existence, augmented through technical instruments or otherwise. Perhaps we can come up with instruments that prove them someday, but we don't have those yet. I don't think Randi was trying to measure what forces you used to read minds/move objects, rather that you can do what you claimed in a way that means there is some kind of force that we haven't yet been able to measure. Like if you claim to be able to see into the future with diminishing accuracy the further out you look, you could demonstrate that by having Randi shuffle a deck of cards out of your line of sight and writing down what order all 52 will come up in, something a normal person can't do but should be trivial for someone who actually had precognition. Same thing with telepathy, if you can be in separate rooms and tell what someone is thinking, with a bit more accuracy than a couple of words the same over half an hour, you would win without having to measure whatever thought beams are emanating from people's heads that you can pick up on. This video is a good example, plus has a cool rear end mystic outfit. Flip the phone pages like you did before, but don't disturb the packing peanuts with your breath, actually use your mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CASghTzNhc
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Oct 22, 2020 22:33
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RasperFat posted:Physics might not be the best word exactly, but the basis of telekinesis is that matter is moved/directed to move by a conscious mind, and however that happens it requires energy to be exerted in our dimension that would have a measurable effect. Prove it
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Oct 22, 2020 22:43
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Zongerian posted:Prove it If you move a chair with your mind then the measurable effect is the chair moves. The entire point of showing supernatural poo poo to be real is that others can see it, which means it's measurable, even if the measurement device is a human.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:44
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Hodgepodge posted:i'm not sure that's the same. like christians have obviously kidnapped kids from their parents, but not to make them the pope. like think about the class concerns instead of noting that other religions are scary and bad. thinking about the dali lama case is incredibly dishonest in terms of kidnapping because the dali lama has the position in the tibetan class structure of "king." no sane parent in a feudal society would object to their kid being taken to be raised as the single most priviledged and powerful member of their own society. this is simple material analysis: that child gets the very best life possible in your society, your other kids have more to eat. It’s important to note that I don’t think religion is the source of all societies ills or anything like that. The problem is that it acts as a catalyst for the worst aspects of humanity. Like, look at the hoops you mentally jumped through to make it okay to separate a baby from it’s parents just because it’ll become rich and powerful. Religious thinking also creates resistance to change in general. If you believe god(s) are a part of or creator(s) of our universe, then what we hierarchies are part of your religion will seem natural and good. The obfuscating effect of focusing on religion for class struggle is a double edged sword though. If we focus purely on material needs and outcomes, the narratives that led to those outcomes in the first place remain in tact. Only by completely over hauling our material systems into a socialistic set and moving away from religion can we make permanent progress.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:50
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BitcoinRockefeller posted:I don't think Randi was trying to measure what forces you used to read minds/move objects, rather that you can do what you claimed in a way that means there is some kind of force that we haven't yet been able to measure. Like if you claim to be able to see into the future with diminishing accuracy the further out you look, you could demonstrate that by having Randi shuffle a deck of cards out of your line of sight and writing down what order all 52 will come up in, something a normal person can't do but should be trivial for someone who actually had precognition. Same thing with telepathy, if you can be in separate rooms and tell what someone is thinking, with a bit more accuracy than a couple of words the same over half an hour, you would win without having to measure whatever thought beams are emanating from people's heads that you can pick up on. Thanks for the clip. The guy seems like a bonehead, but his explanation for why his "powers" didn't work actually speaks to what I see as the limitation of Randi's project. There really is no way to prove that this dude cannot in fact move a phone book page with his mind when he is by himself and following a specific procedure that he has established. There is no way to prove that the light or the other conscious minds there in the room without didn't stop him from doing what he seems certain he can do. Personal experience and introspective analysis are very difficult and at times impossible to reconcile with the empirical standards of the scientific method. If something happens in one observer's presence and cannot be replicated for the other observer, it is labeled as false and the effect of "confirmation bias" or something similar. Do I think he can move a phonebook page with his mind alone under any circumstances? Probably not. But setting up an environment that would prove that he could is very difficult.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:50
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Zongerian posted:Prove it Anything that physically moves mass would be observable. Unless you’re suggesting that if someone imagines they can telekinetically float a book in the air it counts because they envisioned it.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:55
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TheLemonOfIchabod posted:my problem is with the entire concepts of a "controlled environment" and "genuine telepath." when you are talking about things that are inherently "extrasensory" then your typical means of relying on your senses aren't really going to work to prove their existence, augmented through technical instruments or otherwise. Perhaps we can come up with instruments that prove them someday, but we don't have those yet.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:56
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Finicums Wake posted:if you're defining extrasensory as something "senses even augmented through technology" cannot detect, then even with better technology, it's true by definition that it can't be detected Come on, you know what I meant. Augmented through current technology.
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Oct 22, 2020 23:00
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RasperFat posted:Anything that physically moves mass would be observable. (citations needed)
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Oct 22, 2020 23:05
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TheLemonOfIchabod posted:Come on, you know what I meant. We have instruments that can detect the claims that psychics make and always have, they are called eyeballs. If we, as humans, cannot see the results of their powers to our satisfaction then why should we believe them?
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Oct 22, 2020 23:06
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Zongerian posted:(citations needed) You need a citation for reality? I’m genuinely confused in what you’re asking for. Or do you think someone could float an object across the room and it becomes invisible or moves through time or something while it’s happening? Do you know what telekinesis is?
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Oct 22, 2020 23:08
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TheLemonOfIchabod posted:Come on, you know what I meant. i just brought it up because i think that excuse will always work no matter what the level of technology being used. or is there a certain point at which you'd say "ok we didn't detect anything, but we really should've been able to by now, so i'm fine concluding ESP [or whatever] doesn't exist"?
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Oct 22, 2020 23:09
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RasperFat posted:You need a citation for reality? Do you
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Oct 22, 2020 23:14
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Zongerian posted:Do you Yeah it would be moving an object with your mind. Would you care to explain how it would be possible for this to happen without being observable?
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Oct 22, 2020 23:18
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You haven't provided any proof to support your claim that it couldn't
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Oct 22, 2020 23:28
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RasperFat posted:It’s important to note that I don’t think religion is the source of all societies ills or anything like that. The problem is that it acts as a catalyst for the worst aspects of humanity. separating a kid from their family for their material benefit is ultimately horrible, yes. what is more horrible is having a king, even a literally enlightened philosopher king. religion didn't create this disparity, and it criticizes it and renders it explicit just as often as it obscures it. however, all this is ultimately to say that as a means of truly creating justice and ending suffering, it has failed. in a sense, the horror of the situation is that the vast disparity is made explicit when an effectively random infant is chosen as king when, in principle, he may have otherwise starved to death. the sheer leverage of wealth and power is evil, but this evil we see here in the example of a small agrarian feudal monastic kingdom was crushed utterly by the evil of the vastly greater power disparity inherent in colonialism. it is true that religion obscures power relationships; one of the ways it does so is by selective criticism of religion from a nominally neutral standpoint. even if we're doing so as a thought exercise to further discussion, the point of criticism of former tibetan practices is not in any meaningful sense to determine a political position on the subject. our ability to do so in good faith amoung ourselves masks the purpose of directing our criticism at an indigenous and colonized culture in order to obscure the fact that our own relationship to that culture and others is far more monsterous. our own society takes kids from poor parents for their own material benefit on a vast scale, outside of what we imagine are the excessive moments of the residential schools system and such. child protection began as an explicitly religious impulse to protect children from abuse. it does this to some extent, but it mostly functions just as much to funnel poor kids into the hands of abusers. cps is, of course, formally a wholly secular operation in most places now, but the ideology, good will, and hard work of a given social worker at best are allowed to attempt to fight for good outcomes and at the worst conspire to create just another cop. Hodgepodge has issued a correction as of 23:50 on Oct 22, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2020 23:33
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im a practicing hermetic priest and an alchemist throwing up stones sucks
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Oct 22, 2020 23:33
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if you cant detect when someones doing psychic poo poo then its a little bit pointless innit. i mean if noone can tell whether youre doing it or not why bother. just dont do it and say you did, save yourself the work
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Oct 22, 2020 23:34
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my magic level is only level 9 but im casting tenth level spells. crazy stuff.
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Oct 22, 2020 23:35
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I'm somewhere between a Christian heretic and a witch. Like, I believe, but my beliefs are best summed up as "salvation is universal and the logical end-point of a Christ-like lifestyle is basically to live an ancom lifestyle" but my immersion in the pagan/witch side of things up here in the PNW has affected how I interact with said force in my day to day worship and prayer, among other things. Also I tripped on acid back in March and now I think magic is real so it had to be incorporated into my beliefs vOv
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Oct 22, 2020 23:37
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