WatchFile under the "FYI" and "Just Sayin' " Depts...
Seems to me this should be a post to an earlier thread, but I can't be bothered to dig for it.
"On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious."
...
"As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought."
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"Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon."
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I can tell you why I dislike atheists, even though I am pretty close to one myself (agnostic at best). It is because I don't like people who constantly push their religious beliefs on others, and at present the atheists seem like the biggest prosthelytizers out there (excepting the Jehovah's witnesses). Take Youtube, for example. In the comments of stories that have nothing to do with religion, inevitably some atheist has to write something declaring their atheism and explaining why that makes them smarter than everyone else. It is much less frequent to see people pushing other religious views on Youtube. Likewise for many other web sites. I laughed when I saw this discussion topic on Patrick. I thought this was one site that would be free from atheist evangilism, but nope they are here to.
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YesYNot says
!!!
How fucking inappropriate of the realturd!!!
!!!
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terriDeaner says
Possibly, but why?... Is it maybe that the younger generation is starting to see not only the good things that religion can do but also the BAD that has been caused and are renouncing it in favor of a decision process based on facts & knowledge rather than one based on superstition and tribal mentality? Maybe.
I find its interesting that this discussion has focused around defining what an atheist is. Probably thats a good thing, but personally I've never thought much about that part of the issue.
Tenouncetrout says
I think it doesn't matter to me what they think, its what they do thats the important thing... But in this context, what they think actually IS kind of interesting, because apparently their self assessments are so far off the mark of reality, as demonstrated by studies about teen pregnancy, murder rates, theft, etc. The part of the equation I find particularly interesting is the commonly accepted belief that morality stems from religion, which clearly doesn't seem to be the case as shown by study after study - discussed briefly in the article linked above.
The other thing I'm curious about is how religious folks pick & choose, consciously or not, what morality rules apply for various different times & situations. 'Save the unborn child!' but 'kill the foreigners' for example.
I don't know why this is, but I suspect its because on some level certain religious groups basically train people not to think. I think it happens by subjecting people to so many ideas that have to be accepted but that are in obvious conflict with each other and observable facts that the mind's response is to give up & go with the flow, stop thinking... I don't deny that there are some great & benign churches filled with nice people, but the sooner we can do away with this kind of training processes the better our world will be.
Regarding the 'how religious folks pick & choose, consciously or not, what morality rules apply for various different times & situations', here's a great old favorite of mine, "Why can't I own a Canadian?": http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2002/WhyCantIOwnACanadian_10-02.html
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leoj707 says
Your definitions looks fine to me. I do agree that there are many ways to be rational and reasonable. That is why I prefaced my reasoning with:
terriDeaner says
By problem solving I meant this, which I clarified in a later comment:
terriDeaner says
That's why I said I was writing from a scientific context, and conditioning my reasoning on the definitions I provided.
leoj707 says
That's fine, I also suggested:
terriDeaner says
And I do agree that inference and induction are rational, and useful:
terriDeaner says
I'd go as far as saying that some degree of certainty is all we can generally hope for, in a reasonable lifetime.
leoj707 says
Aha! Now we're talking... you've changed the universe of discourse! Also perfectly acceptable, but now we have a different assertion.
leoj707 says
Right! In order to disprove or prove (i.e. test) this assertion, you need to observe a green swan OR fail to observe a green swan by sampling your entire universe of discourse. As written, your universe of discourse (the known universe) or 'test area' is effectively impossible to sample. As I stated earlier...
terriDeaner says
leoj707 says
Sure you can, you just need to limit the universe of discourse, sometimes to the point of absurdity. I assert there are no naturally occurring green swans in the next sentence. Proven, see? However, I cannot PROVE that there are no green swans elsewhere in the uncharted regions of the solar system or our physical universe.
leoj707 says
This is close to my point and I agree with some of this.
leoj707 says
This is getting a bit metaphysical, which is also fine, but outside the scope of where I was going with all this. But this is closer:
leoj707 says
[my added commentary]
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leoj707 says
False. Correlation does not imply causation. Besides, the correlation does not hold worldwide. For example, Egypt is a very religious country, but they have a low crime rate.
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leoj707 says
Hitler was a member of the Thule Society as was Hitler's favorite composer Richard Wagner. Himmler was also heavily influenced by this occult group as were other Nazis in Hitler's inner circle. The Thule Society was thoroughly based on the occult and had a very heavy emphasis on mysticism and the racial superiority (Aryan). It had absolutely nothing in common with your "christian/catholic" analogy.
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terriDeaner says
Absolutely true. As a matter of logic (or maybe semantics) one can't NOT believe in either ideology. One can only believe there is a God or believe there is no God; neither is based on knowledge or science.
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mplangley says
Perhaps you mean 'reasoned', unless those crazy cats still at it, after all these centuries...
ANYONE ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics_%28Aristotle%29 ) can ATTEMPT to rationalize the metaphysical ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics) if they choose:
A person who studies metaphysics would be called either a metaphysicist[4] or a metaphysician.[5] The metaphysician attempts to clarify the fundamental notions by which people understand the world, including existence, the definition of object, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.
A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and how they relate to each other.
Prior to the modern history of science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as natural philosophy. The term science itself meant "knowledge" of originating from epistemology. The scientific method, however, transformed natural philosophy into an empirical activity deriving from experiment unlike the rest of philosophy. By the end of the 18th century, it had begun to be called "science" to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics denoted philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.[6]
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gameisrigged says
Doubtful!? For one thing, do you know the people that I know, or how they communicate their beliefs? For another, where in ANY of the commentary above do I indicate that I believe that ALL atheists (including ones I don't know) are anti-theists?
I'm not trying to call you out as a jerk here, gameisrigged, but I think you misread my comments if you came to the latter conclusion.
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iwog says
Yeah, I am not sure what bible others are reading, but god has a funny way of showing his love to everyone.
The list is way to long to site all the individual examples, but advocating slavery, insisting we kill each other for petty crimes, and torturing people for an eternity for not worshiping him all don't sound like very loving/non-hating/forgiving acts.
I am not sure how many of you have children, but if you do you probably know that the love is unconditional and complete. This love is also one that often is not returned, and will never equal the love a parent has for a child. A little lite reading to illustrate my point:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Guess-How-Much-I-Love-You/Sam-McBratney/e/9780763642648/?itm=1&USRI=guess+how+much+i+love+you
My point being – when your child says they hate you and curses you, as a loving parent, do you think the appropriate response is to torture them forever?
...Oh wait...
The bible does not say torture...
...just kill them...
–Leviticus 20:9
"For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him."
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leoj707 says
Thanks for the reference. I guess I'd start with studies published in peer reviewed academic journals.
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mplangley says
Further down my post I explain why secularist are (in general) not motivated to "stack the deck". Religions however have strong motivations to "stack the deck".
mplangley says
Umm… yes, because science works, and is fundamentally different that the religious method.
The important difference between science and religion is that religion is based on absolute statements, that can never be disproven. Science on the other hand evolves from relative truths and statements, that can be proven false.
In a few hundred years science has done way more to advance the quality of life for humans, than the thousands of years of using the religious method.
Talking and seeing people at great distances, flying, longer life, cures to disease, etc. all promised and undelivered by religion for thousands of years…
Today provided to us courtesy of… drum roll please… a few hundred years of SCIENCE!
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leoj707 - you posit a rivalry between science and religion that does not exist. While it is true that some "scientist" hate religion and some "religious" hate science these are accidental traits to both scientist and religious.
The indisputable fact of the matter is that it is religious people (mostly Catholic) who are responsible for most of the advancement of science including the very development of the The Scientific Method.
I mean give me a break - you'll hardly find any progress in science anywhere without finding Catholics at or near the center of that progress.
How is that for a throw down. Lets go through the history of science and we will start counting the number of Catholics.
Not to mention its Catholic monks who created the finest of fine beverages.
So this conflict you seem to believe that exists between science and religion is just nonsense.
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thunderlips11 says
Agreed, no need to rationalize that...
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mplangley says
Yes, it is:
judgmental or judgemental
— adj
of or denoting an attitude in which judgments about other people's conduct are made
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/judgemental
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mplangley says
Atheist does not = hostile to religion. On that list I think that Alan Turing is the only one who was "hostile" towards religion.
The problem is that we can know what religion they were born to, but it is hard to know what they actually believed. Most of them never even commented on religion. Marie Curie and Alan Turing are the only ones on the list to come out and say, "I am an atheist."
Yes, the religious views of Eistein and Planck are very debatable. I will admit that it is not clear but they both were very clear that they did not believe in a "personal god", and specifically a christian god. At the most they may have been deist (they never said,"I actually believe in a god", they were always somewhat vague), and even then a deist view of divine intellect does not = christian view.
What I see on the list is 3 who were born roman catholic. On left the church when the catholic world view no longer seemed reasonable. One was horribly persecuted, hounded, and imprisoned by the church. One stayed with the church.
Hmmm... catholic church's 33% rate of retaining/supporting scientific advancement from their own top scientific minds does not seem so good. That must be why so many "fallen away" catholics are making the major discoveries.
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marcus says
Illinois has a well-deserved, and I assumed well-known, reputation for the Visatations of the Posthumous Voters. For some, these Electoral Miracles may reaffirm faith, for everyone else it reaffirms cynicism.
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Troy says
Thats a good point. More and more the sentiment that I hear on Christian radio stations - listening to those things is kind of a hobby of mine on some days - is that the real world, the important world, is the OTHER world, and that we don't need to worry about what happens here. And some go further to say explicitly that problems and destructions in the world will be taken care of by God...*
I'll almost go so far as to say that all conservation and 'green' theories are rooted in a basic denial of religion... though I'm kind of spouting off a bit on that cause I haven't got any facts at my disposal, but it sounds right. Considering that Christian teaching is that God places the whole as a resource to be used doesn't support a base for Christian conservation...
...
The whole inter religions/sects battles is such a tragedy, so horrific that it still occurs today. Its so completely tribal, so rooted in a history of divided & tiny villages and is a thing that the world desperately needs to do away with in order to move forward.
RayAmerica says
As for hope, I have to point out that WANTING something to be so and it ACTUALLY being so are not the same thing and shouldn't be confused. If it makes YOU feel better to imagine there's something benevolent watching over you then hold onto that, but don't confuse faith with empirical truth and expect that its the thing everyone else should think as well.
As for me and what makes me hopeful, I suppose its the thought that when I die my body will merge back with the energies of the world and become part of the flow again. I think thats a beautiful thing, that I'm fully a part of the world and not an alien presence in it just waiting to go back the the mothership. I don't expect consciousness to continue, but of course who knows?...
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* Talk about your ultimate handouts! Now that I think about this, its interesting that so many of the Christian conservatives are so against social equality & fair distribution of services & such when they fully expect to be getting the great big final freebie in the end. Maybe its knowing this and the associated guilt that makes them unconsciously over-compensate and be so awfully unfair to the less fortunate... I may go even further and say that to be an Atheist is to accept a more full moral responsibility for your life and actions, more so than Christians... Just thinkin'...
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mplangley says
As a cynical response I would say actions that contradict stated beliefs equates to basically believing in 'nothing':
“On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-americans-still-dislike-atheists/2011/02/18/AFqgnwGF_story.html
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mplangley says
Bullshit. You have no right and no evidence to claim that atheists are any less respecting of basic human rights as Christians. In fact I would argue that Christians have historically shown nothing but contempt for basic human rights and have treated life with the same contempt as an exterminator treats roaches.
mplangley says
And you do? I know that all humans have basic rights. You know that there's an invisible magical skyfairy that arbitrarily defines your interpretation of an old book.
What's the difference? Oh I know you intended to skip that step and proceed on the false premise of divine inspiration, but I'm not going to afford you that luxury.
Your blind assertion of deity is no different than anyone else's blind assertion of anything. Furthermore you completely misreport the agnostic position and DISHONESTLY extend it to everything instead of the limited scope of religious belief. An agnostic is perfectly capable of claiming no knowledge of god while at the same time can be quite sure the sun will rise in the morning. Or for that matter, that humans have rights.