See what always gets me is the attitude that people should be allowed to have their own beliefs. In principle that I can live with but when they come shoving it your face that is going too far or proclaiming that there is a god and everybody must worship or get killed. Now that really bugs me. Just as the shit in this thread which is the product of a masturbated mind having little to do with reality.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

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."



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.

Bullshit. It's consistent with all the observable DATA on the subject.But of course you don't like DATA when it destroys your fantasies and fabrications, do you?

Jayjay4547 wrote:But the self it serves isn't you the estimable Oldskeptic, it's the ideology you allow yourself to be the mouthpiece for.

Bollocks. Once again, NOT treating unsupported supernaturalist assertions as fact isn't a fucking "ideology". Going to learn this elementary lesson sometime, JayJay? You know, the elementary lesson backed by large quantities of DATA?

Scot Dutchy wrote:See what always gets me is the attitude that people should be allowed to have their own beliefs. In principle that I can live with but when they come shoving it your face that is going too far or proclaiming that there is a god and everybody must worship or get killed. Now that really bugs me. Just as the shit in this thread which is the product of a masturbated mind having little to do with reality.

Well one of the truly insidious developments that Middle Eastern mythology brought to the table, was ruthlessly enforced conformity to doctrine. Along with specious fabrications about being a source of "truth", along with corollary fabrications to the effect that failure to genuflect before this merely asserted "truth" is purportedly the product of malice, requiring brutal measures to deal with it. Which assorted adherents of Middle Eastern mythology have only been too happy to implement, especially when doing so happens in addition to dovetail with their own dark desires and noxious prejudices.

Of course, whilst peddling the usual tiresome and entirely predictable bullshit about us purportedly possessing "hubris", JayJay completely ignores the cosmic level of hubris endemic to the entire supernaturalist enterprise, which demands that unsupported assertions be treated uncritically as fact, regardless of what the DATA happens to say on the subject. Along with the hubris associated with asserting that said mythology and its unsupported assertions purportedly constitutes The TruthTM, and therefore has to be forced upon anyone and everyone. Supernaturalism isn't the only doctrine centred world view to exhibit this hubris, but it's a particularly insidious brand in this respect.

One of the truly noxious by-products of this hubristic presumption on the part of mythology fetishists, is the duplicitous pretence that apologetic fabrications count for more than DATA, and as a corollary, that any DATA not conforming to the beloved doctrine can be ignored and summarily dismissed. JayJay has generated floridly and steamingly hypocritical instances of this mendacious practice on an assembly-line industrial scale in his posts, and has never once even acknowledged the existence of DATA destroying his fantasies. He obviously thinks that if he peddles his fabrications relentlessly enough and vocally enough, this will magically transform them into governing laws of nature. Well it won't, and no amount of stonewalling and bullshitting on his part will ever succeed in that aim.

Agrippina wrote: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.

Well, I see your point but I'm still afraid that such old ladies are not necessarily that innocent, because they may well go on to vote for a (religious) scoundrel who passes (or blocks) legislation affecting the happiness of others based on the silly religious beliefs. Or they donate money to organisations that result in a similar thing (which could be indirectly, such as in case of the salvation army, AA, or even the girl scouts).

When religion is kept alive, there is always a risk of people becoming a hardliner, a literalist, and that's when the questionable morals of thousands of years ago get in higher gear again.

Bert

It is, of course, worth noting that despite jayjay whining that biology is influenced by atheism into adopting an anti-Genesis stance, jayjay's ideas, including humans evolving from apes, men and women arising simultaneously, and our ancestors evolving not in a paradise but in predator-laced killing fields are not merely entirely compatible with atheism, but if publicly uttered could, depending on the location chosen, result in many undereducated believers responding by anything from hostility and ridicule through to violence up to and including lynching.
In times past in Europe, stating such an explanation could have resulted in the heretic being publicly burned to death by outraged Christians furious at anyone questioning the stories about their imaginary friend.

Already told him that. Guess what his response was?

bert wrote:

Agrippina wrote: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.

Well, I see your point but I'm still afraid that such old ladies are not necessarily that innocent, because they may well go on to vote for a (religious) scoundrel who passes (or blocks) legislation affecting the happiness of others based on the silly religious beliefs. Or they donate money to organisations that result in a similar thing (which could be indirectly, such as in case of the salvation army, AA, or even the girl scouts).

Luckily the Constitution was written by communists and non-believers with only tolerance for all religions, and no state religion. So even if the hardliners vote for a someone who wants a state religion, which is unlikely because the majority are socialists who want the government to provide everything for them, it will still take a legal battle to change the constitution to put a state religion in place. We've been there, lived with it for almost 50 years and it brought down the wrath of the world on our heads.

When religion is kept alive, there is always a risk of people becoming a hardliner, a literalist, and that's when the questionable morals of thousands of years ago get in higher gear again.

Bert

I agree, but formal religion is more a cultural thing here now. So many different ones that anyone trying to create a religious state would be hard put to get consensus from the majority.

Having freedom of association and religion in our Constitution means that all religions, including no religion is allowed, and no one is allowed to discriminate against anyone else for their belief or otherwise.

Now if only we could apply that to crime, like corruption and stealing public money. But that's a conversation for another thread.

Yes, but there's still plenty of room for religious-based nonsense that make other people unhappy (blocking same-sex marriage or allowing store owners to serve homosexuals, introducing religion (ID) into science books, limiting stem cell research thus hampering finding cures for people who are ill etc.).

It is not that I want a law to forbid the old ladies from discussing psalms. People have only one life. If discussing psalms makes them happy, good for them.

I just would like people to keep their hobby to themselves. For that, education should provide a counterbalance without tiptoeing around the hot issues (if feelings are hurt, well, then it shows it was necessary. It is not that you can't pass if your worldview disagrees with the facts; but you should know them). In addition, I think that as far as hobbies go, religions shouldn't have a special privilege in a constitution. Baseball, knitting or chess don't have that either.

Bert

I am logging off Ratskep, having said about as much as I would like to here and at present, on the topic of how atheist ideology messed up the human origin story.

Wish you all well

Jay

Jayjay4547 wrote:I am logging off Ratskep, having said about as much as I would like to here and at present, on the topic of how atheist ideology messed up the human origin story.

Wish you all well

Jay

Translation : "People here are too smart to fall into my lies and misconceptions, so I'll try somewhere else."

Jayjay4547 wrote:I am logging off Ratskep, having said spewed about as much as polemical crap I would like to here and at present, on the topic of how atheist ideology messed up the human origin story people won't accept my fantastical pet theory.

Wish you all well

Jay

FIFY and:

Jayjay4547 wrote:I am logging off Ratskep, having said about as much as I would like to here and at present, on the topic of how atheist ideology messed up the human origin story.y

Basically, you've said fuck all of value, and have simply pointed out the intellectual worthlessness of a certain kind of belief

You presented a simplistic hypothesis and tried to claim the reason it wasn't mainstream was 'atheist ideology' but failed to engage with repeated explanations that your hypothesis was not merely perfectly compatible with atheism, but would be likely to be attractive to atheists with the particular philosophical position that you wanted to pretend was driving thinking in biology.

You consistently went out of your way to ignore or barely-address things which clearly did happen (like non-weapon uses of tools, and non-predator-defence uses of weapons) and hopelessly unscientifically dismiss anything involving interactions between individuals in a clearly social species as being off-limits due to the taint of 'self creation' (apart, of course, from the social interactions inherent in your own hypothesis).

You tried to claim nasty atheists were promoting an 'un-Genesis' narrative despite you proposing such a narrative yourself.

You tried the typical hopeless shitty creationist tactic of defining 'creation' on the one hand as simply ending up with more features later in time than at some earlier point while simultaneously trying to use the conclusion of evolution as being creative in that sense to falsely conclude there was some god-like creative entity with actual agency.
It's retarded to do that in the first place, dishonest to do it when its flaws are obvious to you, and particularly retarded to carry on doing it when it's obvious that your audience isn't going to fall for it.

You repeatedly and deliberately misrepresented the very words of people here despite repeated correction, and even when eventually addressing that, you tried to justify yourself rather than apologise.

I doubt anyone here will miss your fake humility, arrogance, ignorance, bigotry, hypocrisy or lying.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I am logging off Ratskep, having said about as much as I would like to here and at present, on the topic of how atheist ideology messed up the human origin story.

Wish you all well

Jay

er..bye then.

Frankly, I don't see this as running away. He's invested a lot of time into his answers, at least on certain topics. I didn't support many of JayJay's contentions, but at least he had the guts to really stick to his argument.

What I do see as running away is his complete failure to define the 'atheist ideology' referenced in the title, despite ongoing and repeated requests. So far, the closest we've gotten is this:

"A set of self-serving attitudes that make it difficult for a reasonablee [sic] person to see how there could be a god."

This fails as a definition.

An ideology is a set-of beliefs and attitudes that is followed by a particular group.
An atheist is someone who does not accept the claim of theism that a god/gods exist

His definition of atheist ideology therefore is just a rewording of the two word phase, with the minor pejorative of 'self serving' and a superfluous 'reasonable person' qualifier thrown into the mix.

Re-reading the last 10 pages, I don't think JayJay actually knows quite what he's arguing for. Instead, I think he is purely arguing against.

Anontheist wrote:Frankly, I don't see this as running away. He's invested a lot of time into his answers, at least on certain topics. I didn't support many of JayJay's contentions, but at least he had the guts to really stick to his argument.

What a pity he didn't have the balls to admit when he was serially misrepresenting people.

He didn't need to for the evidence is overwhelming to anyone reading the thread.

Yep, when you can't win an argument, rather than re-examine said argument, flounce off in a huff with "I'm not playing anymore".

Agrippina wrote:Yep, when you can't win an argument, rather than re-examine said argument, flounce off in a huff with "I'm not playing anymore".

With unsubtle tones of "none of you were willing to listen" or the old classic "clearly this isn't the place for a rational discussion" and so on and so forth.

Indeed.

I think this is an appropriate piece of music for the occasion ...