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A Humbling Journey: Theism to Atheism...

Squeegee Beckenheim said:
You said you found Religulous funny.
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Indeed I did. I thought that it was very funny. But I also found it incredibly unsettling too. I think they call it 'dark humor' or something like that.

I'm thinking that Maher's presentation deliberately intended the issue to appear to be both humorous and unsettling. That is my take on it anyway...
 
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acbytesla said:
I too wish to see the end of theism and ALL superstitions. Cultures take time to change. And it isn't a steady change.
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TBH, I'm not expecting things to change. Not for the better anyway. I just don't see it happening. As I had already mentioned earlier, human knowledge is now already far past the point where we need a supernatural explanation for anything. This is just what makes the whole issue (for me) even more unsettling...
 
Autolite said:
TBH, I'm not expecting things to change. Not for the better anyway. I just don't see it happening. As I had already mentioned earlier, human knowledge is now already far past the point where we need a supernatural explanation for anything. This is just what makes the whole issue (for me) even more unsettling...
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I am. I see it like Thomas Parker saw justice.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
 
acbytesla said:
I am. I see it like Thomas Parker saw justice.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
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I will go with that on the proviso that we all realise that it is a very, very long arc. It wont happen in my lifetime, nor likely my childrens.
 
Autolite said:
Indeed I did. I thought that it was very funny. But I also found it incredibly unsettling too. I think they call it 'dark humor' or something like that.

I'm thinking that Maher's presentation deliberately intended the issue to appear to be both humorous and unsettling. That is my take on it anyway...
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Well, then.
 
acbytesla said:
Check out this Louis CK video. Sort of talks a bit about how we expect so much these days. Funny as well.

https://youtu.be/dgEvjW1Pq4I
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I'm not a huge Louis CK fan but that video was funny! Thanks for that. I really liked the 'telephone' bit.

It reminded me of a time at work when one of the younger guys found an old rotary dial phone in a storage closet. He asked me "How does it work"? I told him that "It is voice activated"... :D
 
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acbytesla said:
I too wish to see the end of theism and ALL superstitions. I alsi wish that Trump wasn't elected and that I was a Rockefeller heir. Cultures take time to change. And it isn't a steady change.
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Nor is it irreversible.

What you and I find just and fair today may not be in 50, 200 or 6000 years.
 
Autolite said:
The point I was making is that (if the quoted medical definition was correct) the technical difference between being mentally healthy and delusional seems to depend on whether or not the "irrational, unsubstantiated belief" is commonly shared or not.

I don't think that I'm going too far out on a limb here to suggest that that is at the very least somewhat interesting...
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Interesting to say something polite, how ever there are always two issues to factor:

1. Functioning, if symptoms do not cause a major impacts in one of the areas of life functioning then a disorder is not really present

2. The crazy cultural/social belief clause , where is an irrational belief is commonly held in their social group, it may not be delusional.

IE believing in the resurrection or Noah's flood is different that believing your neighbor is Jesus.
 
Dancing David said:
IE believing in the resurrection or Noah's flood is different that believing your neighbor is Jesus.
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Okay, I think I've got it now.

Believing in Zombies= Not Crazy

Believing Jesus lives next door= Nutters

Thanks for clearing that up. It might be a little awkward though when during the second coming JC actually does end up as your neighbor. I'm just guessing that he's gonna need to crash somewhere...
 
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Dancing David said:
Interesting to say something polite, how ever there are always two issues to factor:

1. Functioning, if symptoms do not cause a major impacts in one of the areas of life functioning then a disorder is not really present

2. The crazy cultural/social belief clause , where is an irrational belief is commonly held in their social group, it may not be delusional.

IE believing in the resurrection or Noah's flood is different that believing your neighbor is Jesus.
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Not really. None of the claims have any evidence. And the Noah story is particularly moronic. They couldn't convince me that was true in Sunday School when I was 6. The resurrection story is more plausible in that people thought to be dead have woken up. That the world was created in 7 days and that Jesus was Son of God/God/Holy Ghost is ridiculous. But people go with it to be culturally acceptable. Believing your neighbor is JC is ridiculous as well, but isn't socially acceptable.
 
acbytesla said:
And the Noah story is particularly moronic. They couldn't convince me that was true in Sunday School when I was 6.
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Thanks for bringing that up! It was the EXACT same deal with me! This is the first time that I have ever heard someone else describe the same scenario. It was the Noah's Ark story in Sunday School that planted the seed of Atheism for me.

Even as a little kid I just couldn't really buy it. It kinda messed with my head thinking that the grown-ups did. Now I'm wondering if there are more of us with the same experience...
 
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acbytesla said:
The resurrection story is more plausible in that people thought to be dead have woken up.
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IIRC Stephen King wrote a book using that as a theme. 'Pet Sematary'. It had something to do with zombie cats I think...
 
acbytesla said:
But people go with it to be culturally acceptable.
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And there's the rub. We have countless EQUALLY ridiculous and absurd stories, myths and claims, some of which are accepted and some that aren't.

Who decides what is to believed and what isn't?

In the documentary 'The God Who Wasn't There', Dr. Robert M. Price claims that much of the biblical apocrypha was removed simply because it was considered too ridiculous to be credible. I'm thinkin' maybe they didn't go far enough...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455507/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik7GRQ9hoVY
 
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Autolite said:
Thanks for bringing that up! It was the EXACT same deal with me! This is the first time that I have ever heard someone else describe the same scenario. It was the Noah's Ark story in Sunday School that planted the seed of Atheism for me.

Even as a little kid I just couldn't really buy it. It kinda messed with my head thinking that the grown-ups did. Now I'm wondering if there are more of us with the same experience...
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That's it exactly.

I thought they were stories that grownups told to kids. Like Santa, or the Itsy Bitsy Spider or the Ugly Duckling or the tooth fairy. The other super stupid one was Jonah and the whale. These stories are a major insult to people's intelligence when they are insisted to be real. For a long time as a Christian I treated the stories as allegories or parables not actually true. I could accept them that way but not as literal truth.

I remember despising adults who insisted that God did all these things, well because he's God. I thought they were one of three things. Dumb, or con men and women, or people who found that their willingness to go all in one God elevated their stature in the church/community. The last one I was convinced was true with most of them. Most unbelievers in church never ever challenge the stories as it puts them on the outside of their group so they go through the motions either forever or until they just can't do it anymore.

I'm convinced what really needs to happen is non-believers must declare they are non-believers to create a safe space for more people to come out of the closet. Eventually it will reach a tipping point.
 
acbytesla said:
I'm convinced what really needs to happen is non-believers must declare they are non-believers to create a safe space for more people to come out of the closet.
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Maher says the same thing at the end of his 'Religulous' documentary. But I do not at all blame Atheists for staying in closet.

I see the vile hatred spewed against Atheists on other forums and that too is unsettling. Atheism is simply the acknowledgement of reality. To be so hated and despised just for something like that is very disconcerting...
 
I remember sitting in church as a kid when the preacher just up and announced the birth of Christ likely really wasn't December 25th. It was another 'WTF' moment for me. I started thinking what else about this Christianity thing is B.S. that they're not telling us.

It was many years later that I figured out that what we now call Christmas was just a re-branding of the pre-existing Winter Solstice celebration and that Easter was actually a pagan fertility celebration of the god Eostre held during the Spring Equinox.

Things like Mistletoe, Yule logs, evergreen trees, Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are all symbols taken from pre-existing celebrations.

I really don't understand how believers today can accept that the birth and death of their Jesus just happen to coincide with the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox celebrations respectively. How does a supposedly rational mind accept this as just a coincidence?

How did an evergreen tree become associated with a little Jewish kid born in the middle of a desert? How did Easter eggs and rabbits become associated with the gruesome torture/murder/resurrection of some guy 2000 years ago. Even as a kid I couldn't help but wonder about this. Something just didn't seem right...
 
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Autolite said:
.....I really don't understand how believers today can accept that the birth and death of their Jesus just happen to coincide with the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox celebrations respectively. How does a supposedly rational mind accept this as just a coincidence?......
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I think we have to be a bit careful with this. I'd warrant that outside of some particularly obsessive communities in the US, there would be very few christians who would actually believe that the dates they celebrate were the actual dates of the events they are supposed to be celebrating. I don't think it wise to judge any community by the views of their most extreme members. Given that these dates aren't in the bible, even biblical literalists (already extremists in my view) don't necessarily subscribe to the validity of christmas and easter dates.*



*Easter is a movable feast anyway. Is there anyone who does actually suggest that this is somehow temporally accurate?
 
I'd also have thought that it's not hard to rationalise how two events - the birth and death of Jesus - could happen on specific pre-determined dates, when those events are explicitly supposed to be part of an infallible plan put in action by a being who is omniscient and omnipotent.
 
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