Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:You should layoff asking JayJay to explain what atheist ideology is. He's explained it very simply and succinctly as a set of rational attitudes that make it difficult to believe in gods. I can get fully on board with that definition, but then I have to ask him what fault he can really find in that? By JayJay's definition of atheist ideology I suppose that theist ideology could be explained as a set of irrational attitudes that make it easy to believe in gods.

Did I say the atheist ideology is a set of RATIONAL belief?

No, you said, "...atheist ideology is a set of attitudes that make it difficult for a rational person to see how there could be a god."

Good Grief. I didn’t mean to say that.

More like you regret saying it.

I do regret my incaution. I didn’t appreciate that you could very easily read that as atheist ideology is a set of RATIONAL attitudes that make it difficult for a rational person to see how there could be a god. And why shouldn’t you interpret it that way? After all a rational person is one who has rational attitudes.

You used that to make out that I would prefer my set of irrational (according to you) attitudes prevail over a set of rational (according to you) attitudes. That couldn’t have been my intention. To prevent that word game I’ll adapt the definition:

Atheist ideology is a set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonable person to see how there could be a god.

There is something that we should get out of the way right now; This Idea that Christians are automatically selfless and self-sacrificing simply by virtue of being Christians. It simply isn't so anymore than being atheist automatically makes one self-serving.

Your definition is based on assumptions that may work in church, but won't fly when tested. Your unstated but implicit assumption is that self-serving attitudes go hand in hand with being atheist. Another assumption is that without these self-serving attitudes that a reasonable person would believe in a god.

Let's look at the common definition of self-serving: "having concern for one's own welfare and interests before those of others." This definition is also one of the main traits of sociopaths. Something that psychologists describe as a personality disorder. Do you honestly think that most of the people on these forums put their self-interest before that of others any more or less than anyone else?

If you want to observe a bunch of self-serving attitudes leading reasonable people astray I suggest you look at religious leaders and preachers. You want to see bigotry and listen to hateful messages from self-serving pompous narcissists go to church or tune into Christian broadcasting.

I've got a definition for you:

Theist ideology is a set of self-serving irrational attitudes that make it easy for a gullible people to believe that they are somehow special in the eyes of a highly improbable magic being.

Jayjay4547 wrote:To prevent that word game I’ll adapt the definition:

Atheist ideology is a set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonablee person to see how there could be a god.

I'm still puzzled at the use of the word "atheist" here.

Atheism is a position one holds pertaining to a lack of belief in deities. If a person never got beyond simply saying," nope, I don't believe you, sounds like bullshit!", to every representation of a deity they encountered, then they are an atheist.

Many, many people who are atheists have opinions and high degrees of knowledge on the origins of the universe, life, evolution, anthropology etc but they don't need to be an atheist to have them. I know of no scientific institution which requires its members to lack belief in deities, do you?

Aside from that, many, many people don't give hardly a passing thought to the above and are still atheists. I hardly gave a thought to any of that when I realised I didn't believe the crap I'd been fed as a child. I don't think I knew anyone who was openly atheist back then. I didn't really tell anyone. There was no internet, nowhere to really find out more back then. Didn't need an ideology. Still don't.

What is it?

bert wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:You used that to make out that I would prefer my set of irrational (according to you) attitudes prevail over a set of rational (according to you) attitudes. That couldn’t have been my intention. To prevent that word game I’ll adapt the definition:

Atheist ideology is a set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonablee person to see how there could be a god.

Self-serving attitudes. That is a list. Could you please write out the list?

Who is served is the ideology. The ideology an active organism made of what people affirm it's the great carriage they push, It's a super-meme. Human origin stories written in the name of evolution have been an important vehicle for the atheist ideology. I've got a list of the major self-serving attitudes to evolution that support a reasonable person in believing there could not be a god. It's not a well expressed list Bert, a bit dusty, but here it is:

The influence of atheist ideology on the presentation and understanding of evolution:
(a) Presenting the process as change, when it has been one of progressive creation, in the direction of accumulated functionality..

(b) Ascribing agency to what is hierarchically below us –genes- whereas agency has lain with what is above us -biomes.

(c) Describing the process as self-creation via intraspecific causes like sexual selection and social interactions whereas it has actually been driven by relations with the other in the form of things we eat and that eat us.

(d) Explaining causality in terms of random chance, non-deterministic effects and non-functional or compromised changes whereas species actually have followed thread-like logical paths of creative solutions that might often be undiscoverable from the fossil record.

bert wrote: I've noticed that abstract labels are used to bad mouth people. By way of example, in the US people care called "a liberal". Not what that person is doing wrong. So, you label atheists self-serving (and we apparently deserve that label more than other people). But you're not specifying what we're doing wrong. But we'll get your list, I assume.

I agree. I’ve noticed many a time on this forum that the US Republican party and the “right wing” is anathematized, by people who like me don’t even live in the USA and can’t vote there.

bert wrote: Here's how it works for me.
1) Religions have contradictory views. So they can't all be right (but they can all be wrong).

To my thinking, there is a lot of agreement between the various “faith communities”. I’m a Christian but I’ve spent some happy times in Hindu temples.

bert wrote: 2) None of the religions has a majority (counted by number of followers of that religion). So, even if there is a true religion, the majority of the religious people is wrong (and statistically that could well include you).

For me it’s a question of access. Though I’m a colonial, my cultural roots are in English and Afrikaans and the religious issues I have are endemic to English. So though I respect people who have gone out to hug trees or embrace Buddhism, that’s not my job.

bert wrote: Am I being unreasonable? In what sense is this self-serving?

Well throughout your post you are using exclusive categories to try to tie down the concept of the creator. That makes you seem the same size as God, which is the hubristic part of atheist ideology.

bert wrote: I continue:
3) Where religious people are wrong, it is crap created by humans. In other words, humans are capable of coming up with religious nonsense.

Are you still with me?

You aren’t exactly writing out a complex equation Bert. You say religion can be crap created by humans, but I’m struck by how often that words “crap”or “shit” comes up on this forum. Did you see the pic about the “golden shit award” or whatever? No doubt humans are capable of coming up with nonsense at all times and for any purpose. But constructs in the name of religion are often numinous.

bert wrote: It is possible to think rationally (reasonably?) about religion:

Case one: How do souls work?
If we split a fertilised egg that has just divided, this results in two human beings (so, can we tell god when to provide another soul to the petri dish). The following options exist (which have interesting consequences in abortion discussions):
a) The cells don't have a soul
b) One cell has a soul and the other one doesn't.
c) Each cell has a soul (or half a soul).

In the latter case, are the souls of your dandruff (dead skin cells) already in heaven? Or is my dandruff already screaming in agony, suffocating in the brimstone.

Case two: The number of gods can be only in one of the following categories:
a) zero
b) one
c) more than one.

I can look for each of the options which one has the most support. I can't see how a reasonable person can disagree with another person about his religion being right about the number of gods in contrast to another person's religion. I can't see how it can be justified for one group of people to make life of another group miserable. But hey, I'm an atheist. I'm not reasonable. I'm self-serving.

Case three: The afterlife. I think there are two exclusive options

a) There is an afterlife.
b) There is no afterlife (be it pleasant or not, whether it is depending on how you lived or not).

Ja well all that categorizing goes over my head. I follow John Macmurray in saying, God is the generalisation of the Other. I think all religions are basically about trying to present that generalization,often using beautiful imagery, music and ceremony. It’s like, painting the ceiling of what we can’t experiment with. I take concepts of the soul and the afterlife as imperfectly understood metaphors.

bert wrote: My view: We know there is the current life, let's make at least that one pleasant. I can only see that religiously motivated groups make other groups life difficult. So, yes I've developed some resentment against it. And you can call that political if you want to. I wouldn't give a damn about religion if people just kept it to themselves. I would bet that goes for the majority of atheists. It is not a matter of principle or something. I don't think there is an agenda.

No problem, you go and make your life pleasant. I think our function s to discern and obey the will of God.

bert wrote:

There is also inevitably some institutional/economic/political interest involved.

Well, there could be some pot-kettle-black here. But given that atheism isn't institutionalised (when I studied at the university (biochemistry), I didn't have to take vows or something), I doubt that atheism is blacker. It is not that atheism can make a fist.

Political: Of course, I want anyone to live a happy life (be they gay or whatever) without suffering from the hate from other people. Call that political, if you wish. But just calling something political, is an abstract bad-mouthing label, again.

No doubt religions have ideologies and are institutional and act politically. Since the fall of European communism with its State atheism, it hasn’t had a powerful institutional basis. Before then, atheism was up to its elbows in the blood of Christians. But you are not at all like those baddies. Seems to me that universities tend to be weakly atheist institutions and the current economic driver in atheism may be to validate graduates earning much more than non-graduates, or to validate universities soaking up ever more of the nation’s efforts. That's not what I'm against though, I'm just trying to figure out the influence of atheist ideology on the presentation and understanding of human evolution.

Jay

A while ago I said some friends were going on a trip to view gorillas in Rwanda and I’d ask them on their return, how they were prepped to not threaten the animals. Well they have come back now and I got this. They were told that it was OK to look at the gorillas but not to stare at them. And to show peaceful purpose one should show ones palm to a gorilla. That’s an interesting contrast with dogs. I’ve trustingly accepted that one can show peaceful intention to a dog by holding out the BACK of one’s hand. That’s sometimes difficult to do but it’s worked for me so far.

The other day someone told me that if you flash your eyes to a monkey it takes that as a threat gesture. How you do that is hold your head a bit lowered and then quickly raise your eyes to glare at it. He said that as a sort of warning that school kids shouldn’t be told about - we were talking outside a primary school with also monkeys messing around. I’ve never heard of monkeys biting a person, though they do threaten and get very agitated when a troop member has been killed (e.g. by a dog). Anyway I thought it was notable that this other person also associated monkeys with threats –a threat to bite. Experimenting with my own instincts I thought how I have tried to get a rise out of the alpha male in that troop, maybe I should try this "flashing eyes" idea. But then I thought yea, but just in case, I’ll take a couple of sticks with me and if against all rational expectations the little beggar tackles me I’ll knock it to Kingdom Come. Agrippina better not read that or she will threaten to report me to the SPCA again. Relax, this is all gedenken stuff. What I take from it is that interspecies threats are powerful and direct and one instinctively backs them with real capacity.

Jayjay4547 wrote: That’s an interesting contrast with dogs. I’ve trustingly accepted that one can show peaceful intention to a dog by holding out the BACK of one’s hand.

It doesn't show peaceful intention to a dog, moving slowly and non aggressively shows that you are not a threat. Extending the hand is to give the dog a non-vital extremity to sniff to ascertain further information about you.

Keep in mind that some dogs will interpret any hand or limb movement in their direction, no matter how slow, as a threat.

Regarding 'self-serving', I suspect that may be jayjay being childish and echoing back criticisms without meaningfully comprehending them.

I called his approach self-serving at various times because he was basically making shit up which was what he wanted to think, concluding it was true, and then using it as evidence that he was right in the first place.

He certainly does that regarding atheists, where he pretends to know what they (as individuals, or as a group) think and what motivates them, always with a complete lack of charity. For example, when faced with evidence that he had repeatedly lied about what I said in order to dismiss me as woefully disrespectful to imaginary entities, he tried to defend himself (or at least his ego) by essentially pretending that he was right all along, and that he knows what I really meant to say despite him seeming to be incapable of reliably reporting what I actually said.

He does it when, faced with the problem of how an animal gets good enough at using tools as weapons to be able to survive encounters with predators, he concludes not simply that they might but that they must have been regularly training in predator-defence skills, and he does that simply in order to be able to ignore other potential tool uses he'd clearly rather not think about because at the very least they undermine the infantile simplicity of his hypothesis.

One huge problem jayjay seems to have (if one takes him as operating in some sort of good faith) is that his idea of 'narrative' seems to hopelessly confuse the issues of:
a) proposed sequences of events
and
b) philosophical/emotional interpretations of those proposed sequences.

Any scientific proposed sequence of events which has no need of gods (basically any scientific sequence of events) is fully compatible with atheism.

Also, leaving biology to one side, all manner of philosophical/emotional interpretations could be attached to a given sequence of events.
Someone who wanted to believe a big old white guy on a cloud or other anthropomorphic deity was tinkering with and directing evolution in some direction could choose to do so.
Someone who wanted to believe in a Gaia-like nature-pseudo-god 'generously creating' things could choose to do so.
Someone who wanted to believe in some or all organisms being partly 'responsible for their own evolution' (whatever that means) could choose to do so.
etc.

Jayjay seems to be obsessed with 'the environment' being a sole determiner of events, even to the point of what happens and when it happens being entirely controlled the environment, with organisms essentially as puppets.
Clearly, that crosses the line from philosophising into being incorrect biology, but jayjay makes the hopeless mistake of concluding that actual biology which recognises the role of chance as well as natural selection in evolution must be as ideologically driven as his own bogus biology, and must therefore be coming from an opposing philosophical position when in reality the same rational biology could be done from all manner of philosophical positions, and is done in practice because it seems to work the best at explaining reality.

Oh it seems that the in tray is full after all. Ho hum.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:You should layoff asking JayJay to explain what atheist ideology is. He's explained it very simply and succinctly as a set of rational attitudes that make it difficult to believe in gods. I can get fully on board with that definition, but then I have to ask him what fault he can really find in that? By JayJay's definition of atheist ideology I suppose that theist ideology could be explained as a set of irrational attitudes that make it easy to believe in gods.

Did I say the atheist ideology is a set of RATIONAL belief?

No, you said, "...atheist ideology is a set of attitudes that make it difficult for a rational person to see how there could be a god."

Good Grief. I didn’t mean to say that.

More like you regret saying it.

I do regret my incaution.

This is what happens when you think apologetics is a superior substitute for rigour.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I didn’t appreciate that you could very easily read that as atheist ideology is a set of RATIONAL attitudes that make it difficult for a rational person to see how there could be a god. And why shouldn’t you interpret it that way? After all a rational person is one who has rational attitudes.

Once again, this should be teaching you [1] the value of rigour, and [2] the worthlessness of apologetics.

Jayjay4547 wrote:You used that to make out that I would prefer my set of irrational (according to you) attitudes prevail over a set of rational (according to you) attitudes. That couldn’t have been my intention.

And once again, this should be teaching you about the value of rigor over knee-jerk apologetics.

Jayjay4547 wrote:To prevent that word game I’ll adapt the definition:

Oh this is going to be good ...

Jayjay4547 wrote:Atheist ideology is a set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonablee person to see how there could be a god.

Except that this is complete crap. You've already been presented repeatedly with substantive reasons why this is crap, but I'll run through them all once again, to ensure that everyone here knows that you've been schooled on this properly, leaving you no excuse for failing to address these substantive reasons (not that this has stopped you evading them in the past):

[1] I and others here have already stated that we don't have any problem per se with the hypothesis that a god-type entity actually exists. What we actually have a problem with, is the complete inability of supernaturalists to support their assertions on this subject.

[2] Supernaturalists have never once provided genuine evidence to support their assertions, across the millennia, that various mythological candidates for god-type entities are anything other than fabrications of their imagination. As evidence for this, I cite:

[2a] Supernaturalists have never been able to agree, on a global scale, which of the multiple mythologies fabricated by human imaginations is purportedly the "right" mythology, and which assertions arising therefrom are purportedly the "right" assertions;

[2b] Supernaturalists have demonstrated that even adherents of a particular mythology cannot agree amongst themselves what this mythology is purportedly telling us;

[2c] Supernaturalists have demonstrated that they do not understand what is required to provide genuiine evidence for an entity of this sort, hence their preference for apologetics;

[2d] If any genuine evidence of this sort actually existed, then that evidence would have been presented by now, and the debate would be over. Furthermore:

[2e] Whoever succeeded in presenting said evidence would be a guaranteed candidate for a Nobel Prize, because such evidence would utterly transform our understanding of the universe and its contents. That this has not happened, should be telling you something important here.

[3] What I and others also have a problem with, is that many of the assertions erected by supernaturalists invalidate their chosen candidates for a real god-type entity, because those assertions, taken together, are beset with internal contradictions, paradoxes and absurdities. Any genuinely existing god-type entity would not possess poroperties arising from sets of assertions such as this;

[4] The idea that I and others here purportedly "reject" or "deny" (though one cannot in rigorous discourse deny merely asserted entities, an elementary concept lost upon many pedlars of apologetics), the assorted asserted candidates presented by supernaturalists, on the basis of naked self-interest or malice, is a myth and blatant falsehood. If presented with genuine evidence that an entity of this sort existed, one intent upon ensuring that a proper, rigorously conceived, defensible ethical code governed human behaviour, had the power to deliver that, and was actively working to this end, I would be one of the individuals welcoming this. Unfortunately, no such evidence has ever materialised. Worse still, many of the so-called "ethical" precepts contained in various mythologies, are manifestly the products not of a powerful and gifted sentience, but of superstitious, pre-scientific human imaginations, leavened with large measures of self-interest themselves. Indeed, some of the assertions about the so-called "ethical" position of the asserted mythological entities in question, are assertions that most modern, educated human beings regard as ethically repuslive. Assertions such as the purported "inferior" status of women, the purported "need" for brutal repression of human activities nowadays regarded properly as ethically neutral, and the sometimes bizarre concentration upon non-issues that are laughable in the modern age, not to mention the insidious habit exhibited by supernaturalists, of cherry-picking those parts of their favourite mythologies that happen to be in accord with their own existing prejudices, as presciently noted in the past by Susan B. Anthony.

[5] The fact that we recognise, unlike supernaturalist pedlars of various assertions, that certain of those assertions have observational consequences, of a sort that invalidate those assertions right from the start. For example, the assertion that a particular choice of mythological entity not only exists, but actively intervenes in the observable universe, in a manner that would be detectable in an instant in the modern world, and furthermore does so in a manner suspending the laws of physics whenever this is administratively convenient, would make science as we know it an impossibility, because in such a universe, there would not exist real laws of physics, merely temporary contingencies that vanished whenver the whims and caprices of the entity in question called for another magic conjuring trick. That this manifestly isn't happening, tells us that this assertion is null and void. Other examples of assertions rendered null and void by recourse to observational data exist.

[6] The fact that once again, all the DATA with respect to real ideologies, tells us that those ideologies are founded upon the treatment of one or more unsupported assertions as purportedly constituting "axioms" about the world, regardless of whether or not the universe and its contents agrees therewith, but that atheism, in contrast to the frequently duplicitous apologetic assertions erected by supenaturalists, consists in its rigorous formulation, solely of suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions, and erects no assertions of its own, rendering null and void the very concept of "atheist ideology" at source;

Now I don't expect JayJay to address any of the above in anhonest manner, because he's never done so when any of the above has bene presented to him before. Instead, the ersatz for a proper response invariably provided, has consisted of ignoring whatever of the above happens to be inconvenient for his apologetics, misrepresenting other parts of the above, and pedling yet more manifest fabrications as if they constituted fact. The latter frequently taking the form ot purporting to be in a position to tell us what we think, without the inconvenient chore of actually asking us what we think, and taking account of this. But then, JayJay routinely demonstrates that inconvenient DATA is to be avoided at all costs, when peddling his fantasies and fabrications.

Moving on ...

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:JayJay's complaint is that this set of rational attitudes leads to the undermining of belief in creation by something greater than ourselves. JayJay would rather have his set of irrational set of attitudes prevail over a set of rational attitudes. The point of his in this thread isn't that atheist ideology messed up the human origin story; It's that rational attitudes interfere with creationism.

JayJay wrote:

That passage would be about right if you everywhere changed “rational” to “irrational” and “irrational” to “rational”.

But then it wouldn't match how you described atheist ideology.

Not how I have now reframed it, to stop you from making out that my position is the opposite of what it is.

The butthurt you display over this contrasts starkly with your repeatedly demonstrated willingness to misrepresent us in exactly the same manner when it happens to be apologetically convenient. Hypocrisy, much?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Another point I want to bring out is that the self-serving attitudes that make up an ideology are made up by a group of believers over time, so that the “reasonable person” inherits them and swims in them. There is also inevitably some institutional/economic/political interest involved.

Except of course that we have repeatedly told you, that WE REJECT BELIEF ITSELF AS PURPORTEDLY CONSTITTUING A SOURCE OF SUBSTANTIVE KNOWLEDGE. Because as you've been repeatedly schooled here, belief consists of the very treatment of unsupported assertions uncritically as fact, that supernaturalists demonstrate is central to their thinking all the time. We reject that entire process, preferring instead proper testing of assertions. Yet another reason that your "atheist ideology" fiction IS a fiction. Not that you'll ever respond honestly to this elementary fact, and instead will almost certainly continue pretending that we never told you this, and as a corollary, continue pretending that your manifest fabrications about our thinking constitute the reality.

Oh, and while on the subject of "institutional, economic or political interest", supernaturalism displays this on a grand scale. The Catholic Church, for example, has been a player in power politics in European history for the best part of 1,500 years, and in that time, has amassed enough riches to own its own bank. Most of the church institutions extant in America today are also corporate entities engaging in political lobbying, frequently in contravention of Constitiutional provisions aimed at enforcing separation of church and state. If you want to see self-interest writ large, just look up the words "prosperity theology". Interesting that the "self-interest" you assert to be a part of our modus operandi, hasn't led to any of us flouncing about the world in $36 million private jets paid for by other people. Makes one wonder where the real self-interest lies, doesn't it?

Jayjay4547 wrote:You ignored my bringing up that an ideology becomes visible when it’s wrong.

Oh, you mean the way your ideology is manifestly wrong? And is demonstrated to be wrong by vast quantities of DATA?

Apparently you forgot that we're capable of understanding elementary concepts without the need for spoon feeding.

Jayjay4547 wrote: It should be possible to demolish part of an ideology by showing that some attitude is held by s bunch of believers and is wrong.

Oh, you mean the way we have repeatedly demonstrated that the assertions of YOUR ideology are wrong, courtesy of vast quantities of DATA telling us they are wrong? But which you ignore because you prefer your ideology over and above the DATA?

Once again, hypocrisy, much?

Theists like Jayjay make you become involuntary head-bangers. You will never convince them because their minds are shut. It is a form of self protection.
They have been so brain washed thinking anything else is impossible. If it was only that but they then to proceed and put everyone else into their designed pigeon hole. The problem is when they find out the people dont fit and they are at completely at sea and then invent every argument possible to satisfy their minds that the people do fit which finally ends up as one big massive circular argument.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I've got a list of the major self-serving attitudes to evolution that support a reasonable person in believing there could not be a god. It's not a well expressed list Bert, a bit dusty, but here it is:

The influence of atheist ideology on the presentation and understanding of evolution:
(a) Presenting the process as change, when it has been one of progressive creation, in the direction of accumulated functionality.

It's certainly a process of change, and assuming one is sufficiently adult not to get too caught up by words, one could call it 'progressive change', bearing in mind that there are no fixed utopian targets, but that the nominal goal which exists for any particular organism relates to maximising fitness in the particular environment it is living in, with no regard to possible future environments. A group of gazelles finding themselves on a predator-free island could well evolve into something much fatter and slower, birds can lose the ability to fly, etc.

Calling it 'creative' with the intention of shoring up some religious or pseudoreligious twaddle is simply unscientific as well as dubious in terms of honesty.
Similarly, it's clearly wrong to assume any kind of inevitable ratcheting of functionality when loss of functionality can sometimes clearly be advantageous.
It's simply that the nature of environments is one where real or apparent increased functionality is typically advantageous.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(b) Ascribing agency to what is hierarchically below us –genes- whereas agency has lain with what is above us -biomes.

Wrong.
Genes aren't actually thought of as 'agents' in any real sense, since as even you acknowledge, genetic changes are in the first instance seen as being the result of chance, and genes aren't actually seen as having intentionality even if an intentional stance may be a useful tool when considering them, despite the fact that it risks confusing the ignorant and being misrepresented by the dishonest and deluded.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(c) Describing the process as self-creation via intraspecific causes like sexual selection and social interactions whereas it has actually been driven by relations with the other in the form of things we eat and that eat us.

You're moronically presenting an either/or situation there, when that isn't how things are seen by actual scientists.
Even considering sexual selection, the effect of wider interactions isn't dismissed as nonexistent and is frequently explicitly referenced, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. When talking about the evolution of sexually selected features, a key element is the 'cost' of the feature, which is frequently dependent on wider interactions, including things like the increased risk of predation or the requirement for increased food intake.

And looking at actual explanations of human evolution, things like dentition changes and brain development are frequently intimately linked with things like dietary changes.

Just because you are seemingly obsessively focussed on predator defence to the exclusion of much else doesn't mean other people are similarly obsessed in other directions.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(d) Explaining causality in terms of random chance, non-deterministic effects and non-functional or compromised changes whereas species actually have followed thread-like logical paths of creative solutions that might often be undiscoverable from the fossil record.

That's possibly one of the most colossally retarded and ignorant things you have ever said.

Obviously, looking backwards [and ignoring horizontal gene transfer] one can take any species and point to a 'thread-like' history going back through a tree of descent.
But it's moronic beyond belief to say that such a path is 'logical' when it's clear that all manner of possible solutions are constantly being 'explored' by evolution, usually resulting in failure sooner or later, and where an ultimately successful path is only determinable in hindsight.

And the whole point about evolution is that it is a process of selection working by the differential success of different organisms. What chance does is act as a source of difference for selection to work on.

If you want to start splitting hairs about what 'deterministic' or 'chance' actually mean, or whether a particular radioactive decay event was 'part of the deterministic creative environment', that seems to be some mix of physics and philosophy, not biology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:You used that to make out that I would prefer my set of irrational (according to you) attitudes prevail over a set of rational (according to you) attitudes. That couldn’t have been my intention. To prevent that word game I’ll adapt the definition:

Atheist ideology is a set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonablee person to see how there could be a god.

Self-serving attitudes. That is a list. Could you please write out the list?

Who is served is the ideology.

Since it's already been pointed out that atheism ,due to not being a positive claim of any sort, cannot be an ideology, you are once again, lying.

Jayjay4547 wrote: It's not a well expressed list Bert, a bit dusty, but here it is:

The influence of atheist ideology on the presentation and understanding of evolution:
(a) Presenting the process as change, when it has been one of progressive creation, in the direction of accumulated functionality..

Has fuck all to do with atheism, as has been pointed out to you ad-nauseam. Stop lying.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(b) Ascribing agency to what is hierarchically below us –genes- whereas agency has lain with what is above us -biomes.

Again, has fuck all to do with atheism, more-over you've failed to establish that anything is 'hierachically' below us in any objective sense.
Stop lying.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(c) Describing the process as self-creation via intraspecific causes like sexual selection and social interactions whereas it has actually been driven by relations with the other in the form of things we eat and that eat us.

Also has fuck all to with atheism.
Stop lying.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(d) Explaining causality in terms of random chance, non-deterministic effects and non-functional or compromised changes whereas species actually have followed thread-like logical paths of creative solutions that might often be undiscoverable from the fossil record.

If only that had anything remotely to do with atheism.
Stop lying.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: I've noticed that abstract labels are used to bad mouth people. By way of example, in the US people care called "a liberal". Not what that person is doing wrong. So, you label atheists self-serving (and we apparently deserve that label more than other people). But you're not specifying what we're doing wrong. But we'll get your list, I assume.

I agree. I’ve noticed many a time on this forum that the US Republican party and the “right wing” is anathematized, by people who like me don’t even live in the USA and can’t vote there.

Just because we cannot vote in the elections of Burundi, doesn't meant the outcome of said elections doesn't affect us or those we care about in anyway Jayjay.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: Here's how it works for me.
1) Religions have contradictory views. So they can't all be right (but they can all be wrong).

To my thinking, there is a lot of agreement between the various “faith communities”.

Then your 'thinking' is seriously flawed.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m a Christian but I’ve spent some happy times in Hindu temples.

And you've apparently completely failed to realise that those two religions fundamentally disagree, among other things, on the number of gods, original sin and salvation.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: 2) None of the religions has a majority (counted by number of followers of that religion). So, even if there is a true religion, the majority of the religious people is wrong (and statistically that could well include you).

For me it’s a question of access. Though I’m a colonial, my cultural roots are in English and Afrikaans and the religious issues I have are endemic to English. So though I respect people who have gone out to hug trees or embrace Buddhism, that’s not my job.

You're basically admitting you're a Christian because you were told to be one.
Which is a rather irrational basis to be one.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: Am I being unreasonable? In what sense is this self-serving?

Well throughout your post you are using exclusive categories to try to tie down the concept of the creator. That makes you seem the same size as God, which is the hubristic part of atheist ideology.

FFS Jayjay, why do you persist in so deliberately and ludicrously misrepresenting other people's posts?
bert has said nothing that can in any way be construed as him comparing himself to any god.
Stop with the pathetic lies.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: I continue:
3) Where religious people are wrong, it is crap created by humans. In other words, humans are capable of coming up with religious nonsense.

Are you still with me?

You aren’t exactly writing out a complex equation Bert.

He doesn't have to.
If religions can't stand up to simple deductions, it certainly cannot stand up ot 'comlex equations'.

Jayjay4547 wrote:You say religion can be crap created by humans, but I’m struck by how often that words “crap”or “shit” comes up on this forum.

So fucking what? We're not obliged to deal with your idiosyncratic fetishes vis a vis certain words.
They're just words. They're not used to attack you, only to describe certain claims or ideas.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Did you see the pic about the “golden shit award” or whatever? No doubt humans are capable of coming up with nonsense at all times and for any purpose. But constructs in the name of religion are often blindly claimed to be numinous.

FIFY.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote:

There is also inevitably some institutional/economic/political interest involved.

Well, there could be some pot-kettle-black here. But given that atheism isn't institutionalised (when I studied at the university (biochemistry), I didn't have to take vows or something), I doubt that atheism is blacker. It is not that atheism can make a fist.

Political: Of course, I want anyone to live a happy life (be they gay or whatever) without suffering from the hate from other people. Call that political, if you wish. But just calling something political, is an abstract bad-mouthing label, again.

No doubt religions have ideologies and are institutional and act politically. Since the fall of European communism with its State atheism,

Stop pulling shit from your arse Jayjay.
Communism was anti-theist, not atheist.
Atheism =/= anti-theism.

Jayjay4547 wrote:it hasn’t had a powerful institutional basis.

It never had because atheism isn't a belief, let alone a set of beliefs on which to base an institution of any kind.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Before then, atheism was up to its elbows in the blood of Christians.

Stop making shit up Jayjay.
Again anti-theism =/= atheism.

Jayjay4547 wrote:But you are not at all like those baddies.

No more than people who do not collect stamps are like Hitler.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Seems to me that universities tend to be weakly atheist institutions

They're secular, which, like anti-theism =/= atheism.

Jayjay4547 wrote:and the current economic driver in atheism may be to validate graduates earning much more than non-graduates, or to validate universities soaking up ever more of the nation’s efforts.

All of which has fuck all to do with atheism. Seriously, stop treating your rectum as a source of information.

Jayjay4547 wrote:That's not what I'm against though, I'm just trying to figure out the influence of atheist ideology on the presentation and understanding of human evolution.

Jay

You cannot begin to understand something that is:
1. Not clearly, let alone rigourously defined
2. Based on a stubborn refusal to acknowledge what certain words and concepts actually mean
3. Dishonestly ignoring and dismissing any and all contradictory arguments and facts.

Oh look, the in tray is full again ...

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:You used that to make out that I would prefer my set of irrational (according to you) attitudes prevail over a set of rational (according to you) attitudes. That couldn’t have been my intention. To prevent that word game I’ll adapt the definition:

Atheist ideology is a set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonablee person to see how there could be a god.

Self-serving attitudes. That is a list. Could you please write out the list?

Who is served is the ideology.

Except of course that you've already been schooled repeatedly as to why your "atheist ideology" fiction IS a fiction. Reasons such as:

[1] NOT treating unsupported supernaturalist assertions uncritically as fact isn'f a fucking "ideology", and indeed, when the concept of "ideology" is understood in rigorous terms, NOT treating unsupported supernaturalist assertions uncritically as fact is the very antithesis of an "ideology";

[2] Scientists base their ideas upon DATA, not unsupported assertions of the sort supernaturalists routinely treat as fact. If the DATA says that a given idea is to be discarded, they discard that idea. What part of "discarding an idea when the DATA tells us to discard it" equals an "ideology" in anything other than the fantasy parallel universe of your duplicitous apologetics?

Jayjay4547 wrote:The ideology an active organism made of what people affirm it's the great carriage they push, It's a super-meme.

Except that ideas validated by DATA do NOT constitute a fucking "ideology". Going to learn this elementary lesson sometime?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Human origin stories written in the name of evolution have been an important vehicle for the atheist ideology.

Bare faced lie. Oh wait, those human origin accounts, arising from the DATA telling us that evolutionary processes played a central role therein, once again do NOT constitute a fucking "ideology". Once again, ideas validated by DATA do NOT constitute a fucking "ideology". Going to learn this elementary lesson sometime?

Plus, you've already been schooled repeatedly as to why your "atheist ideology" fiction IS a fiction. Do I have to keep repeating those substantive reasons you keep ignoring duplicitously, and pretending were never presented to you?

Oh wait, once again, NOT treating unsupported supernaturalist assertions uncritically as fact, is NOT a fucking "ideology". Going to learn this elementary lesson sometime?

Jayjay4547 wrote:I've got a list of the major self-serving attitudes to evolution

All of them almost certainly mere fictions on your part. Oh wait, how can a process that eliminates insufficiently competent individuals from a population be in any way "self-serving" to those eliminated individuals? How can a process that by definition involves the shaping of the genetic destiny of a population by external forces be in any way "self-serving" to that shaped population? Once again, you're talking horseshit.

Jayjay4547 wrote:that support a reasonable person in believing there could not be a god.

Except that I've already destroyed this bare faced lie of yours, by openly declaring that I can consider the possibility of the existence of a god-type entity. I just happen to recognise that supernaturalist assertions on this subject don't support the hypothesis, not least because many of those assertions are deliberately constructed to be untestable, others are refuted by DATA, and yet others are replete with internal contradictions, paradoxes and absurdities. But this is another of those elementary concepts you keep mendaciously ignoring, whilst peddling your fantasy fabrications on the subject.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It's not a well expressed list Bert, a bit dusty, but here it is:

Oh this is going to be good. Let's see what blatant fabrications and fictions are presented here, shall we?

Jayjay4547 wrote:The influence of atheist ideology on the presentation and understanding of evolution:

Well since your "atheist ideology" is a complete fiction anyway, you've got off to a bad start.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(a) Presenting the process as change, when it has been one of progressive creation, in the direction of accumulated functionality.

Excuse me, but accumulation of new functions equals change in the system BY DEFINITION. Or don't you understand what the word "change" means? Oh wait, it means that the system of interest acquires a state different to the state it had previously! Which is exactly what happens in any evolving system!

Do you really think this retarded apologetics you''re peddling here, counts for anything amongst people who paid attention in class, and learned about rigorous concepts?

Even if someone were to accept your assertions about "progressive creation", this constitutes a form of change in itself BY DEFINITION.

Once again, your lame apologetic incompetence demonstrates the palsying effects of treating made up shit as fact.

Jayjay4547 wrote:(b) Ascribing agency to what is hierarchically below us –genes- whereas agency has lain with what is above us -biomes.

Oh wait, this is another blatant fiction on your part. Because whilst genes determine function, what determines whether that function is sufficiently competent to persist across multiple generations, is a multiplicity of factors, many of them external to the organism and the population. Or did you not bother reading the multiple instances you were schooled about the manner in which scientists constructed an entire scientific discipline devoted to the study and analysis of those very same external factors? Heard of the word ecology have you?

Jayjay4547 wrote:(c) Describing the process as self-creation via intraspecific causes like sexual selection and social interactions

Processes for which vast bodies of DATA exist, telling us that they are real, and operating within populations of living organisms. Oh look, another example of ideas being shaped by DATA in the world of science, instead of being shaped by your fictitious "atheist ideology"! Once again, how many scientific papers did I bring here containing some of that vast body of DATA, telling us that sexual selection and social interactions are real, measurable phenomena?

Jayjay4547 wrote:whereas it has actually been driven by relations with the other in the form of things we eat and that eat us.

Except that your assertion that these external factors are purportedly being "ignored" by scientists is a flat-out bare faced lie. Once again, heard of the word ecology, have you?

Jayjay4547 wrote:(d) Explaining causality in terms of random chance, non-deterministic effects and non-functional or compromised changes

For which, once again, we have EVIDENCE, in the form of vast bodies of DATA telling us that these processes are real and in operation in populations of living organisms. Do I have to bring the Lenski paper here to establish this? Though this is only one of thousands of such papers?

Jayjay4547 wrote:whereas species actually have followed thread-like logical paths of creative solutions that might often be undiscoverable from the fossil record.

Wrong. Oh look, it's the scala natura and great chain of being fallacies writ large. Except that, oh dear, competent biologists have recognised these to be fallacies for decades.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: I've noticed that abstract labels are used to bad mouth people. By way of example, in the US people care called "a liberal". Not what that person is doing wrong. So, you label atheists self-serving (and we apparently deserve that label more than other people). But you're not specifying what we're doing wrong. But we'll get your list, I assume.

I agree. I’ve noticed many a time on this forum that the US Republican party and the “right wing” is anathematized, by people who like me don’t even live in the USA and can’t vote there.

This might have something to do with the EVIDENCE they provide themselves of their malign ideas and influence. Such evidence as their constant scheming and plotting to overturn Roe vs Wade, their constant rejection of valid climate change science, their constant rejection of valid evolutionary biology, and their obsessive pursuit of the enrichment of billionaire fraudsters and crooks at the expense of the far more deserving poor. They're busy trying to turn America into a cross between Blade Runner and The Hunger Games.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: Here's how it works for me.
1) Religions have contradictory views. So they can't all be right (but they can all be wrong).

To my thinking, there is a lot of agreement between the various “faith communities”.

Poppycock. Oh wait, supernaturalists across the globe cannot even agree amongst themselves, which of the numerous mythologies humans have fabricated is purportedly the "right" mythology! And in some instances, are still, even in the present day, slaughtering each other over these differences! Worse still, adherents of a given mythology routinely demonstrate that they cannot agree amongst each other, what said mythology is purportedly telling us! Indeed, from a rigorous standpoint, there is actually no such thing as a "Christian" - there are merely lots of people treating their particular interpretation of obscurantist mythological prose as purportedly constituting The TruthTM, and calling themselves "Christian" on this basis. At the last count, there existed worldwide over forty one thousand different such organised groupings. I suspect that a similar situation will be found to exist, if not perhaps on such a baroque scale, in the world of other mythologies as well.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m a Christian but I’ve spent some happy times in Hindu temples.

On what basis do you call yourself a "Christian"? Only you've already expressed beliefs here that other people calling themselves "Christian" would consider heretical and anathema.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: 2) None of the religions has a majority (counted by number of followers of that religion). So, even if there is a true religion, the majority of the religious people is wrong (and statistically that could well include you).

For me it’s a question of access. Though I’m a colonial, my cultural roots are in English and Afrikaans and the religious issues I have are endemic to English. So though I respect people who have gone out to hug trees or embrace Buddhism, that’s not my job.

Apparently rigorous thinking isn't your job either.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: Am I being unreasonable? In what sense is this self-serving?

Well throughout your post you are using exclusive categories to try to tie down the concept of the creator.

Bollocks. He's simply noting the manner in which many supernaturalists do this, and demonstrating the manner in which taking said supernaturalists at their word on this leads inexorably to contradiction and absurdity. Do learn the difference.

Jayjay4547 wrote:That makes you seem the same size as God

Oh, you mean the little gods invented by humans in their own image?

Jayjay4547 wrote:which is the hubristic part of atheist ideology.

Lie. Oh wait, recognising the human origins of many of the requisite assertions isn't "hubris", it's called paying attention to DATA. Learn this lesson. And once again, paying attention to DATA instead of fabricated assertions, isn't a fucking "ideology".

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: I continue:
3) Where religious people are wrong, it is crap created by humans. In other words, humans are capable of coming up with religious nonsense.

Are you still with me?

You aren’t exactly writing out a complex equation Bert.

Well since even elementary concepts fly clean over the top of your head, he'd be wasting his time if he did.

Jayjay4547 wrote:You say religion can be crap created by humans

Oh wait, we have DATA supporting this. DATA such as the manner in which many supernaturalist assertions are completely unsupported, and the demonstrable malign influence that arises from treating these unsupported assertions uncritically as fact. Your apologetic fabrications being a particularly florid example.

Jayjay4547 wrote:but I’m struck by how often that words “crap”or “shit” comes up on this forum. Did you see the pic about the “golden shit award” or whatever? No doubt humans are capable of coming up with nonsense at all times and for any purpose.

You've demonstrated that here in spades.

Jayjay4547 wrote:But constructs in the name of religion are often numinous.

Oh, another of those made up words supernaturalists bandy about to pretend they actually know something. It's nothing but the use of vocabulary to reinforce circular wishful thinking. Because, oh wait, the existence of a god type entity is precisely the central assertion we're still waiting for supernaturalists to support. We've been waiting 5,000 years or so for supernaturalists to get their act together on this, and they've failed. Indeed, as I've already told you repeatedly, if genuine evidence for such an entity materialised, whoever presented it would be a guaranteed candidate for a Nobel Prize, because such genuine evidence, upon being presented, would utterly transform our understanding of the universe and its contents. Journals such as Nature, Science and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London would be fighting each other to be the first to publish the data. The presentation of genuine evidence for a god-type entity would be the biggest world news headline of all time. It would utterly eclipse everything that had gone before. It would even push all the celebrity/reality TV crap from the headlines for weeks or even months to come. It would be the single most transformative event in the whole of human history.

Now the mere fact that I recognise this, along with many others here, renders your trite assertions about what we think on the subject utterly null and void, including that bullshit about "self-serving ideas" and the accompanying attempt to misrepresent suspicion of unsupported assertions as purportedly driven by malice, in typical and tiresomely predictable creationist ideological fashion.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: It is possible to think rationally (reasonably?) about religion:

Case one: How do souls work?
If we split a fertilised egg that has just divided, this results in two human beings (so, can we tell god when to provide another soul to the petri dish). The following options exist (which have interesting consequences in abortion discussions):
a) The cells don't have a soul
b) One cell has a soul and the other one doesn't.
c) Each cell has a soul (or half a soul).

In the latter case, are the souls of your dandruff (dead skin cells) already in heaven? Or is my dandruff already screaming in agony, suffocating in the brimstone.

Case two: The number of gods can be only in one of the following categories:
a) zero
b) one
c) more than one.

I can look for each of the options which one has the most support. I can't see how a reasonable person can disagree with another person about his religion being right about the number of gods in contrast to another person's religion. I can't see how it can be justified for one group of people to make life of another group miserable. But hey, I'm an atheist. I'm not reasonable. I'm self-serving.

Case three: The afterlife. I think there are two exclusive options

a) There is an afterlife.
b) There is no afterlife (be it pleasant or not, whether it is depending on how you lived or not).

Ja well all that categorizing goes over my head.

Quelle fucking surprise. Oh wait, Bert is demonstrating above that he's actually thought about the consequences arising from supernaturalist assertions. That you manifestly haven't, with your above admission, merely demonstrates yet again, that your entire ideology is based upon uncritical acceptance of unsupported mythological assertions and nothing else.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I follow John Macmurray in saying, God is the generalisation of the Other.

Exactly what is this supposed to mean? And what distinguishes this from any amount of other made up shit emanating from supernaturalists?

Jayjay4547 wrote:I think all religions are basically about trying to present that generalization,often using beautiful imagery, music and ceremony. It’s like, painting the ceiling of what we can’t experiment with.

But of course, if the subject matter consists, in your own words, of "what we can't experiment with", how can one possibly derive any substantive knowledge about it? It's blind assertions all the way down with supernaturalists.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I take concepts of the soul and the afterlife as imperfectly understood metaphors.

For what?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote: My view: We know there is the current life, let's make at least that one pleasant. I can only see that religiously motivated groups make other groups life difficult. So, yes I've developed some resentment against it. And you can call that political if you want to. I wouldn't give a damn about religion if people just kept it to themselves. I would bet that goes for the majority of atheists. It is not a matter of principle or something. I don't think there is an agenda.

No problem, you go and make your life pleasant. I think our function s to discern and obey the will of God.

And once again, when are supernaturalists going to provide something other than mere assertions about this entity?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote:

There is also inevitably some institutional/economic/political interest involved.

Well, there could be some pot-kettle-black here. But given that atheism isn't institutionalised (when I studied at the university (biochemistry), I didn't have to take vows or something), I doubt that atheism is blacker. It is not that atheism can make a fist.

Political: Of course, I want anyone to live a happy life (be they gay or whatever) without suffering from the hate from other people. Call that political, if you wish. But just calling something political, is an abstract bad-mouthing label, again.

No doubt religions have ideologies and are institutional and act politically.

Catholic Church, anyone? Which was roundly excoriated for doing so in a malign fashion, just four years ago by a practising Catholic Irish prime minster.Or did you not watch that video clip I provided of his speech in the Irish parliament some pages back?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Since the fall of European communism with its State atheism

Oh no, not this tiresome apologetic fabrication yet again. Yawn.

Oh wait, I've already stated in numerous past posts, that the real reason Marx exhorted the followers of his doctrine to oppose religion, was Machiavellian recognition of the most dangerous ideological enemy to that doctrine. It had nothing to do with "promoting atheism", and everything to do with preparing the ground for the introduction of a replacement doctrine, one founded upon economic axioms. Plus, even the former Soviet Union was equivocal about its opposition to religion, sometimes tolerating it when it served a useful purpose in the manner of the old Seneca aphorism. On the other hand, the Catholic Church was, at the height of its political power in Europe, wholly unequivocal about exterminating rival religions.

Jayjay4547 wrote:it hasn’t had a powerful institutional basis.

It's never had an "institutional basis" in the same way as supernaturalism. Another of your fabrications.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Before then, atheism was up to its elbows in the blood of Christians.

Bullshit, and another bare faced lie on your part. Oh wait, for something like 1,000 years, the blood of "Christians", however these might be defined, was being spilt by other people calling themselves "Christians". Heard of the Inquisition, have you?

Jayjay4547 wrote:But you are not at all like those baddies.

Which exist only in the more diseased parts of your imagination.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Seems to me that universities tend to be weakly atheist institutions

Oh, does this include universities with departments of theology or divinity, perchance?

Jayjay4547 wrote:and the current economic driver in atheism

How can an entirely fictitious "ideology" drive anything, let alone economics?

Jayjay4547 wrote:may be to validate graduates earning much more than non-graduates, or to validate universities soaking up ever more of the nation’s efforts.

As opposed to the manifest economic and political interests of corporate religion, of course ...

Jayjay4547 wrote:That's not what I'm against though, I'm just trying to figure out the influence of atheist ideology on the presentation and understanding of human evolution.

Bullshit. You're fabricating fictions to make excuses why people don't treat your fantasies as fact. Your "atheist ideology" being one of the most duplicitous of those fictions.

Another faithist having difficulty with the differences between one/few/some/many/all.

That a process may possibly have had or has a role in an observed phenomena does not mean it is the only possible cause or the proximal cause or even an important factor.

Also the difference between necessary and sufficient.

Necessary does not mean sufficient and sufficient isn't always necessary.

Oldskeptic wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Did I say the atheist ideology is a set of RATIONAL belief?

No, you said, "...atheist ideology is a set of attitudes that make it difficult for a rational person to see how there could be a god."

Good Grief. I didn’t mean to say that.

More like you regret saying it.

I do regret my incaution. I didn’t appreciate that you could very easily read that as atheist ideology is a set of RATIONAL attitudes that make it difficult for a rational person to see how there could be a god. And why shouldn’t you interpret it that way? After all a rational person is one who has rational attitudes.

You used that to make out that I would prefer my set of irrational (according to you) attitudes prevail over a set of rational (according to you) attitudes. That couldn’t have been my intention. To prevent that word game I’ll adapt the definition:

Atheist ideology is a set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonable person to see how there could be a god.

There is something that we should get out of the way right now; This Idea that Christians are automatically selfless and self-sacrificing simply by virtue of being Christians. It simply isn't so anymore than being atheist automatically makes one self-serving.

Your definition is based on assumptions that may work in church, but won't fly when tested. Your unstated but implicit assumption is that self-serving attitudes go hand in hand with being atheist. Another assumption is that without these self-serving attitudes that a reasonable person would believe in a god.

Let's look at the common definition of self-serving: "having concern for one's own welfare and interests before those of others." This definition is also one of the main traits of sociopaths. Something that psychologists describe as a personality disorder. Do you honestly think that most of the people on these forums put their self-interest before that of others any more or less than anyone else?

If you want to observe a bunch of self-serving attitudes leading reasonable people astray I suggest you look at religious leaders and preachers. You want to see bigotry and listen to hateful messages from self-serving pompous narcissists go to church or tune into Christian broadcasting.

I've got a definition for you:

Theist ideology is a set of self-serving irrational attitudes that make it easy for a gullible people to believe that they are somehow special in the eyes of a highly improbable magic being.

That's a self-serving definition. But the self it serves isn't you the estimable Oldskeptic, it's the ideology you allow yourself to be the mouthpiece for.

Oh stuff the bullcrap Jayjay.

At this point he's not definitely just trolling. Pathetic.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

bert wrote:
Case three: The afterlife. I think there are two exclusive options

a) There is an afterlife.
b) There is no afterlife (be it pleasant or not, whether it is depending on how you lived or not).

Ja well all that categorizing goes over my head.

Sorry for the confusion. That should of course have been

a) There is no afterlife.
b) There is an afterlife (be it pleasant or not, whether it is depending on how you lived or not).

If one supposes there is an afterlife, one can think about how it should work. Is everybody there like they were when they died? So, it is full of mostly old people. And if your grand children arrive, would you recognise them. Would still born babies walk around/be nursed? And it is getting more and more crowded. Are new sections getting built? It is rather strange concept, this afterlife thing. Or it is just the soul that is there. That nebulous, intangible thingie. Imagine a place with billions of those. Must be a fun place. All worth it.

I think our function is to discern and obey the will of God.

Well, then there is the problem about how to know that will. I gave examples of how one can learn more about the nature of god(s) should they exist, i.e. discern it. For example, my thinking about the soul brings me to the conclusion that it is unlikely that a god has any problems with the morning-after pill.

Religious people prefer to rely on some arbitrary old book (arbitrary in the sense that it is just the book held in esteem by the family/culture they were born in. If the fertilised egg they'd grown from had been planted in another womb, it would have been another book or version thereof). If that book can be dismissed because it contains nonsense then I don’t want to rely on that.
Many religious people don’t want to rely (in full) on such a book either because they recognise that it contains nonsense, and resort to cherry-picking. By doing that, they’re doing in a sense the same thing as I do: thinking for themselves to filter the crap out. Then one has to figure out what to filter out. Obviously, you can't use the book for that!. One of the tools atheists use to filter crap out is check with nature/reality. If nature is created by god(s), then that is the ultimate filter is a sea of conflicting religious views. And if nature isn’t created by god(s), then it is the ultimate filter too.

I now notice I’m using the c-word again. I don’t suffer from a particular taboo regarding the word crap. To me it is a word that conveys not just the meaning “nonsense” but expresses also my disrespect for that nonsense. I do regret the use of the word though, because it led you to a tangent instead of a more in depth addressing of my arguments.

In a discussion, it could be considered polite not to show such disrespect. However, if one were to show such respect to a discussion partner, it would give that person equal treatment in comparison with genuinely honest discussion partners that are willing to consider the arguments made, give those arguments the weight they deserve and shift their point of view if the arguments have the merit. I think that would be very disrespectful to such discussion partners.

Jayjay4547, it is not that atheists on this board can’t be convinced of the existence of god(s). Even a tiny bit of evidence could suffice. But the evidence has to be solid. The members of this board are easy: They don’t expect you to come up with it. No one ever did, so they don’t expect that of you either. But they do expect you to consider the arguments they make and facts they present. Not with an open mind as in: accept what we say blindly. No, it is perfectly fine to be critical. But… your criticism has to be logically correct and supported by facts.

Bert

I think basically religious people are terrified of life and need the crutch of religion to support them.

They also need this afterlife because their own life is such a disappointment and the need a reason for their existence when there is none.

Some [disproportionately noisy] believers are like that, but it's far from universal.

Though I'll grant you that when it comes to people motivated to go out of their way to go online and lie like bastards about non-believers in order to feel superior, some sense of insecurity or [justifiable] inferiority seems likely to be an underlying psychological issue.

tolman wrote:Some [disproportionately noisy] believers are like that, but it's far from universal.

I agree. People get comfort from believing in a god and an afterlife. It makes the reality of death a little easier for people who don't know anything about cosmology to be able to deal with the inevitability of it, and the loss. I don't have a problem with people saying "I'll pray for you" or "bless you" they feel like they're doing something when there's nothing else they can do.

Not everyone is cynical and realistic about their place in the great scheme of things, and they get something out of believing that there is actually a great scheme of things.

Though I'll grant you that when it comes to people motivated to go out of their way to go online and lie like bastards about non-believers in order to feel superior, some sense of insecurity or [justifiable] inferiority seems likely to be an underlying psychological issue.

I agree. I'm happy to just ignore the ones who go to church on Sundays because that's what they've always done and from which they get a little comfort, and social interaction. It's the ones who use their religion to be mean to other people, to kill and plunder, and lie, that I have a problem with. When I see someone who I know to be a downright criminal making pious comments about "god's plan" that makes me irritated, or when, as you say, they lie and defend the nasty bits of their religion. The old ladies who get together over tea to discuss psalms, nope they don't bother me.