Calilasseia wrote:Jayjay4547 wrote:More basic than the Marxist labour theory of value and of surplus value thesis lay the workerist perceptions of the injustice of social inequalities and of the class system and economics as the means to analyse and rectify them
Calilasseia wrote:Ahem, how can anything be "more basic" than
the foundational assertions Marx erected upon which he based his entire
I’m arguing that more basic than the labour theory of value and the theory of surplus value- which you claimed as foundational- lay Marx’s perceptions of the inequlalities of the class system and of economics as the means to analyse and rectify them. Marx was on the side of the working class and he was their champion. To my thinking, it was that commitment that was foundational to “Marxist ideology” – ideology is about being on some side of a group argument, and that brings with it a bag full of supporting beliefs. I’ve got an interest in the beliefs about evolution that go with being on the side of atheism.
Calilasseia wrote:I'm reminded here of the words in the preface to one edition of
Das Kapital, in which the translator wrote that whilst many of the oppresed workers in the 19th century were dissatistifed with the iniquities of the capitalist system as then pursued,
Marx was the first to suggest a detailed conceptual alternative, providing a framwork wihtin which that dissatisfaction could be channelled into aspirations for a purportedly better alternative. The fact that there existed serious flaws with his alternative is, of course, a separate issue.
I don’t have a problem with that.
Jayjay4547 wrote:. and economics as the means to analyse and rectify them
Calilasseia wrote:The average 19th century worker was too busy trying to stay alive and out of debt, to spend time engaging in academic deliberations.
Then the19th century capitalists had nothing to fear from the workers hearing about Marx.
Jayjay4547 wrote:I agree that a central flaw in Marxism was the notion that the human intellect could control an economy.
Calilasseia wrote:The funny part being, of course, that quite a few capitalists think this. They just differ in the details. They think that mass pursuit of avarice will somehow magically build a functioning economy.
The human intellect and individual or even mass avarice are different. I was referring to a planned economy versus an unplanned one.
Jayjay4547 wrote:Mind you that worked well enough during WWII, compared with the Russian performance in the previous war.
Calilasseia wrote:Actually, one of the problems Russia faced in WWII, was the manner in which Stalin's whims and caprices frequently
hindered Russian progress. It's a bit difficult to maintain a coherent and consistent military campaign, if your top generals keep being sent to Gulags.
Of course, one of the advantages the then Soviet Union had, was large tracts of land, out of reach of Nazi weapons, into which military production facilities could be moved. Which was one of the sensible moves that the Soviet Union undertook. It also had some eminently fine designers working for it, such as the people who designed the T-34 tank, which is the ancestor of all modern main battle tanks.
Russia had just as large a hinterland during WWI
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:Ideology is a broader complex of beliefs than you make out.
No it isn't. Allow me to expound once again the process that takes place, a process that you will find is shared by
all ideologies if you analyse them. Namely:
[1] Erect one or more assertions, to be treated as purportedly constituting "axioms" about the world, to which the world is purportedly required necessarily to conform;
[2] Construct an edifice based upon the treatment of those assertions in the above manner.
Which, of course, is why, if you
subject assertions to test, and discard those failing said test, you are manifestly NOT pursuing an ideology. Do learn this elementary lesson, JayJay, I've dispensed it to you often enough.
You have indeed often enough insisted that I accept your description of ideology but I’m more inclined to the Wiki definition:
An ideology is a set of conscious and/or unconscious ideas which constitute one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology is a comprehensive normative vision, a way of looking at things, as argued in several philosophical tendencies (see political ideologies), and/or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society (a "received consciousness" or product of socialization), as suggested in some Marxist and Critical theory accounts. While the concept of "ideology" describes a set of ideas broad in its normative reach, an ideology is less encompassing than as expressed in concepts such as worldview, imaginary and ontology.So there are good grounds for my assertion that an ideology is broader complex of beliefs than you make out.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:You haven’t thrown light on why you claim that ideology does not include highlighting some aspects of the world (e.g. social class)|and backgrounding others.
I never erected any such claim, JayJay, this is another manifest fabrication of yours. Indeed,
concentrating upon specific details is inherent in the formulation of the foundational assertions underpinning an ideology. But just because ideologies happen to do this, doesn't mean for one moment, that
other disciplines not founded upon ideologies taake a similar approach, namely,
concentrate upon the details of a particular system of interest. It's the basis from which the entire current classification of scientific disciplines has arisen. And, for that matter, the classification of disciplines in the humanities as well. Just because, for example, physics concentrates upon matter and its behaviour, doesn't in the least make physics an "ideology". Do learn this elementary fact, JayJay.
You did claim that ideology doesn’t include highlighting some aspects of the world (e.g. social class). When I cited Marxism’s highlighting social class, you countered that other non-communist theorists also highlighted social class.
Jayjay4547 wrote: Atheist ideology is also expressed in assertions for example, that there is no progress in evolution.
Calilasseia wrote:This isn't an "assertion", JayJay, it's
observed fact. There is NO teleology, NO externally applied goal arising from a magic sentience, nothing but "whatever works in the current environment".
Jayjay4547 wrote:When I see that word “teleology” I reach for my smelling salts because it always seems to precede some overreaching argument beyond the remit of real observers.
Calilasseia wrote:But that's
exactly what your fellow creationists routinely assert to be in place - a teleology enforced by their imaginary magic man in the sky. Once again, there is
zero evidence for any of this.
Jayjay4547 wrote:I speak only for myself.
Calilasseia wrote:But As I've noted in detail previously, JayJay, I'm aware of this. That entire discourse on the manner in which your assertions would be considered heretical by many other creationists, being a part of said understanding.
Then it’s pointless your saying again and again how heretical I should seem to other creationists. One reason they don’t climb into me might be because they notice who is already screeching at me. Another could be that they intuit my disinterest in changing their minds. A whole lot of cleaning up of the understanding and presentation of evolution would be needed before fundamentalists should consider treating it as the truth.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:And a central part of my thinking is about what the real observer can see.
Oh, you mean
REAL WORLD DATA, JayJay? Much of which you ignore when it fails to genuflect before
your ideology?
When I next ignore REAL WORLD DATA then please let me know. You often cite data that is off the point being discussed, as if DATA is a brick you can throw, rather than a set of pertinent information.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:He [the real observer] can see progress in evolution without being able to see where it will lead.
Wrong. What observers routinely alight upon in evolution, is
movement towards LOCAL fitness maxima. There is NO SUCH THING as a GLOBAL fitness maximum.
It depends on the observer’s closeness of focus. If he looks at a particular population in a petri dish, he sees it moving towards local fitness maxima. But if he looks at life on the planet three bullion years ago, with just algae and then looks at life now, with algae and also elephants, bees and birds and people and the internet, and when he knows that this change came about stepwise or gradually, then the observer is likely to see “progress”.
Unless that word has been made ideologically unacceptable.
Jayjay4547 wrote: The basic difference between atheists and theists is that theists see themselves as embedded in a hierarchy….Theists express this perception of the human condition in meditation, prayer, singing, dancing, great building and in narratives that are spiritual tools…Take “great building” that I cited above. The great cathedrals were spiritual tools
Calilasseia wrote:Actually, the only "experience" I have upon entering a cathedral, is to ask myself how much further we would be as a species, if we'd spent the money developing science instead of penis extensions for religion.
Jayjay4547 wrote: Science was developed by people who in many instances, worshipped in those same cathedrals.
Calilasseia wrote:Oh no, not the tiresome "Christian scientists" trope. Oh wait, most of those were "Christian"
in an era when failing to conform to doctrine led to a one way trip to an Inquisitional dungeon. Funny how most scientists now living in an era where they don't face this threat have
jettisoned religion, isn't it? Do I have to shove that
Nature paper under your nose again? Oh wait,
I dealt with your tiresome apologetics on this subject back on August 18th in this post, where I presented that very paper and its findings, in which it was established that the more prominent the scientists in question, the MORE likely they are to jettison religion.
Scientists and other intellectuals have always been pretty much sacred cows, with a very few exceptions. In England Oxford and Cambridge were run by people who were not so much cowed by religion as controlling access to jobs in the church, and who might well have disliked atheism and atheists from a perfectly reasonable distaste for scoffers.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:If people wanted to depict a penis extension they could have done that more simply than by building a cathedral.
Oh wait, building gigantic edifices has been an essential part of making statements about power,
ever since the days of the Ancient Sumerians and their ziggurats. It's been an essential part of supernaturalists trying to say to the world "look how marvellous our magic man is" for
five thousand years. Planet Earth is
littered with supernaturalist buildings aimed at showing off the purported "power" of all manner of different religions, ranging from those ziggurats, through to the Egyptian Pyramids (which were constructed as portals facilitating a Pharoah's passage into the afterlife), the numerous Greek and Roman temples to various deities, the assortment of buildings in Mesoamerica constructed by the Aztecs and the Incas, such as Xochicalco, the enormous Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia, the Mayan temples of Chichen Itza, and of course the bizarre Moai of the ancient Rapa Nui civilisation on Easter Island. Indeed, in the case of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Pyramids were religious buildings, the Colossus of Rhodes was a religious statue of the sun god Helios, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was a religious building, and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia was a religious statue.
Quite simply, every time human beings have decided to cook up mythological magic entities, and treat them as real, virtually the next step has been the business of building edifices of one sort or another, aimed at telling the rest of the world how powerful these entities are, and why everyone around should worship these entities. It''s been an essential aspect of supernaturalism for at least five thousand years, and indeed, prehistoric cave paintings dating back 20,000 years or more, are widely regarded by scholars to have arisen from similar motivations, not least because they were invariably painted in areas that were difficult to access, requiring special effort to see them, and consequently can be thought of as humanity's first ever sites of pilgrimage. Of course, it's rather difficult to determine what ideas were formulated by the requisite cave artists, given that their works pre-dated the invention of writing by over 10,000 years, but the difficulties haven't stopped scholars from poring over the evidence and arriving at consistent, coherent and evidentially defensible conclusions.
Indeed, the trend for building vast edifices as symbols of power, continues to the present, a supernaturalist trait that has manifested itself elsewhere, in buildings ranging from the palaces of kings, to the assembly halls of various governments, through to the modern-day giant temples to capitalism in the form of skyscrapers. For that matter, back in the 1980s, when I still watched television, BBC 2 broadcast a very interesting programme on this very subject, as part of the television material accompanying an Open University humanities degree course, which I remember extremely well, not least because, with respect to this matter of building giant edifices of power, the narrator made an interesting observation. Namely, that power has transferred, over time, from the Church, through to the State, and thence increasingly to corporate business. That same narrator also noted, quite presciently, that whilst in the past, both Church and State at least professed a concern for human rights, even if the actual record with respect thereto was somewhat chequered, corporate business quite simply isn't interested in anything other than the bottom line, and that transfer of power to corporate business therefore brings with it the worrying prospect of a wholesale undoing of Enlightenment advances in the field of human rights and responsible governance. Here we are, thirty years down the line, and those comments now bear a worryingly predictive aura
In all that, you didn’t once mention “penis”. Penis is used in religion and then it’s done quite openly
But it’s questionable whether a medieval cathedral is a penis-extension for-religion.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:The experience that cathedrals are built for is actually something more searching and abstract.
JayJay, it's a manifest exercise in power projection. One that has been a central manifestation of the supernaturalist aetiology for five thousand years. All of the
data tells us this. A particularly gigantic example can be found a 30 minute train ride from my home, in the form of Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, which is a
colossal edifice. It's frequently cited as the heaviest stone built building on the entire planet, the longest cathedral in the entire world, and the largest Anglican building of any sort anywhere. It's also one of the world's tallest non-spired church buildings. It's built on a
vast scale, and houses two other record breaking artefacts, in the form of the world's largest and heaviest working ringing peal of bells (also situated at the greatest height above ground level of any church bells in the world), and the UK's largest pipe organ. The best part of
sixty thousand tons of sandstone were quarried to build it, which means that its mass was equal to that of
both the World Trade Center towers put together before the September 11th terrorist attacks. Usually, you don't build something that big, unless you
really want to make a huge impression upon people.
Which, of course, leads me to an interesting question. Why would any
real, existing god type entity, require us to build these massive edifices? Surely any genuine entity of this sort could happily make its presence felt without the need for all this architectural grandiloquence? Indeed, I gather this is
exactly the view held by the Quakers, who routinely regard ostentation of this sort as superfluous to requirements, and who will, if you ask them, quite happily tell you that they can experience the same "searching and abstract" experiences you assert above exist, whilst conducting far more modest ceremonies in each others' homes.
Oh, and while we're at it, JayJay, I would FAR rather that supernaturalists built something like THIS:
than some of the edifices they've been erecting of late. A classic example of
hideous supernaturalist architecture of recent vintage, being the US Air Force Academy Church, viz:
That latter building has so many creepy, fascist overtones, it's difficult to know where to start. It looks like the sort of thing that the Nazis in
Iron Sky would build. It even manages to out-fascist the
Zeppelinfeld at Nuremberg.
But then Americans have a habit of building tacky or creepy buildings in their slavish pursuit of Magic Man adulation. Just check out
any recently built "megachurch", and see what I mean.
Still no penis. All I’m picking up here is your dislike for Americans and for religions being responsible for large buildings.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s a tragedy for Europe, that these cultural works should now be so blindly and contemptuously treated by the descendants of the builders.
Oh please, spare us the cant, JayJay, because that's all it is. We simply recognise the
observable facts, namely that these buildings were very much exercises in power projection here on Earth. That some of them happen to be wonderful pieces of architectural aesthetics in their own right, is merely the icing on the cake. But it's entirely apposite to ask whether or not the labour and money expended thereupon, might have been better directed at, for example, providing us with a
genuine understanding of disease and its treatment two or three centuries before we actually alighted upon it. If given a choice between lots of impressive buildings, and the acquisition of antibiotics in the 16th century instead of the 20th, I'd take the latter any day. That you describe such a choice as "contemptuous treatment" of your beloved edifices, speaks volumes about
your ideological agenda.
If the medieval cathedrals were exercises in power projection, then what should we say about the today’s worldwide fashion for skyscrapers? Those things aren’t utilitarian. Medieval cathedrals did harness the intellect and skills of their societies but a part of that was to present to the individual inside the church with a strong experience of the greatness of God. It’s only from the inside that the stained glass windows were lit while the great flying buttresses outside were only to laterally support the immensely high vaulted ceiling arches. It’s not cant to point out the tragedy in your lack of appreciation for the aspirations and achievements your own ancestors.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:We can recapture some of the cathedral experience by filling a cathedral with a similar ceremony. Even in my country, with a poor copy of the great cathedrals and a ceremony in a different language, by people of a different race, some of that experience comes back.
Mass hysteria, anyone?
Certainly a group experience.
Oh, you mean like that nonsense at Fatima? I can give you plenty of reasons why that
was nonsense.
I was actually thinking of an investiture ceremony in the Grahamstown cathedral. But ceremonies like that have been carried out all over the world.
Jayjay4547 wrote: Even a single cell is a complex organism.
Calilasseia wrote:Modern ones benefiting from 3.5 billion years of evolution might be. This wasn't always the case. Oh, by the way, what about viruses?
Calilasseia wrote:Modern cells benefiting from what? From3.5 billion years of evolutionary
progress? development?
Calilasseia wrote:Fixed it for you.
You snipped “progress” from my text and replaced it with “development”. You could have got a job as censor in Stalin’s Russia.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:Yes. And viruses are themselves complex organisms, being made from DNA that plays out in a marvelous way when in the appropriate environment.
One word. Chemistry. Learn about it.
I did learn some chemistry. There is a lot more to be said about a virus’s ability to unfold itself in a victim cell, than just “chemisty”. Some of that was said by Douglas Hofstadter in his excellent
Godel Escher Bach:; an eternal golden braid, from page 536. If you still have your copy we can discuss that.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:Or [pick up] Smuts’
Holism and evolution to look at hierarchy]
Ah, the same Jan Smuts who founded Apartheid. Seems like we're getting all sorts of interesting clues about the origin of your ideology, JayJay.
That’s a blatant and despicable ad hominem. “Apartheid” was a term invented by the parliamentary opponents of Smuts, many of whom his government had detained for pro-Nazi sedition during WWII. The apartheid policy of that Nationalist party was implemented by them after his party lost the 1948 election, under the name “apartheid”.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:The fact that one can have loyalty towards an ideology, identifies the ideology as greater than the individual.
Wrong. It merely demonstrates that
adherents treat it as such. Non-adherents don't by definition.
Non adherents typically serve opposing ideologies.
Poppycock. What part of the "NON" in "NON-adherents" don't you understand? If one is an adherent of ANY ideology, then the word "non-adherent"
simply does not apply.
My point is that ideologies typically come in pairs and they grow through opposition to each other. Communism was opposed by capitalism, Christianity by atheism.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:I don’t know that every philosopher on the planet would agree that your “rigorous formulation” of atheism is useful.
Steve Gimbel is an example of one who does. Because, wait for it, his deliberations on the subject were part of the inspiration for my doing so….Try
this entire blog post.
I read clear through that interesting blog post without finding support for your defining atheism as “not accepting unproven assertions as fact”.
Oh, didn't you read this paragraph then?
Steve Gimbel wrote:Negative inductive atheism, we can call the first stance, is exactly the sort of inference you describe here. Are the respondents on this blog aliens from another planet? There is no evidence in favor of this hypothesis (well, little evidence) and since there is no good reason to believe it, I don't.
In the same way, one could argue as you do that there is someone making a claim of the existence of a being and therefore assumes the burden of proof for it and if they have not met that burden then rationally, one ought not believe in the existence claim.
Exactly how is is possible for you to read the above paragraph, and NOT arrive at the conclusion that what is being discussed therein, is
suspicion of unsupported assertions? Indeed, that is
exactly what Gimbel is telling his readers in that paragraph, namely, that
no unsupported assertion should be accepted as purportedly constituting fact. Which is precisely the basis for my entire thesis on the nature of assertions!
That you are unable to connect the
manifestly connectable dots here, JayJay, speaks far more about the palsying effects of the ideological blinkers you are wearing, than any amount of words on my part.
I did read that paragraph, it described the first of four brands of atheism that Gimbel identified, I still don’t see that he supports your brand. Rather he points out that this first brand is the only one relying on the question of the burden of proof. And if you go to the bottom of that blog, note my asking Gimbel whether he accepted your definition. He hasn’t replied yet so I conclude, he doesn’t feel strongly about it.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:The closest one can actually get to a rigorous definition of atheism is more like the Wikipedia definition of someone who denies that God or any deity exists.
Er, no. Once again, do learn the elementary facts here, JayJay. An atheist,
by definition, is someone who does NOT treat unsupported supernaturalist assertions as fact. That is the
critical defining feature of an atheist.
That’s what you say Cali, and much as I respect you, that’s only one of four basic brands that Gimbel identifies being
negative inductive atheism, positive inductive atheism, deductive atheism and linguistic atheism. And yours doesn’t have the strong advantage that the Wiki definition (below) does have, of being accepted by both sides.
Calilasseia wrote:This presupposes that there actually
is such an entity to "deny" the existence of.
That is the very assertion atheists call into question. You really don't understand the elementary concepts at work here, do you? Because
denial implies
rejection of established fact. When there are no established facts present with respect to a particular subject matter, [i[]denial[/i] doesn't enter the picture. Indeed, the very use of the word
denial is an instance of
manifest linguistic manipulation on the part of supernaturalists, who want their unsupported assertions to be treated as fact by default.
Which word would you like to see removed from English to aid our clarity and right thinking? Is it God or Deity or Exists?
Calilasseia wrote:Oh wait, one of the key concepts I keep impressing upon people at every opportunity, is that
definitions should reflect the observable data arising from the entities and interactions that those definitions purport to be informative about. And that's exactly what I've been doing here, JayJay, taking note, from that
observable data, what central defining feature unites all of those calling themselves 'atheist'. Quite simply, they do NOT regard unsupported supernaturalist assertions as fact, and apply this suspicion thereof consistently to
all supernaturalist assertions. What I add to the mix, is elementary facts regarding the nature of assertions, one key fact being that assertions
all possess the status "truth value
unknown" until they are
tested, and that as a corollary, it is utterly ridiculous to treat
any assertion as fact, until said test has informed us that we can do so. But of course, once a test
has informed us of this, then that assertion
ceases to be an assertion, and instead becomes
an evidentially supported postulate.
It’s a significant problem when you offer a definition that isn ‘t accepted by the person you are talking to. If the Wiki definition were generally unacceptable to atheists, it would have been changed by atheist editors. And similarly, if theists thought it was manipulative they would have changed it.
Calilasseia wrote:Indeed, you have been told repeatedly here,
substantive reasons why we are suspicious of supernaturalist assertions. Reasons such as:
[1] The complete absence of real evidence for
any of the multiplicity of asserted magic entities fabricated by human imaginations;
[2] The paradoxical, absurd or internally contradictory nature of several of the assertions presented with respect to these entities;
[3] The presence of manifest elementary errors in mythologies, that would never have appeared, if any
real god type entities had genuinely been responsible for those mythologies;
[4] The fact that science as we know it would be impossible, if some supernaturalist assertions were true;
[5] The fact that scientists have provided vast quantities of evidence, to the effect that testable natural processes are
sufficient to account for vast classes of observational entities and pheneomena, and as a corollary, that supernatural entities are superfluous to requirements and irrelevant;
[6] The complete failure of supernaturalists to agree amongst themselves, on a global scale, which of the numerous extant mythologies is purportedly the "right" mythology, and the manifest failure of adherents of a particular mythology to agree amongst themselves, what that mythology is purportedly telling us.
My own Christian belief is based on an intuition that I am embedded part way up a natural hierarchy, and am only able to do science on what is below this human condition. What I can see of this scheme appears to me to be great and beautiful and wise. I take the word “God” to point towards the upper pole of this hierarchy. I understand religions to be aimed at depicting this upper part of our condition though ceremony, art, music, myth, architecture and so on. I find a great deal of agreement with what matters in other religions. I find the Christian faith most accessible for me.
On the other hand I find atheism unattractive; it is put to me in unappealing language by hostile people.
It also seems to me that atheist ideology has influenced the understanding and presentation of evolution. The direction of that influence is towards dulling comprehension of the current ecological crisis.
Calilasseia wrote:Indeed, it's rather telling that your magic man, if it exists, seems content to let it be represented here on Earth by mere pedlars of apologetics, whilst those of us who are
suspicious of said apologetics, frequently have
hard empirical science to call upon. Indeed, I recall Steve Gimbel's words on this very subject, that you
claim to have read, yet apparently remain blissfully unaware of the implcations, viz:
Steve Gimbel wrote:Positive inductive atheism would be what we could term the position in which
one argues that there is evidence to believe in the falsity of the magical, invisible man in the sky hypothesis. Folks with this view often point to the incredible successes of purely naturalistic explanations for phenomena that were thought at earlier times to be entirely unassailable by scientific methods. With all the things that had been thought to be the result of magic, spirits or supernatural causes that we now understand and can control by the use of science, there seems to be reason to be suspicious of claims that any part of the universe is beyond scientific understanding. This is an inductive argument based on the historical relation between science and religion, and judging that the successes that science has had in the past in realms like astronomy, biology, geology, and psychology will thus probably go all the way down to eliminating non-naturalistic elements in all our beliefs.
Yes that was Gimbel’s second brand of atheism. I don’t think it’s necessary to abandon naturalistic beliefs to believe in God.
Calilasseia wrote: Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s true that the Christian faith has been pushed by the theist-atheist opposition into a rickety position about assertions of “historicity”.
Bollocks. Assertions of this sort have been a staple of Christian apologetics from the very start. The treatment of various fantastic events as historical fact, is even endemic to the Nicene Creed. Viz:
Nicene Creed, 381 CE Version wrote:he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried,
and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven
The fantastic supernatural events treated as historical fact therein are highlighted in blue above. This was in place
long before atheism started to become even noticeable in Europe.
Yes, but it was understood as the closest one could get to expressing the relationship between man and what is greater than man. That’s why the word “mystery” appears in the book of cmmon prayer. It’s only in the 19th century that many people started worrying whether Jesus did really
really come live again and ascend to heaven. They were confusing the world of experiment with the world we try to depict above us.
Calilasseia wrote: Please tell this to the world'[s physicists. I'm sure they'll be
so grateful for your assertions here. Oh wait, it was
physicists who were amongst those people informing us, that the universe was constructed on a
far grander scale, than the sad little stories contained in mythologies would have us think. The
real grandeur and majesty of the universe wasn't revealed to us by mythology, it was revealed to us by
science, and by
scientific experiments.
I mean no respect to physicists; I’m not presuming to some high status to make them contemptuous of what I say. The Bible is rather good at expressing the greatness of the creation
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?Calilasseia wrote: Only amongst religious fundamentalists. If it wasn't for the manner in which religions have stolen discoursive and policy making privileges over the past millennia, atheists would regard the failure of mythologies in this vein, to be as much an irrelevance as those mythologies themselves. The only reason we're even bothering with these mythologies, is because there are lots of people trying to force us to treat those mythologies as fact.
Who is trying to force you Cali to treat anything any particular way? Me? Some other poster?
Calilasseia wrote: Oh wait, the
very existence of so-called "spiritual" entities is
one of the assertions we're waiting to see supported with something other than apologetic hot air.
Your range of experience then excludes worship. You walk into a cathedral and just think of it as a penis.
Calilasseia wrote: Well frankly, the only reason we bother with the fact that fundamentalists have their heads inserted into their rectal passages, is because these people have a habit of trying to force the rest of us to stick our heads up our arses in the same manner.
It’s often said that atheism created Christian fundamentalism, specifically in the USA.
Calilasseia wrote: Bollocks. It's a recognition of observable fact. Because if you
had any real evidence to present, you'd have done this long ago. In fact, you wouldn't even have bothered with this forum for the purpose, because if you ever came into possession of
real evidence that a god exists, your first point of call would be
Nature and
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Part A. Followed shortly afterwards by your award of a shiny gold medal from those nice Swedish people. The mere fact that this is the scale of the task to be undertaken, should be telling you that your apologetics is
woefully inadequate here.
To my understanding of what “God” means, it would be impossible to find experimental evidence for God. Indeed when something like that is offered e.g. the so called ontological proof of God, I’m intensely suspicious. As I’ve said before, if I discovered deep inside the rind of the Mandelbrot set, the statement in Times Roman “Yes I God do exist” , that would seem to reduce me to a mere cog in a machine. We live in a more classy place than that.
Calilasseia wrote: Except that, oh wait,
he provided EVIDENCE for the applicability of his physics. This is why we don't regard him as lazy or stupid. Indeed, even though his physics has been superseded, it's
still regarded as useful, where the error in application is too small to be measurable, and therefore not likely to result in catastrophe, not least because it's mathematically and computationally far simpler than general relativity or QM. But of course you're not going to let
facts such as this get in the way of your apologetic fabrications, are you?
Here you advertise that you know about Einstein’s physics, but you don’t address the point that Newton could by no means be called lazy or stupid, or a poor scientist, although he was a devout Christian. Francis Collins, head of the human genome project and author of “The language of God” is a modern example.
Calilasseia wrote: Oh dear, not this tiresome bullshit again ... yaawn, yawn, fucking yawn. How many times do I have to lead you through the nose, with respect to the preoccupation with god in
Mein Kampf, before you'll drop this bare faced lie? The governments you duplicitously try to misrepresent as "atheist", were in fact
committed to well defined REAL ideologies that had nothing to do with atheism. Hitler was a pedlar of racial ideologies. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were peddling their own interpretations of Marxism, the very fact that "interpretations" thereof existed being informative here.
According to the Wiki entry on state atheism:
State promotion of atheism as a public norm was first practiced during the Revolutionary France.[1] Since then, such a policy was repeated in Revolutionary Mexico and in Marxist-Leninist states. The Soviet Union had a long history of state atheism, in which social success largely required individuals to profess atheism and stay away from houses of worship; this attitude was especially militant during the middle Stalinist era from 1929–1939. The Soviet Union attempted to suppress public religious expression over wide areas of its influence, including places such as central Asia.According to the Wiki entry on The Republican government of Spain
“
the controversial Constitutional articles 26 and 27 imposed stringent controls on Church property and barred religious orders from the ranks of educators.[9] Scholars have described the constitution as hostile to religion, with one scholar characterising it as one of the most hostile of the 20th century”. According to the Wiki entry on the Mexican leader Plutarco Elías Calles:
“The following month on 14 June 1926, President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as the Calles Law.[16] His anti-Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to trial by jury (in cases involving anti-clerical laws) and the right to vote.[16][17] Catholic antipathy towards Calles was enhanced because of his vocal atheism.”Here’s a Wiki pic of Christians hanged by Calles’s government during the Christados war in Mexico.
Calilasseia wrote: Once and for all, JayJay, drop the "atheist genocide" lies and bullshit, because we've done this bullshit to death.
I didn’t claim an atheist genocide, just that recent explicitly atheist governments have a bad record on human rights. That’s the truth.
Calilasseia wrote: Lie. It's a deliberate and duplicitous attempt to misrepresent proper suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions, as purportedly being motivated by malice. It's such a frequently observed creationist trope, that we can see it coming from light years away. And it IS manifestly defamatory as a result.
I’m not the least interested in misrepresenting “proper suspicion of unsupported supernaturalist assertions” as you put it.
Calilasseia wrote: Lie. The ONLY thing that has affected evolutionary theory, has been the
REAL WORLD DATA. Stop posting lies, JayJay.
So you say Cali, but you may be wrong.
Calilasseia wrote: Bullshit and lies, JayJay. Oh wait, the people on this planet who gravitate most strongly toward a view of the biosphere, as purportedly nothing other than a source of burgers and fries,
are creationists. Especially the Rapture retard brigade. These are the people who oppose action on climate change, oppose preservation of biodiversity, and who, to use Ann Coulter's words, are the ones adopting the "rape it" mentality toward the planet. On the other hand, many of the people involved in conservation, climate change awareness, and a proper scientific understanding of the biosphere, are the very atheists you impugn with the manifest bare faced lies in your posts. Last time I checked, Ann Coulter wasn't an atheist.
Ann Coulter certainly has said some wrong things, but I’m trying to address a different issue, which is the direction of influence that atheist ideology has had on the understanding and presentation of evolution.
Calilasseia wrote: Lies. The very same creationist lies peddled by Ken Ham and the duplicitous Arsewater In Genesis website.
Does Ken Ham really argue the danger in humans drawing too much of nature into an obligatory relation with ourselves? I doubt it.
Calilasseia wrote: Lies, lies, lies.
Sounds like you are blocking your ears Cali; not a good thing to do if in fact humanity faces an unrecognized present danger. By the way, the next time you call me a liar, or one of the weasel words that mean the same thing, I will end my discussion with you. I’ve got to take that step in the face of the extreme level of name calling from Eshuis, Spearthrower and tolman but I’m sorry | ever put up with it in the past.
Calilasseia wrote: Then why did you state above that this was
an implication of your claims about "atheist ideology"? Rather walked into that one haven't you?
You might not recognize that by denying progress in evolution you also deny the possibility and prospect of progress being reversed through human actions such as drawing too much of nature into an obligatory relationship with us.
Calilasseia wrote: You obviously haven't spent time in Georgia or Mississippi. Take my advice and don't. The locals there will probably lynch you the moment you step over the border, once they find out about the assertions you've posted here. This isn't a "tirade", JayJay, it's observable fact. If you want to see what you're likely to face, just take a peek at a certain episode of
Top Gear, where Clarkson and the other two overgrown schoolboys took a trip into the Deep South.
I can well imagine. The BBC has taken advantage of American big-heartedness often enough, to sneer at the Yanks. But once they realize how they are being treated, Americans can get rough. Anyhow you are returning fantasy for data.
Calilasseia wrote:Jayjay4547 wrote:I don’t sneer at other posters or indulge in ad hominem
Boom, there goes another irony meter ... oh wait, you've accused me of being "linguistically manipulative", despite all the evidence pointing to this being a
creationist trait.
Calling something you said “linguistically manipulatve” is ad hominem? I’d call it just an awkward construction. A good example of real ad hominem is where you said above:
“Ah, the same Jan Smuts who founded Apartheid. Seems like we're getting all sorts of interesting clues about the origin of your ideology, JayJay".Jayjay4547 wrote:I deny that I am a “supernaturalist”; that word implies a belief in ghosts and ectoplasm.
Calilasseia wrote:Well for the purpose of
this part of the discourse, and my immediately preceding paragraphs, we'll treat this term as referring generically to anyone who accepts mythological assertions as fact, even if those assertions don't necessarily involve fantastic magic entities, just so that you feel comfortable.
Jayjay4547 wrote:Thanks but that won’t do either, I don’t accept mythological assertions as fact; I accept the stories in the Bible as numinous, not as fact.
Calilasseia wrote:Though I'm not usually a fan of dictionary expositions in my posts, not least because they've been used in the past for apologetic convenience by others, I decided to check out what "numinous" means, courtesy of
here. It made interesting reading.
adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or like a numen; spiritual or supernatural.
2. surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious: that element in artistic expression that remains numinous.
3. arousing one's elevated feelings of duty, honor, loyalty, etc.: a benevolent and numinous paternity.
[1] above renders your apologetics on this matter tautological, [2] introduces epistemological problems for your apologetics that your above-stated delicate constitution might find too onerous, and [3] appears at first sight inapplicable. Not a good start.
I’ll say it again,
I don’t accept mythological assertions as fact; I accept the stories in the Bible as numinous, not as fact. Now you know something about what “numinous” means, we can move on.
Calilasseia wrote:But, whilst providing you with this piece of largesse, you might want to take note of the fact that a lot of
other supernaturalists, are supernaturalists red in tooth and claw, so to speak, fully signed up to the idea that magic entities exist, and in the more florid cases, even resurrect the ridiculous vision of the world extant in mediaeval times. These are people who
hate viscerally the idea that testable natural processes can provide an explanation for
anything, who want the universe and its contents to be subject to the dominion of their doctrines and the assertions contained therein, and who entertain such fatuous notions as the idea that diseases are caused by "demons". Strange as it may seem to you, with a somewhat comfortable Anglican background, there are such people about, and in America, they have money and political connections that they are using, to try and make their hideous mediaeval world view rise to an anachronistic hegemony. These people would be amongst the first to put you to death as a pagan and a heretic, for expressing the views you've expounded above, and they would take
pleasure from doing this. Sordid, squalid, sadistic pleasure. Let that thought dwell for a while in your mind, JayJay, that quite a few of the people who describe themselves as "Christians", are actually Torquemada wannabees hoping to become the torturers on behalf of the theocracy that is their bizarre, outré and frankly psychotic masturbation fantasy. America is
littered with these people.
Jayjay4547 wrote:Well I rather like Americans generally. I was brought up partly amongst White, Afrikaans Nationalist, Dutch Reformed Church, Boers. Who also I rather like, though my own positions on many issues have been different. I imagine them as a bit similar to Southern Baptists in the USA. Guess I’m not a good hater.
Calilasseia wrote:I'm tempted to say
quelle surprise at this juncture.
But But in the preceding paragraph you referred to my supposed “somewhat comfortable Anglican background”. Now you aren’t surprised that I was exposed to something more like the Deep South. You were on such a riff about how horrid you imagine your opposition is that you couldn’t bother with consistency.
Jayjay4547 wrote:And there are millions of Christians who think somewhat along my lines: the very people whose position is adjacent culturally, to that of atheists. So your insistence on “supernaturalist” instead of “theist” is part of atheist ideology to build the wall between your belief and adjacent ones.
Calilasseia wrote: But as I've just explained, JayJay, you and these millions of Christians aren't the only game in town. The fun part being, of course, that I've simply described the horrors awaiting you at the hands of some of the other "Christians" currently extant. I suspect that the hatred you would experience from the assorted head-choppers of Islamic State would make even the creepy, fascist Dominionists look tame.
Jayjay4547 wrote:So you say but I’m making a serious point that your demonizing of Christians based on extremism when the kind of Christianity you might possibly be attracted to is being discussed, is part of your ideology.
Calilasseia wrote: I don't have an "ideology", JayJay, you keep peddling this fabrication. What was that you accused me of again ... being "linguistically manipulative"?
I argued that your proposed definition of atheism was linguistically manipulative. I’m sorry I said that now, I should have called it “tricksy”. But it’s not tricksy to claim an atheist ideology. It’s not even necessarily hostile. If you acknowledged an ideology you could take steps to rid yourself of its clutch or at least to clean it up. For example on this forum you could insist on not calling other posters liars. You being a moderator.
Calilasseia wrote: As I have stated often in my posts, JayJay, I regard ideologies, regardless of content, with
suspicion. That you keep peddling this fabrication of yours, in the light of this information, means that the one being "linguistically manipulative" here is
you.
To disagree with you isn’t to be linguistically manipulative.
Calilasseia wrote: As for the idea that I could now find
any religion in the least "attractive", well that's about as plausible as Kent Hovind's tax returns.
“Now” find? You mean, I have turned you off Christianity? I’ve put your back up? That would be bad. Maybe there is a more acceptable way of arguing that atheist ideology has influenced the understanding and presentation of evolution, and that the direction of that influence could be dangerous.
by 
Seriously?
