• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

So you're an atheist. Ok, what next?

If only it hurt, physically, for a person to have their arguments soundly refuted and their beliefs debunked....
 
DmKrispin said:
Then we would all of us be in pain at some time or another.
Click to expand...

True. Some of us would be in significantly more pain than others though. And damn if you wouldn't learn to examine your arguments better before you put them out there too! :p
 
plumjam said:
To have perfect knowledge of something like objective beauty (or anything else), what is needed is a perfect merging of the subjective and the objective. This only exists in God. If you were to become God-realised, Joobz, I dare say you'd have a clear view of where the beatles stood in relation to kabuki, vis-a-vis musical beauty.
I'm not really familiar with Kabuki, but my money'd be on the cheeky scousers.
Click to expand...

What a load of donkies, plumjam. Beauty is subjective. No end of navel staring, holy book reading or sky daddy seeking will give anyone the power to have perfect knowledge and the super power to recognize it. You need to go hang with the Co$, you seem to share their loopy belief in super powers.
 
I got to page 3, saw that it went on for many, many more. I don't think that plumjam will have learned anything or will respond to serious posts within the rest of the thread so I'll just respond to the OP.

It seems to me that the true nature of this thread was not to create a serious discussion, but to stir up some *%(# on the forums.

An Atheist simply means that a person does not believe in supernatural hooygafooey, it does not mean to define someones morality. It leaves that up to the person, who will likely do the "right thing" even though they are not being threatened by a pit of fire.

When I returned from an absence to the forums I found his threads and responses and for a moment wondered if he was serious or troll. I call troll and attention seeker.

First and last response to plumjam.
 
An Atheist simply means that a person does not believe in supernatural hooygafooey, it does not mean to define someones morality. It leaves that up to the person, who will likely do the "right thing" even though they are not being threatened by a pit of fire.
Click to expand...

He cannot accept this conclusion.

If morality is not objective then it is as easy for someone to decide something is "right" as it is to decide it is "wrong".

He does not want this to be the case.

He would have to accept that he would be as vulnerable to this arbitrariness as anyone else.

As such he could be Hitler. He could be Stalin. He could do evil.

Let us be thankful that it is not that simple for us to simply switch "right" and "wrong" even when we accept the conclusion that morality is arbitrary.

Our moral centres are nominally aligned. They are made objective by their physical construction.

Let us be fearful that it is, however, possible.

The objectiveness of our morality is based on our perception of the world.

If this forum achieves nothing else let it be testament to the fact that our perception of the world is highly malleable.
 
Where has PJ gone? Has he flounced off JREF? If so, where is the obligatory "You're all a bunch of meanie losers post"? :rolleyes:
 
Foster Zygote said:
He comes and goes. He'll be back again with the same arguments.
Click to expand...
And when he comes back he'll make insulting snide claims against atheists, act innocent in defense, and then mention how mean/rude the atheists are. all the while, treat people who bother collecting evidence to disprove him with contempt and scorn. And then claim that evidence doesn't matter.

I think PJ is nice enough and can be funny. I think we would have some fun out on the town. But I do not delude myself by thinking he'll be open-minded in his debates.
 
What could their thought process be? "I'm going to drop over the the skeptics forum and see if I can convert a skeptic to woo to help me convince myself my woo is true?" Of course, the woo never think of their woo as woo.... to me they all start to blend together.
 
Well, I know for sure he didn't convert me to woo, or even convince me that secretly I'm an undercover theist, but more important, I also know for damn sure that

since he left

that means

I am the last one standing in the

Godless vs. Theist Comedy Smackdown!

I'll expect a marginallly funny concession speech when he returns.
 
Last edited:
articulett said:
What could their thought process be? "I'm going to drop over the the skeptics forum and see if I can convert a skeptic to woo to help me convince myself my woo is true?" Of course, the woo never think of their woo as woo.... to me they all start to blend together.
Click to expand...
Well, that's kinda how missionaries work (in my experience of having talked to some). The go out there and lay down the word, but the important thing is the effort, not actually winning converts. Admittedly, in some areas of missionary work, another important thing is not being eaten by the natives.

However that is not universal:
Q: Why won't cannibals eat missionaries?
A: You can't keep a good man down.
 
FSM said:
Well, I know for sure he didn't convert me to woo, or even convince me that secretly I'm an undercover theist, but more important, I also know for damn sure that

since he left

that means

I am the last one standing in the

Godless vs. Theist Comedy Smackdown!

I'll expect a marginallly funny concession speech when he returns.
Click to expand...

I'm on team godless, and I support this expectation.
 
articulett said:
I'm on team godless, and I support this expectation.
Click to expand...

Thanks Articulett and GO TEAM.

I fear we shall both see the end of our sour, hedonistic, humorless days without ever seeing this expectation fufilled.

But now, now we, the Godless Comedy Team can take a moment to relax still wearing our team uniforms (they look a lot like a bowling shirts except they smell of brimstone and have COOL flames all over them... and our names are embroidered on the pockets with demon saliva...) We'll go have a couple of morally subjective beers while we roast our latest sacrifice over a nice BBQ pit.

YAY us!


ETA:
Somebody save a leg for Gord! 'Afraid knot...' heeheehee
 
Last edited:
Stuffed Sacrificial Lamb BBQ

  • 175 g (6 oz) fresh breadcrumbs
  • 2 tsp 666-brand Garlic Salt
  • ½ tsp 666-brand Ground Black Pepper
  • 2 tbs 666-brand Parsley
  • 2 tsp 666-brand Rosemary
  • 75 g (3 oz) butter
  • 1 medium egg, beaten
  • 1 boned leg of lamb, ask your butcher to remove the bone before the lamb is eviscerated
  • 6 tbs oil
  • Garnish:
    • 12 button onions, peeled
    • 12 glacé cherries

Mix the breadcrumbs with the garlic salt, black pepper, parsley and rosemary. Melt the butter and stir into the breadcrumb mixture. Add the egg and mix all the ingredients thoroughly. Use the stuffing to fill the bone cavity of the meat. Using a trussing needle and string, sew the loose meat edges together so that the leg resembles its original shape.

Place the joint on the grill and baste with the oil. Grill for 1 to 2¼ hours for medium (or until a meat thermometer inserted into meatiest part of roast registers 160°F/71°C) or 1¾ to 2½ hours for well-done (170°F/77°C). Add the onions for the last half of the cooking time.

When cooked, transfer the meat to a serving plate, skewer the onions and glacé cherries together on cocktail sticks and arrange with the meat.
​
Serves 5,000
 
Last edited:
Recently, I had the typical unproductive exchange with our resident “loss of contact with reality, pseudo cryptozoologist, imitation fossil archaeologist, biblical literalist”.
It had all the classic routines of most inane believer discussions. One point that I simply dismissed as just rhetoric might have had some merit upon further thought.

When trying to help it understand reality, one of its accusations were that I was try to “convert” it or otherwise try and bring it over to the “dark side.”
Naturally, I disagreed and informed it that I was merely trying to be helpful and assist in cranial removal from the nether regions.

Now however, I will admit that maybe it wasn’t entirely wrong on that point.
Consider an accident on the freeway. You stop to offer help. Why you may ask?
Because you were raised to try and help others in need? Because, it’s helpful to the society at large, that if individual members help each other it increases the genetic fitness of the whole group? Possibly a combination of those factors. That doesn’t necessarily conflict with the individual selfish gene. Sometimes helping the group can indirectly increase your own personal fitness when you need help.

Now, if that person is bleeding out from the jugular vein, your natural reaction would be to try and stop the blood loss. But what if they demand to be left alone to bleed out?
It’s tempting to dismiss their death wish, but if they are absolutely positively insistent in your inaction…well then perhaps their wishes should be heeded.
I know it’s hard to resist not to help a believer, because that 1% of the time when you do get through tends to create a false hope that they can be helped.
Being an optimist, I still fall for trying to help, though intellectually I understand that I’m usually pissing in the wind.

Here’s where the work of Dawkins, and the Wilson brothers (David Sloan, and Edward O.) may shed some light.
If the Wilson’s evolutionary perspective is correct, you have an irrationality system that may have helped early humans increase their genetic fitness. What ever the reason (increased group continuity, ease fear of death, maintain loyalty to the leader, etc).
As long as there is a positive selection pressure, then this predisposition will be passed on. Interestingly, there may have been a selection pressure to be rational most of the time, but have the ability to suspend that reason when it threatened the genetic fitness of the tribe. Coincidentally, that happens to explain why normally completely rational people (yes, including scientists) suspend that reason in very specific areas (i.e.: religion for example).
Though even the scientific community doesn’t completely accept this theory. Some of the resistance seems to come from those that argue physical traits are passed on and that cognitive traits are somehow not applicable. But then when one studies instincts, it would seem to support the possibility. Granted, "higher" thought processes are not instincts.

That being said, now combine Dawkin’s work with cultural meme indoctrination and you may have a powerful one-two punch that can have a global effect.
Yes, one or both of these theories may be incorrect, but there is something to be said for simple hypotheses that can explain vast amounts of behavioral data.

Even mediocre fans of irony would have to appreciate the ramifications.
The very ideas that theists dismiss may be the exact things that are responsible for their belief in the first place. Their denials can actually be viewed as confirmation.
It’s easy to dismiss theists as being dumb, blind, deluded etc. It might be more appropriate to think of them as simply being “human.”
You take some stinky, naked, sometimes violent yet clever hominids that have only recently come away from the safety of the forest and you jam them by the millions into cities. They have made great technological and knowledge based advancements, but still carry eons of baggage. That baggage served them well in the past, but unfortunately those same early characteristics don’t translate so well on a global scale.

Rather than becoming frustrated, perhaps you can forgive them and realize that they are products of their environment and culture.
It might be too much to ask (at this point) for humans to let go of those old convictions.


-H”only Scientologists know what to do at an accident scene” S.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom