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Barlow posted:"Jesus Christ, Denton!" "You Dentons have been nothing but trouble."
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Feb 9, 2015 00:03
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Miltank posted:I see this argument made a lot here but I haven't seen anything to back it up. The idea that because religion is objectively wrong, then it must also be harmful in some way- is there any evidence that supports this? I am skeptical of rationality because I recognize its moral limits. nihilism you know you want to
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Feb 9, 2015 00:10
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:nihilism
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Feb 9, 2015 01:46
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Ocrassus posted:I think this thread should shift away from the slave trade and focus on modern day issues that many Christians throw their weight behind. Gay peeps should def be allowed to marry and all drugs should be legalized controlled substances. I believe these things because of Jesus' and the Church's general teachings viz a viz what constitutes moral righteous behaviour ie: 'don't harm others because they are as sacred as yourself', and this overrides any specific teaching by those parties that claim otherwise. Generally isn't the Christian God connected more with consequential or virtue ethics than deontological? Also ya might wanna avoid making "ancient thinking" type statements, they always come across myopic and unnecessary. The present is absolutely built upon the past, many modern ideas and concepts and traditions have very old roots, this is common sense, etc. Orkin Mang posted:miltank you should read william t cavanaugh on religious violence I've heard of him but never read him, but that sounds good. I'm reading Armstrong's Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence right now and its p. dope
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Feb 9, 2015 02:28
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However questions of morality should be given a justification that stands on its own. "Grandma did it" or "God did it" are merely explanations for why it's a topic people have heard of, not a good reason for why things should be a particular way.
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Feb 9, 2015 10:14
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materialists are weird because they think that anything like an ethics that has a real ontological grounding is in any way consistent with a materialist metaphysics. they're all humanists but humanism makes no goddamn sense given materialism. it's pure assertion based on inherited sympathies and habits.
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Feb 9, 2015 10:19
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Orkin Mang posted:materialists are weird because they think that anything like an ethics that has a real ontological grounding is in any way consistent with a materialist metaphysics. they're all humanists but humanism makes no goddamn sense given materialism. it's pure assertion based on inherited sympathies and habits. There's no contradiction between "there's no such thing as magic" and "people are cool things".
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Feb 9, 2015 11:47
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Ratios and Tendency posted:There's no contradiction between "there's no such thing as magic" and "people are cool things". "People are cool things" contains a value judgement, and therefore comes from a place other than strict materialism.
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Feb 9, 2015 11:58
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Mornacale posted:"People are cool things" contains a value judgement, and therefore comes from a place other than strict materialism. Humanism doesn't derive from materialism but since there's no contradiction it's not weird to believe both.
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Feb 9, 2015 12:44
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Mornacale posted:"People are cool things" contains a value judgement, and therefore comes from a place other than strict materialism.
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Feb 9, 2015 13:32
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Mornacale posted:"People are cool things" contains a value judgement, and therefore comes from a place other than strict materialism. There's a difference between methodological materialism and philosophical materialism. Most materialists are the former.
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Feb 9, 2015 20:40
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rudatron posted:But the concept of value does not contradict materialism, It's possible to both materialist and still have a set of values or preferences. Metaphysical assumptions can inform ethics, but it cannot determine ethics. Even strict biblical christians must make an ethical assumption (that god must be good) before any of the metaphysical assumptions actually matter. you should read alex rosenberg's 'atheist's guide to reality'.
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Feb 9, 2015 22:18
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I'm gonna go back to something from the first page, completely separate from the main argument about the importance of Jesus to Western history... Barlow posted:At the very least if we are going to engage in a debate lets pick some interesting religious voices as counterpoints, Terry Eagleton's "Reason, Faith and Revolution" nad his review of the "God Delusion" (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching) was a pretty interesting defense of Christianity for instance. An aside. In the beginning of the article, he sets up an incredibly bizarre standard when he says: "Card-carrying rationalists [...] are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding." By that same standard, physicists are ill-equipped to castigate the existence of the luminiferous aether, chemists are ill-equpped to castigate the existence of phlogiston, and 10-year olds are ill-equipped to deny Santa Claus. By this premise, any denial of the existence of anything is self-defeating, since the denier obviously doesn't believe in the existence of the thing he claims doesn't exist. On to my main argument: this review is an example of strain of arguments I'v noticed, where the religious defender dodges the argument by disclaiming any sembleance of conventional religious belief and accusing the atheist of attacking a strawman. The apologist outlines the atheist's supposed strawman with many of the typical characteristics of God: That he's a person of some sort, that he exists, that he does things in the universe, that he has great powers, that he created us in some way, that he commands us to do some things and not others, that he cares about our emotions, etc. These qualities are scoffed down as some infantile caricature that no one actually belives besides schoolchildren and fire & brimstone Amerian Talibans; and thus the apologist tries to wash his hands of such silly notions. Anglican Priest Giles Fraser does it when he says: "Simply put: there is no such thing as the God he imagines. It is the flying teapot orbiting a distant planet about which nothing can be said. Such a God doesn’t exist. Nilch. Nada. It’s a nonsense. Indeed, as no less an authority than Thomas Aquinas rightly insists, existence itself is a questionable predicate to use of God. For God is the story of human dreams and fears. God is the shape we try to make of our lives. God is the name of the respect we owe the planet. God is the poetry of our lives. Of course this is real. Frighteningly real. Real enough to live and die for even. But this is not the same as saying that God is a command and control astronaut responsible for some wicked hunger game experiment on planet earth. Such a being does not exist. " ( from a response to the Stephen Fry video going around http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/02/stephen-fry-god-christianity-evil-maniac) Eagleton does it here where he says "God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO" and goes on to explain it with a bunch of murky and contradictory word salad including gems like: "Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster. This is not to say that religious people believe in a black hole, because they also consider that God has revealed himself" and "For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects." However, the simple fact is that the majority of believers actually do believe those things. Thus, what the religious apologists call a "strawman" actually isn't, and their attempt to excise those notions from what they defend as "religion" is a No True Scotsman fallacy. This makes it seem to me like there is a disconnect between two broad areas of belief: religion as viewed by academic theology (as supported by Eagleton) and religion as actually practiced by the religious. It's very understandable that acadmics don't want to espouse a belief that the universe was created by an all-powerful magical spirit who exhibits the neurology of a certain branch of African ape who one time wanted us to cut off a piece of our penises... this would make anyone a laughingstock in an intellectual setting. It's also understandable why these acadeimics wouldn't want to face up to their general-public coreligionists holding those same type of so-called strawman beliefs. This leads to 2 possibilities. Either they're in denial of what the everyday believer actually believes because it's unfathomable that the majority of believers could think something so stupid; or they do realize it, and arguments like the quotes above are wilfully duplitious. From one side of their mouth, God is an impersonal "love," a metaphor of some sorts, the "ground all being," or my new favorite "the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves" (is he channeling Deepak Chopra?) thus obviating infantile atheist arguments. But as soon as the atheist's back has turned as he slinks away in defeat, the goalpost shifts again and it's back to asking Our Father for forgiveness and performing magic rituals with wine and bread. In either case, if Giles Fraser thinks that a personal God is so silly, he needs to address his castigations toward the religious if he thinks they're so wrong about it, instead of toward atheists. There he's, uhm, preaching to the choir. TLDR, Push comes to shove and sophisiticated theologian says "God does not in fact exist" and concedes the argument to the atheists. vessbot fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 23:27
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Terry Eagleton is a hack when he gets out of his chosen field, and a pretty vicious and unpleasant one at that.
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Feb 9, 2015 23:29
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instead of critiquing loving book reviews how about you read actual literature on the topic.
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Feb 10, 2015 00:06
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vessbot posted:TLDR, Push comes to shove and sophisiticated theologian says "God does not in fact exist" and concedes the argument to the atheists. Well, there are many atheist theologians of course. Eagleton could well be a hack, I didn't read the link, but going by his and Fraser's quotes the concession should more accurately read "God does not in fact exist as a Material Thing with a Geographic/Sub-spacial Location", which is a very old and well known position in Christianity (and the other monotheist faiths), hence the reference to Aquinas. They still believe God is real/exists, and are Christians. You're correct that there are many differences in belief between a theologian and the average believer, but there are many differences in belief between the average believers themselves, ditto for theologians. You brought up the No True Scotman fallacy, so be careful you don't commit it yourself: one person considers God as the First Cause, another as literately a 10 foot tall man with a beard who lives in the stratosphere - if they both belong to the same church, then that simply means that the community has a plurality of beliefs. Neither is invalidated by the other, although we can certainly judge who has the better argument, is nicer person, whatever.
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Feb 10, 2015 00:49
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Orkin Mang posted:instead of critiquing loving book reviews how about you read actual literature on the topic. It's not like Terry Eagleton's book on God is any good (his recent book on Marx is also rear end).
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Feb 10, 2015 00:56
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Humanism doesn't derive from materialism but since there's no contradiction it's not weird to believe both. You're right, my reading comprehension was poor and I was arguing against the claim that humanism and materialism are congruent, rather than consistent. I personally hold both belief, I'm just very wary of the tendency of materialists to insist that their beliefs are fully rational.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:55
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Disinterested posted:It's not like Terry Eagleton's book on God is any good (his recent book on Marx is also rear end). who cares, he's a literary critic. an excellent book to read is david bentley hart's 'the experience of god: being, consciousness, bliss'.
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Feb 10, 2015 06:14
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Orkin Mang posted:instead of critiquing loving book reviews how about you read actual literature on the topic. None of this stuff rises to the level of literature. The New Atheist movement is a bucket of smarm, piss and treacle overflowing from a barrel shaped like Richard Dawkins' face. It should be addressed on the same level as the Kardashians.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:16
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SedanChair posted:None of this stuff rises to the level of literature. The New Atheist movement is a bucket of smarm, piss and treacle overflowing from a barrel shaped like Richard Dawkins' face. It should be addressed on the same level as the Kardashians. i'm not talking about the dogshit new atheist literature; it's trivial, puerile, magnificently ignorant and scientifically illiterate. the god delusions is a pos and any discerning person knows that. what i'm saying is that some small effort should be made to acquaint oneself with the best literature on both sides of the debate. i happen to think that the case for something like classical theism is quite strong, but it's not like nietzsche for eg didn't have profound criticisms to make; this thread is an exemplar of his argument that western civilisation gave up formal belief in god while incoherently retaining belief in the imago dei as if it were some sort of obvious conclusion of dispassionate reason. this whole thread is on the level of flying spaghetti monster idiocy at the moment. aquinas' self subsistent act of being is not some big man in the sky. Orkin Mang fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 08:56
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vessbot posted:This makes it seem to me like there is a disconnect between two broad areas of belief: religion as viewed by academic theology (as supported by Eagleton) and religion as actually practiced by the religious. Nor does the fact that "popular" religiosity is often less sophisticated really diminish the need to address these "academic" voices. Hell, Aquinas is the center of reasoning for the entire Catholic church and Dawkins repeats some gross over simplifications of his ideas and declares him beaten after three pages. If religious people directed their criticism solely at arguments made by r/atheism users we should likewise be critical.
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Feb 10, 2015 09:30
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I think you guys are complaining a bit too much about oh they don't understand  . People like Dawkins just don't give a poo poo about definitions and descriptions of God beyond the point that those definitions would involve them in having, by definition to believe in God. They're obviously, because of the nature of their own project, going to be dismissive of even beautiful and intricate thinking that is piled upon an assumption that can't be empirically or clearly logically demonstrated (namely, that God qua any type of God you care to mention, exists). Combine that with the fact that they're humanists and Aquinas's arguments about God are necessarily anti-humanist and...well, I don't know what you would be expecting. But you seem to be proceeding as if the views of Aquinas as a proponent of religion should have intrinsic value to people like Dawkins, which is hazy to me even as a student of Aquinas. They're never going to care if you can't demonstrate the basic underlying assumption that God exists at all, which Aquinas is definitely not sufficient to do. Really that is the nature of their project. Arguing about internal theological inconsistencies within religion in a very blunt instrument way is just ornamental trolling to that central POV.
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Feb 10, 2015 13:12
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Aquinas is an intellectual badass and I fully respect his work. He is able to make some seriously compelling arguments, but one of the major issues of his proof is that it proves that there is a being and nothing further. Christians require a very specific 'God' to exist with certain characteristics. My main problem with religion as an agnostic is not the idea that there might be some overarching sentience to creation, but instead that humans claim to know quite detailed information about it, particularly its whims and desires.
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Feb 10, 2015 13:56
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Disinterested posted:I think you guys are complaining a bit too much about oh they don't understand i mentioned aquinas incidentally. i'm no thomist. you're simply presuming that there are no rational arguments for the existence of a necessary being; such arguments are far from relegated to aquinas. the idea that you're a 'student of aquinas' is bs.
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Feb 10, 2015 13:57
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Orkin Mang posted:i mentioned aquinas incidentally. The argument applies more generally. I didn't intend the post to be principally about Aquinas. My point is that Dawkins doesn't really intend principally to engage with the question in the manner you seem to want him to, but that isn't necessarily just his problem. Insofar as he does, in my view he's partly doing it as something like a troll. Orkin Mang posted:i'm no thomist. I didn't say you were. Orkin Mang posted:you're simply presuming that there are no rational arguments for the existence of a necessary being; I'm not making that presumption at all. I did not say there were no arguments or that such arguments as exist are irrational - I just expressed my view that such an argument is in my view not successfully rendered in Aquinas (or elsewhere). Orkin Mang posted:such arguments are far from relegated to aquinas. I didn't say they were; you brought him up, I merely used your example as an example of my own. Orkin Mang posted:the idea that you're a 'student of aquinas' is bs. A well-founded view if ever I saw one. Ocrassus posted:Aquinas is an intellectual badass and I fully respect his work. He is able to make some seriously compelling arguments, but one of the major issues of his proof is that it proves that there is a being and nothing further. Christians require a very specific 'God' to exist with certain characteristics. And it's important to remember that however much people would like Aquinas to be a deist, he wasn't one. But he has the integrity to now try to carry the logical ball further than it can be borne. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 14:35
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One of Dawkins' TV specials opened with a vast ceremony of lights on the Day of the Dead. Dawkins' smug face comes on. "It looks beautiful. But isn't it just a short step to bombings on the Tube?" Dawkins is a straight up simpleton. It doesn't really matter all that much what he intends.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:19
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SedanChair posted:One of Dawkins' TV specials opened with a vast ceremony of lights on the Day of the Dead. Dawkins' smug face comes on. "It looks beautiful. But isn't it just a short step to bombings on the Tube?" I'm not really attempting to defend Dawkins, I just think it's funny that religious people and Dawkins chase eachother in circles because they keep having totally mistaken expectations about the kinds of question the other is going to be able to answer, which is why the other Jesus thread is like it is.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:28
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Perhaps theists and atheists of all philosophies can unite in their belief that Richard Dawkins is an insufferable berk.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:09
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OwlFancier posted:Perhaps theists and atheists of all philosophies can unite in their belief that Richard Dawkins is an insufferable berk. Yep. Part of the reason I do think he's trolling is because I've seen him participate in debates in which he conducts himself quite well, but it's the exception rather than the rule.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:10
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I could probably quite easily attribute my dislike of strong atheism more or less entirely to Richard Dawkins. When he was big news back when he wrote The God Delusion all the atheists in my school bought it and said it was awesome, whereas personally I couldn't see the point. So thanks Dick, for more precisely defining my atheist identity as "absolutely not like Richard Dawkins if I can help it"
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Feb 10, 2015 16:20
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OwlFancier posted:Perhaps theists and atheists of all philosophies can unite in their belief that Richard Dawkins is an insufferable berk. I think we can all agree to that.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:28
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I converted to Islam when I realized I could be a Victim too. It's so much cooler to worship no dog but Allan.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:31
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The thing about the New Atheists is that they aren't trying to convince people who are smart enough to think this poo poo through on their own. Naturally when we read it, it comes off as smug and facile, but that's just because it's the atheist equivalent of "accept Christ or burn for eternity". There's a reason preachers are known for fire and brimstone as opposed to explaining the cosmological argument.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:44
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One wonders if people too dumb to put it together on their own are worth converting, or if they actually count as rational. In fact I will go ahead and say those who side with the Dawkins crew are mostly not rational, they are substituting the smug beliefs of one group for another, without a sufficiently reasoned foundation for that belief.TheImmigrant posted:I converted to Islam when I realized I could be a Victim too. It's so much cooler to worship no dog but Allan. You've been surpassed by many a superior Islamophobic troll at this point.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:55
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I think it requires more introspective and intellectual ability to forgive someone for being a smug twat than it does to simply recognise and dislike it. Smug is smug to everyone, it's not a very good way to convince anyone of anything.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:56
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OwlFancier posted:I think it requires more introspective and intellectual ability to forgive someone for being a smug twat than it does to simply recognise and dislike it. Well Dawkins and Hitchens don't really understand that their form of skepticism and atheism is just burning bridges, which is not what we need to be doing. Or they do understand, and that is what they want, but I don't think it serves our purposes well.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:00
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CommieGIR posted:Well Dawkins and Hitchens don't really understand that their form of skepticism and atheism is just burning bridges, which is not what we need to be doing. I cannot comprehend that you of all people think that someone else's form of atheism burns bridges but yours doesn't. Your arguments are always more reductive versions of Dawkinsesque ones.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:01
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I think Dawkins probably likes lots of money for books and TV programs and enjoys being a self righteous bellend at people he thinks are stupider than him. Which I guess technically we all would like but there is such a thing as moderation.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:02
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Disinterested posted:I cannot comprehend that you of all people think that someone else's form of atheism burns bridges but yours doesn't. Your arguments are always more reductive versions of Dawkinsesque ones. No, I mostly just like arguing on a joke forum with a guy who thinks we're all sociopaths for not buying his specific religions premise about the world and his supporter who quotes theologians as if they have some valid observations on reality. But hey, thanks for noticing.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:04
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