Atheists who don't hate religion

[Correa Neto]

Depends also on what is being proposed.

Consider the following:
Men usually have a better performance at weight lifting than women because they tend to be more muscular [add here links to papers backing the claim that statistically men have more muscle mass than women].

Men have a better performance at weight lifting than women because Kggthilhut-b'stowr, creator of Mankind never meant women to do weightlifting [add links to the Scrolls of Grtukwm'eh-sihjk here].

The above statments have very different support, implications and consequences. The second statement leaves the door open to forbid women from weight lifting based on nothing but a tall tale. Most people who follow the thousands years-old teatchings of the Scrolls of Grtukwm'eh-sihjk are OK. They never cared about or noticed this or that weird outdated bit. Those bits, however, may be used by others to support or reinforce a silly prejudice and try (perhaps even manage) to forbid women from weight lifting.

Without the Scrolls of Grtukwm'eh-sihjk, they would have one less thing supporting their stupidity. Some would still have issues with weight lifting women, but they would have less support.

 

[JaysonR]

Bah, religion is injected, not endemic.

It's a variable artifact of our neurological processing.
The ability to process object permanence (which baffles infants), for example, permits the impression of a soul remaining after someone dies.
Temporal lobe epilepsy can remove the ability of the person to not amplify the value of otherwise mundane observations and to feel they have experienced some divine knowledge as a result - to overly fixate upon the imbued observation, be it a stick or rock or just being.
Subjective capgras removes the ability of the individual to be able to emotionally relate to the image of their face, dormant as that emotion may normally be.
They reject their own image as being them, and soon become convinced that they are walking dead, in limbo, a soulless double replacing their real self, and many other like terrors.

Emotion. The ability for this extremely primal information system to interact with our information processing, the very core root of our system, effectively facilitates all religious perceptions by an individual.
Remove emotion and religion stops.
Keep emotion, and someone will always feel connected in a special way to some non-person or animal thing and hold that feeling as reverent.
Religion is a breath from there.

 

[JaysonR]

People also have the potential to realize when an idea is silly, and let go.

About half of all children have or had an imaginary friend. (Which makes me feel shafted by the universe. I didn't get one) But you don't see many adults talking about what their imaginary friend wants them to do, or worse yet, wants YOU to do. Nor insisting they address their imaginary friend before every meal.

That's just as much neurology in action. In fact, it's some of the same circuits involved in religion. Yet people are perfectly able to let go of that.

Quite exactly. But reflect - they didn't really.
It evolved and became more complex, but they didn't actually let go.
The relationships changed and so did the nomenclature, but the elementary construct remained the same.
Even when we are looking at non-theist forms, the sensation of relation to one's existence or existence itself as a concept take the place; extracted out as if a thing unto itself to be related with.

Emotions are incredibly strong and ontological emotions are some of the most potent, for what folks perceive to be needed to survive can quickly escalate beyond the value of any other sense - be they rational or irrational.

 

[JaysonR]

I have to agree. I was raised without faith and I cannot imagine how I'd have to deform my brain to (truly) believe religious mumbo jumbo.

Well, if there was social pressure on all sides, I might adopt the appearance of belief to get by, but that's no more than a sham.

Quite, but that's not always true - neither is it true that someone must remain religious if raised such.

Nor does the point regarding our neurology belong to the acute class of subjective sampling.

Instead, it means that the potential for the capacity will remain present for as long as there are such volumes of population and our neurology has within it the ability to fool itself because of the emotional bias in which it processes information.

 

[JaysonR]

No more so than many people. Most of the people I've met in my life are religious when necessary, and the rest of the time they're just people.

And we can find this true about the entire relationship of misconceived perceptions and the over-zealous drive of emotions in general.

Most of the time people are just people, but when it's necessary, they can become outrageous political party advocates over things they hardly know anything about, but are absolutely certain that everyone needs to go with their idea - because some politician or set of politicians said something and thus began the charge.

Most of the time people are just people, but when it's necessary, they can suddenly set fires to entire city blocks, kill people for no apparent reason, and generally incite a riot - even if no one knows the real reason for the action.

Take a look at interactions between footballer fans in Europe at times, for example; and that is just sports...sports...sports.

Generally speaking, people are placid.
However, the vast majority of the population are also highly irrational about more than a few things, and capable of extremely irrational behavior.

 

[HansMustermann]

Quite exactly. But reflect - they didn't really.
It evolved and became more complex, but they didn't actually let go.
The relationships changed and so did the nomenclature, but the elementary construct remained the same.
Even when we are looking at non-theist forms, the sensation of relation to one's existence or existence itself as a concept take the place; extracted out as if a thing unto itself to be related with.

Emotions are incredibly strong and ontological emotions are some of the most potent, for what folks perceive to be needed to survive can quickly escalate beyond the value of any other sense - be they rational or irrational.

Hmm, well, we could debate how much the two are really similar. I mean, I'm all in awe of existence, but I don't talk to it.

And I think that's really an important distinction. You can have all the emotions you want, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's when they take anthropomorphic form and start telling you to kill the muslims, or to prevent a raped 12 year old from getting an abortion, that they're a problem.

Replace that with just having some emotions about the wonder of existence, and, meh, it's not the same problem any more. In fact, it's not even a problem any more.

So, really, far from telling me that there's some impossibility to get rid of religion, the above gives me hope that maybe we can, after all.

 

[JaysonR]

Yes, much like certain viruses that are incurable and people are deliberately infected with it from childhood.

Yes the legal system is probably our only hope for now.... but even that is being chipped at incessantly and insidiously.... I wonder how long it will stay uninfected?

Education is of major importance. It is like an immunization against viruses. Just like we inoculate children against many viruses we ought to vaccinate them against religions. Just like we use a weakened organism to build an immunity we should use an educational program that exposes religious lies and preposterousness.

I personally think that rather than not teaching religions, we should in fact teach them in high schools with emphasis on pointing out all the ridiculous stuff in them. We should have a curriculum that shows how unscientific religions are and how nasty they have been throughout history and how they came about.

For instance I doubt any children would maintain respect through adulthood for the Anglican Church if they were informed how it was formed by a horny despotic King just so that he can divorce the wives he no longer wanted so as to marry new ones and to give him the right to behead anyone he did not like.

I doubt many children would maintain respect through adulthood for a religion that has all the sordid and bloody stories of racism and genocide and incest and pimping and adultery and despotism that are in the bible.

I think that not mentioning anything about religions until well after they have already been thoroughly infected is very much like not vaccinating them against say polio.

When a child grows up a little s/he realizes the Santa lie. I think at this age they should also, progressively through the education system, be informed about the religious lies.

So yes we should teach the controversy by pointing out that the iPads and Playstations they enjoy so much would have never been possible had we been still under control of the religious lies.

I think that a curriculum should be designed and be taught as a subject starting at a certain age. The syllabus should concentrate on pointing out all the ridiculous and the unscientific and the immoral in all religions as well as the history of their influence and their atrocities and how they were created.

I think children at a certain age are capable of understanding such stuff and we owe it to them to vaccinate them so as to enable them to make better informed decisions in their adult lives.

But I could be wrong….

I have always held it more simply.
Two things:
1) People need to be in smaller population groupings relative to our neurological capacity for maintaining relevant identity.
The average family size by the average Dunbar number should be the relevant population size of their dwelling area's population density.

2) Children should be taught the basic neurology of magic tricks and how the brain is being tricked, and why - including tricks about self-identity.


Reducing the population of interaction to a meaningful quantity (meaning, capable of being meaningful identities instead of "people") and nurturing self reflection and self awareness of one's own means of conception would go quite a way in aid.

However, neither of these proposals are gainful to concepts like congressional districts, city tourism, tax revenue, voter party allegiance demographics, economic working force, or any such socio-political values of governing bodies.
Such constructs which we employ to help regulate a well-ordered society for the betterment of society are better facilitated by large population densities as such address all above concerns in favor of such facilitation.

So it's somewhat of a catch-22.

 

[Leumas]

And we can find this true about the entire relationship of misconceived perceptions and the over-zealous drive of emotions in general.

Most of the time people are just people, but when it's necessary, they can become outrageous political party advocates over things they hardly know anything about, but are absolutely certain that everyone needs to go with their idea - because some politician or set of politicians said something and thus began the charge.

Most of the time people are just people, but when it's necessary, they can suddenly set fires to entire city blocks, kill people for no apparent reason, and generally incite a riot - even if no one knows the real reason for the action.

Take a look at interactions between footballer fans in Europe at times, for example; and that is just sports...sports...sports.

Generally speaking, people are placid.
However, the vast majority of the population are also highly irrational about more than a few things, and capable of extremely irrational behavior.

I agree, that is why I think instead of trying to debunk GOD we should be debunking religions.

Many people may always need a god, but what we should counteract is not the people’s need but rather the HIJACKERS of this need.

We need to explain that just as there are people who peddle fake gold as real gold and just as one needs to be cautious and weary when buying gold not to be fooled into buying false gold, they need to realize that all these religions are selling a FOOLS’ GOLD.

What needs to be done is instill that a god that requires genuflecting and servile worship and unquestioning obedience is not a god by the simple reality of definition. A god does not require anything from us if it is a real god worthy of the name. We should educate children in such a way so as to realize that the CONCEPT of god given in religions is not very godly and thus it is nothing but a hucksterism designed by shysters to usurp the human need for a god.

We should make them realize that all that sacrifice and tithing and singing and ritual and creeds and so on and so forth is nothing but stuff designed to facilitate fleecing them for the benefit of the priestly castes and to easier control them for the benefit of whoever is able to wrangle the cult.

We need to educate them that the REAL GOD would never prefer some people over others just because they believe in him more or slaughter and burn more cows or believe that he is so cruel as to commit adultery with a 13 years old girl so as to make a son and then make him a human sacrifice. We need to explain that a god does not need a few acres of dirt to dwell in no matter who killed whom to acquire the title deed to it. We need to explain to children that a real god would never drown to death millions upon millions of children and babies along with their parents and every animal in the world.

We need to explain to children that if there is a REAL GOD then the gods of religions must be nothing but the deception and subterfuge of humans who want to drive us away from knowing this real god.

Here is something that might be required reading:

The scene: God and Satan are discussing the design of humans on a dull afternoon.

G: I am going to create humans and give them wisdom and goodness and they will love me.

S: So you are going to make them worship you?

G: No...that defeats the purpose... They will do it out of reverence to me.

S: Ah....but that is no good either. They can't help but revere you if they know you and see you.

G: Yeah....isn't that the point?

S: Not really.... that doesn't prove anything if they love you just because you do things for them and they can see you as a guardian and protector. They would be morons if they don't and YOU cannot create morons can you?

G: No... I cannot create morons...you are right. But Hmmmmm....you are right. How can I test that they would love me for me and not for the things I do for them?

S: If I may suggest something?

G: Well....go ahead!

S: I think that you should NEVER EVER show yourself to them. If before they go extinct they have come to conclude that you are THE GOD then that shows they were sufficiently clever and a testament to your creative wisdom.

G: OK…. I will just help them ANONYMOUSLY.

S: Oh no....that won't do. If you help them that would be a dead give away...no?

G: Ok...then I will just make sure no calamities would ever befall them.

S: Oh...no that won't do either…. What kind of test is that? If nothing bad happens despite which they loved you then what kind of character test is that?

G: Hmmm....ok... I will just let them be on their own and if they grow to love me then we know they loved me for me and not just because I helped them out.

S: But that is not enough.

G: What now....what else do you want me to do.

S: Well....One has a choice only if one has things to choose from. If there are no other temptations how can we know that they chose at all? We need to tempt them away from you and if they resist then we know how clever they are.

G: I don't like this. After all I love them and you now have me rain hell on them and not help them and then you want me to also DECEIVE them too?

S: Well....it is up to you....but if you really want to be sure!

G: What do you propose then?

S: Here are my rules for the bet:

• You leave them all alone. You never show yourself or manifest any sign or indication of your existence.
• They are to be left to fend for themselves against all natural disasters and diseases and so forth.
• Every now and then, I will make sure to pretend to be some God and try to convince man to worship me as if I am the real god. I will also make sure that I do that many times in various places at the same time.
• Let’s say I do that for 10 million years.
• At the end of that time, if there are any humans who are not fooled by the myriad of godly disguises and are in fact not worshiping any of these disguises then YOU win.
• I get to keep the souls of the ones that fall for my shams. YOU get the ATHEISTS.

G: Even the atheists that are killers and rapists? What about the theists that are good and their only fault is that they fell for the ruses?

S: Well….what do you want?

G: Any people who harm other people and have made any others miserable you get whether they fell for your ruses or not. Any ones that have been kind and never intentionally or directly harmed anyone I get whether they fell for your ruses or not.

S: That is not fair. I should get all the ones that worshiped me in any guise regardless. After all I can make a case that by worshiping my hoaxes they wasted valuable time that they could have better devoted to other tasks that could have benefited humanity more.

G: Look…. I don’t like you taking ANY souls. What are you going to do with them anyway… No…. my decision is final. I agree to all your proposals EXCEPT let’s just have it so that all people who die just stay that way….except for the ones that do bad stuff….them… you get to torture for a million year and then extinguish.

S: So even the good ones just die?

G: Yes…all just die but for the bad ones whom you get for a million years and then you extinguish them and we are done.

S: So….let’s be clear about the terms:

• You never ever interfere or show your face.
• I get to do what I want.
• If by the end of 10 million years there are good atheists….you win….otherwise you lose.

G: OK….you are on……

S: How many matches do you want to play?
​

 

[JaysonR]

Hmm, well, we could debate how much the two are really similar. I mean, I'm all in awe of existence, but I don't talk to it.

And I think that's really an important distinction. You can have all the emotions you want, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's when they take anthropomorphic form and start telling you to kill the muslims, or to prevent a raped 12 year old from getting an abortion, that they're a problem.

Replace that with just having some emotions about the wonder of existence, and, meh, it's not the same problem any more. In fact, it's not even a problem any more.

So, really, far from telling me that there's some impossibility to get rid of religion, the above gives me hope that maybe we can, after all.

Keep that hope and run with it; we need the counter-balance - it is terrible when those counter-balances do not exist.

That said, keep in mind - you and I are two vested persons in rational discussion and critical thinking; ergo our participation in this forum, and the exchange of discourse for the weighing of ideas.
Then there's the population of the world - the mass. Truly consider the reaching means of that construct and note that as quickly as religion comes up in a discussion about abortion that you know the conversation isn't going anywhere; equally note that a discussion of political party's in a discussion about gun control means the same.

The best, as far as I can see, that we can do is try to nudge the propagation toward behaviors within an acceptable range of social interaction through social stigma and legal constructs (the former is by far stronger than the latter, but also may become volatile if some group feels overtly repressed).

The ideal would be as I mentioned previously of reducing the density to levels where people are more meaningfully identified among their shared population, and teaching how the brain works early and never stopping those lessons, but I have very little faith that either of these two would happen as the first would inherently require a form of economic collapse in its wake without financial restructure (and no one wants that) and the latter requires additional funding and work (and no one wants that because it doesn't produce a product that can be sold).

 

[JaysonR]

I agree, that is why I think instead of trying to debunk GOD we should be debunking religions.

Many people may always need a god, but what we should counteract is not the people’s need but rather the HIJACKERS of this need.

We need to explain that just as there are people who peddle fake gold as real gold and just as one needs to be cautious and weary when buying gold not to be fooled into buying false gold, they need to realize that all these religions are selling a FOOLS’ GOLD.

What needs to be done is instill that a god that requires genuflecting and servile worship and unquestioning obedience is not a god by the simple reality of definition. A god does not require anything from us if it is a real god worthy of the name. We should educate children in such a way so as to realize that the CONCEPT of god given in religions is not very godly and thus it is nothing but a hucksterism designed by shysters to usurp the human need for a god.

We should make them realize that all that sacrifice and tithing and singing and ritual and creeds and so on and so forth is nothing but stuff designed to facilitate fleecing them for the benefit of the priestly castes and to easier control them for the benefit of whoever is able to wrangle the cult.

We need to educate them that the REAL GOD would never prefer some people over others just because they believe in him more or sacrifice and burn more cows or believe that he is so cruel as to commit adultery with a 13 years old girl so as to make a son and then make him a human sacrifice. We need to explain that a god does not need a few acres of dirt to dwell in no matter who killed whom to acquire the title deed to it. We need to explain to children that a real god would never drown to death millions upon millions of children and babies along with their parents and every animal in the world.

We need to explain to children that if there is a REAL GOD then the gods of religions must be nothing but the deception and subterfuge of humans who want to drive us away from knowing this real god.

It would be nice if you could even just get basic philosophy in grade schools, but you can't.
No one wants to spend the money on it, and even if we did squeeze religion in there, folks just pull their children out of school and send them somewhere else or home school them, or get the entire thing thrown out of the school on some premise that it invades their religious freedom (in America at least; in many other nations, these kinds of concerns are just not an issue - the government can do what it wants and tell the masses to piss off).

In the perfect world; sure.

 

[David Mo]

[

Yeah but at a certain point this just turns into semantics.

I oppose religion because it is factually wrong. I have a negative emotional response to religion based on the objective harm that factual error creates.

Call that whatever you want, the distinction becomes rather meaningless rather quick.

Of course, because we discuss about things by means of words. Semantic precision is a very important issue both in common language and sciences.

And I claim that the difference between hate and moral indignation is only evaluative according to their object.

 

[David Mo]

It would be nice if you could even just get basic philosophy in grade schools, but you can't.
No one wants to spend the money on it, and even if we did squeeze religion in there, folks just pull their children out of school and send them somewhere else or home school them, or get the entire thing thrown out of the school on some premise that it invades their religious freedom (in America at least; in many other nations, these kinds of concerns are just not an issue - the government can do what it wants and tell the masses to piss off).

In the perfect world; sure.

You are speaking from the American or similar ambit. My country is traditionally catholic. A huge majority of people tell they are catholic. But now, under the pressure of the progressive parties, the religion is only an optional subject in the school. (Before the last triumph of the conservative party it was not included in the student's dossier. Let us hope it will be so again in the future).
I don't know if the religion will be erased from the human mind in the future. In any case, this is a speculative subject. You haven't given any reason to claim this. Only presumptions about the "inevitable" human nature that you actually pulled from the American or similar cultural world.
But I know that the power of religion can be reduced. History shows this. We can struggle against de State-Religion symbiosis, for a public school without religion, etc. We can also struggle for making the atheism/agnosticism conspicuous and respectable.
They are big tasks. There are some important cultural, social, political and perhaps psychological forces against it. But it is a plausible fight. Not an impossible one.

 

[JaysonR]

But I know that the power of religion can be reduced.

Yes it can, and I plea to folks to continue to struggle for that end in spite of all of what I wrote.
This is because without the struggle, there is a lack of counter-balance to at least keep things from spiraling entirely out of control.

The reality, however, is this:

History shows this.

History does indeed show us this; and then it shows it slip right out and lose its hold.

As such, we cannot remove the problem entirely from the species, but we can hope to temporarily make small progress by continuing to struggle.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

I agree, that is why I think instead of trying to debunk GOD we should be debunking religions.

Many people may always need a god, but what we should counteract is not the people’s need but rather the HIJACKERS of this need.

We need to explain that just as there are people who peddle fake gold as real gold and just as one needs to be cautious and weary when buying gold not to be fooled into buying false gold, they need to realize that all these religions are selling a FOOLS’ GOLD.

What needs to be done is instill that a god that requires genuflecting and servile worship and unquestioning obedience is not a god by the simple reality of definition. A god does not require anything from us if it is a real god worthy of the name. We should educate children in such a way so as to realize that the CONCEPT of god given in religions is not very godly and thus it is nothing but a hucksterism designed by shysters to usurp the human need for a god.

We should make them realize that all that sacrifice and tithing and singing and ritual and creeds and so on and so forth is nothing but stuff designed to facilitate fleecing them for the benefit of the priestly castes and to easier control them for the benefit of whoever is able to wrangle the cult.

We need to educate them that the REAL GOD would never prefer some people over others just because they believe in him more or slaughter and burn more cows or believe that he is so cruel as to commit adultery with a 13 years old girl so as to make a son and then make him a human sacrifice. We need to explain that a god does not need a few acres of dirt to dwell in no matter who killed whom to acquire the title deed to it. We need to explain to children that a real god would never drown to death millions upon millions of children and babies along with their parents and every animal in the world.

We need to explain to children that if there is a REAL GOD then the gods of religions must be nothing but the deception and subterfuge of humans who want to drive us away from knowing this real god.

Sorry I didn't give a point-by-point response to your lengthy previous post. I didn't have the time to go through it all, so I only responded to the summary at the end. Do you think you could be more concise?

Also, regarding what you've said here, I have a few questions.

Would you teach children that religions and gods are false? Or would you teach them critical thinking skills and allow them to choose and come to the conclusion themselves?

How would you approach and engage religious people? Would you try to talk them out of their beliefs? Or would you just ensure they don't follow the more dangerous / extremist forms of religion?

For that matter, which religious people would you focus on? Would you address all of them equally, out of concern for the consequences of their beliefs? Or would you worry more about the militant members of a faith?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"If you want to have a religion, pick the one that can prove their god or gods exist. Accept no substitute."

 

[Frozenwolf150]

"If you want to have a religion, pick the one that can prove their god or gods exist. Accept no substitute."

What about a religion that worships a head of lettuce on someone's kitchen table? One can at least prove the head of lettuce exists, so would that be a valid religion?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What about a religion that worships a head of lettuce on someone's kitchen table? One can at least prove the head of lettuce exists, so would that be a valid religion?

My kid wouldn't be impressed with a holy salad. And, of course, there's the problem of dumbing down.

 

[JaysonR]

Then again; there are non-theist religions as well.

 

[Leumas]

Sorry I didn't give a point-by-point response to your lengthy previous post. I didn't have the time to go through it all, so I only responded to the summary at the end. Do you think you could be more concise?

Yes.

Also, regarding what you've said here, I have a few questions.

Would you teach children that religions and gods are false? Or would you teach them critical thinking skills and allow them to choose and come to the conclusion themselves?

How would you approach and engage religious people? Would you try to talk them out of their beliefs? Or would you just ensure they don't follow the more dangerous / extremist forms of religion?


For that matter, which religious people would you focus on? Would you address all of them equally, out of concern for the consequences of their beliefs? Or would you worry more about the militant members of a faith?

No/Yes!

 

[JaysonR]

Just teach religions in history class the same way politics is taught.