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I want to start a different flavor of religion thread in D&D, one which most likely won't even address the truth of religion at all. This is a topic that has been dealt with at glancing blows in almost every iteration of "The Religion Thread of the Moment" in this forum, but has never been addressed head-on. The question is, in brief: what are the problems with so-called "New Atheism"? It seems non-believers tend to fall somewhere along a wide spectrum with regards to this area of discourse: some are content to simply be non-religious and find it nonsensical to make use of the label "atheist", just as we don't feel the need to call ourselves "not astrologers", as many have pointed out. Others find it efficacious to coalesce together as a group, but don't so much mind the faith-based beliefs of their neighbors. Still others are vehemently against religion, and work actively to oppose it. And there are many gradations along this spectrum; for instance, one who does not oppose religion except in cases of terrorism or harmful changes to public policy. But at least on this forum, there seems to be a common thread of taking issue with the prominent "New Atheists" and their ilk, people like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, TJ "The Amazing Atheist" Kirk, Lawrence Krauss, and especially Richard Dawkins. For the most part, this distaste seems to stem from a tone argument, which is to say, we don't collectively like how vituperative Dawkins might be in his criticism, but I'm wondering how much of the disagreement is with the message itself. Is religion a problem? And should it be opposed, amended, or left alone? What should the general stance of an atheist be? In this discussion, there is a sequence of three questions I see that need to be asked: 1) Are any of our religions true? While this can most certainly be a fruitful area of discourse, for our purposes I think we will just assume the answer is "no" and move on. Feel free to address this if you think there is something of vital importance to be said, however. 2) Are our religions doing harm, or more precisely, doing more harm than good? This, I feel, will comprise the lion's share of our discussion in this thread, though perhaps not enough to eclipse the other questions entirely. I think it is beyond debate that our religions do both harm and good in various situations, and determining which side has the higher score can be incredibly difficult, especially given that there are other factors, like poverty or political instability, which may or may not play a role in the obvious examples of seemingly religiously inspired violence. It is also hard to determine how heavily the religious precepts themselves weigh in on these sorts of occurrences, and claims run the gamut from "they are the only factor" to "they aren't a factor at all". Further compounding the problem is how varied our religions are in their prescriptions. "Religion" is a word like "drug": are we talking about Tylenol or crack cocaine here? If the side arguing that religion is vitiating our society is thinking "radical Islam" and the side arguing for religion's benignity is thinking "Episcopalian", we will inevitably talk past each other. Let's strive to be specific here. 3) If the answer to question 2 is yes, religion is, on balance, doing more harm than good, then what is our best strategy in opposing it? Here, I feel, is where the dispute over tone comes into play: even those who agree with a Dawkins or a Hitchens than religion is poisonous will object to how rude or crass they can be when espousing their views. They will say: we need to be nicer to win them over. But do we? Was Martin Luther King or Malcom X more effective in their approaches to end racism? And tone aside, how active do atheists need to be? Do we take an uncompromising approach, or do we make common cause with religious moderates to oppose extremism before dealing with "religion" more broadly? If extremism is eradicated, will there even be any need to oppose the softer flavors of religion? Or is none of that necessary; can we just sit back and wait for a sea change to happen without our input? What does the victory condition look like? As a slightly derivative discussion, we should probably discuss problems with specific views of some of the above figureheads in the New Atheist movement. Plenty of critics find someone like Sam Harris distasteful because of perceived racism and neo-conservatism on topics like profiling, torture, and gun control, as well as his claims that Western society is objectively better on many issues than, say, a Muslim society, though Harris is more or less constantly bemoaning the misrepresentation of his views on these subjects. If he is right about that, however, it poses a significant bulwark to finding consensus among non-believers, as many might find that they actually agree with Harris or others, but say they disagree, because they have only been apprised of the strawmen made from his actual stances. A clarity on precisely what is being proposed and by whom in the discussion so far would be enormously beneficial. While I have stances on many of these topics, I would like to pose the questions and open the discussion before weighing in. I think that would be more helpful, and even if not, I have likely typed far too much already. So I will momentarily step aside.
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Jul 7, 2016 17:06
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A simplistic utilitarian "doing more harm than good" valuation is nonsensical. "determining which side has the higher score" is hard because there is no score, and any attempt to create such a score will be deeply flawed. The benefits brought about by religion often aren't even remotely comparable to its drawbacks, and you can't sum the two together (whatever that would even mean) to determine whether religion is good or bad.
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Jul 7, 2016 18:36
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No child is born with knowledge of God!
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Jul 7, 2016 18:40
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I think it's virtually impossible to determine how much "religiously motivated" violence and harm is motivated solely by the religion and not countless other more concrete factors. Using radical Islam as an example, I don't think you can determine how much of it is caused by the religion itself and how much is due to stuff like geopolitics and socioeconomics (I imagine most of it is not caused by the religion, though). In the US, I think that many people would oppose stuff like gay marriage anyway, and that they're just using the religion to justify their views. I think the fact that views on this have changed over time as society has continued to change validates this view. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to challenge a religious person's beliefs, but it depends upon the context. It's kind of pointless and rude to force the topic, but it's alright to debate the topic if the religious person also wants to.
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Jul 7, 2016 18:49
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quote:As a slightly derivative discussion, we should probably discuss problems with specific views of some of the above figureheads in the New Atheist movement. Plenty of critics find someone like Sam Harris distasteful because of perceived racism and neo-conservatism on topics like profiling, torture, and gun control, as well as his claims that Western society is objectively better on many issues than, say, a Muslim society, though Harris is more or less constantly bemoaning the misrepresentation of his views on these subjects. If he is right about that, however, it poses a significant bulwark to finding consensus among non-believers, as many might find that they actually agree with Harris or others, but say they disagree, because they have only been apprised of the strawmen made from his actual stances. A clarity on precisely what is being proposed and by whom in the discussion so far would be enormously beneficial. Your "slightly derivative discussion" is my problem with NuAtheism. I feel that since atheism is the edgy position to take, this gives people free reign to also take other, similarly edgy positions. Yeah God doesn't exist! Yeah all Muslims are monsters! and so on. If one is socially unacceptable but you have people liking you for championing it, what's wrong with another? Well of course, the answer is 'everything'. I never liked Harris' generalizations abut Islam. I always thought, even as a teen, that he went too far in his direction. I actually used to respect Hitchens a lot (God is Not Great does legit have some good points and some decent arguments), though he has his own problems and he's also completely insufferable. Another popular one was Bill Maher, especially after Religilous. I never liked his show, I always thought people were too busy yelling at each other to really get to any work done. Nowadays I really see it as nothing more than the O'Reilly factor for liberals. Anyhow, I respect Religilous more than God'd Not Dead (let's say) because Maher's misconceptions are challenged and rebuffed by people. He legit gets things wrong, people tell him this to his face and he leaves it in. I respect him for doing this. The ending was too much. As a teenager, I again went "okay old-timer sloooooooooow doooooooown. The world was "going to end" for the past 2000 years let's not get too crazy" Dawkins is my biggest disappointment of the bunch. His Twitter feed really disillusioned me, he believes every single anti-religious conspiracy out there, especially if it has to do with Muslims. And when people call him out on it, he doesn't re-examine the facts like a scientist should (and like what he says religious people should do), he instead just doubles down. TAA is a loving joke and I don't take him seriously on any level. I'm an atheist myself, if that helps matters.
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Jul 7, 2016 19:03
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Well I'm agnostic but the general rule of "Don't Be A Dick" is still the most useful I think. Religion is both responsible for some incredible, amazing, uplifting things and also some of the worst atrocities in human history. Putting every religious person under the same label does not help, every individual has a different perception of what their religious belief means(whether it's a spirit of peace and cooperation where all humans should come together in harmony, or god hates fags). A lot of this can also come down to whoever is leading the place of religious worship, I've seen both varieties of it: a kind, spiritual person who brings peace to those who know them and uses religion to help them find meaning in their lives, and the person who uses it as an excuse to justify their hate. It should probably be kept away from government though. Rulers figured out a long, long time ago that if you can justify it in the shallowest religious context then you can basically do whatever you want if you rule over believers. EDIT: Atheism is actually surprisingly similar to this actually, I've seen rational people trying to make the world a better place and smug idiots who think that not believing in the same thing a lot of people do gives them a moral and logical high ground that is infallible. Yinlock fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 19:09
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Ytlaya posted:I think it's virtually impossible to determine how much "religiously motivated" violence and harm is motivated solely by the religion and not countless other more concrete factors. quote:(I imagine most of it is not caused by the religion, though).
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Jul 7, 2016 19:12
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Crystal Geometry posted:A simplistic utilitarian "doing more harm than good" valuation is nonsensical. "determining which side has the higher score" is hard because there is no score, and any attempt to create such a score will be deeply flawed. The benefits brought about by religion often aren't even remotely comparable to its drawbacks, and you can't sum the two together (whatever that would even mean) to determine whether religion is good or bad. I think this is a bit of a pessimistic stance to take. Imagine that religion did exactly two things: told people to be nice to other people in their faith, and told people to kill those outside of it. NOTE: I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS ACTUALLY THE CASE. But imagine that it was. Would it be possible to compare the two and "keep score"? I think so. I think the deaths far outweigh the vague sense of community that this hypothetical faith brought about. Thus, we'd determine that religion is harmful. But of course the discourse is far more varied and nuanced than that. There are many, many factors at play to many, many degrees depending on the specific religion in question, and it's hard to weigh them all. But just because the problem is complex doesn't mean we will never find an answer, and just because we can't find an answer doesn't mean there isn't one. Imagine someone saying "well, economics is complicated, so therefore we can never know if a specific policy is good or bad." That's absurd. Maybe we will never determine which answers are best, or maybe there IS no best answer, but something like "tax everyone at 100% and burn all money" is still clearly a wrong one. Ytlaya posted:I think it's virtually impossible to determine how much "religiously motivated" violence and harm is motivated solely by the religion and not countless other more concrete factors. Why? Maybe it would take a long time, but couldn't we take a look the statistics and control for all of those other factors? To pluck the first example that comes to mind, doesn't the fact that the 19 hijackers were disproportionately well educated answer the suspicion that terrorism is all about lack of education? That's just one overly-simplistic factor, of course, but surely a similar analysis could be done for all the others? Also, why are other factors "more concrete"? SSNeoman posted:Your "slightly derivative discussion" is my problem with NuAtheism. I feel that since atheism is the edgy position to take, this gives people free reign to also take other, similarly edgy positions. Yeah God doesn't exist! Yeah all Muslims are monsters! and so on. If one is socially unacceptable but you have people liking you for championing it, what's wrong with another? Well of course, the answer is 'everything'. You're probably right in that some people just enjoy being controversial, but I don't think we can dismiss every opinion that's currently in the minority on the basis of it being in the minority. quote:I never liked Harris' generalizations abut Islam. I always thought, even as a teen, that he went too far in his direction. Can you talk about the specific generalizations you dislike? Yinlock posted:Religion is both responsible for some incredible, amazing, uplifting things and also some of the worst atrocities in human history. Putting every religious person under the same label does not help Hence why I made my comparison to the word "drugs". twodot posted:You will almost certainly fail to find any real correlation. Societies are violent or not, whatever religion they are predominately is almost always a geographical or historical accident. There's never been a group of people who thought "Hey, we want to be more violent, but Buddhism doesn't permit it, let's convert to Christianity". That's a facile way of looking at it; even violent societies aren't thinking "hey, we want to be more violent". It begins with ideology and moves from there. One can compare two societies of different religious affiliation while controlling for other variables and examine the differences. If it's all about political disenfranchisement, why aren't the Tibetan Buddhists engaging in suicidal terrorism with the same alacrity as disenfranchised Muslim societies? quote:Societies are violent or not, If we could snap our fingers and transform every citizen of Iraq into a Jain, do you really think we would see the same level of violence?
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Jul 7, 2016 19:42
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:That's a facile way of looking at it; even violent societies aren't thinking "hey, we want to be more violent". It begins with ideology and moves from there. One can compare two societies of different religious affiliation while controlling for other variables and examine the differences. If it's all about political disenfranchisement, why aren't the Tibetan Buddhists engaging in suicidal terrorism with the same alacrity as disenfranchised Muslim societies? edit: quote:If we could snap our fingers and transform every citizen of Iraq into a Jain, do you really think we would see the same level of violence?
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Jul 7, 2016 19:45
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ah so by "efficacy of new atheism" we're really talking about 'rationalist' islamophobia, right?
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Jul 7, 2016 19:47
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I think this is a bit of a pessimistic stance to take. Imagine that religion did exactly two things: told people to be nice to other people in their faith, and told people to kill those outside of it. NOTE: I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS ACTUALLY THE CASE. But imagine that it was. Would it be possible to compare the two and "keep score"? I think so. I think the deaths far outweigh the vague sense of community that this hypothetical faith brought about. Thus, we'd determine that religion is harmful. have you seen my baby fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 19:48
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Popular Thug Drink posted:ah so by "efficacy of new atheism" we're really talking about 'rationalist' islamophobia, right? Well really these threads exist so he and the fedora brigade can pretend their superior to everyone else.
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Jul 7, 2016 19:58
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The only thing New Atheism is effective at is making smug assholes feel superior to other people.
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Jul 7, 2016 19:59
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twodot posted:I think you have an unfulfilled burden to demonstrate Muslims are particularly prone to suicidal terrorism, and that it's not, for instance, way more correlated with geography than religion. "People in similar areas with similar histories use certain methods whereas people in other areas with other histories use different methods" isn't really a surprising thing. Right, I should have been more thorough in that comparison, but my point is that we can at least make those comparisons. quote:Absolutely, we would just have a lot of bad Jains, like we have bad Christians today. Really? You don't think the core Jain doctrine of nonviolence would temper the violence, even a little? Don't be naive. Popular Thug Drink posted:ah so by "efficacy of new atheism" we're really talking about 'rationalist' islamophobia, right? Please. There is a yawning gulf of difference between "irrational fear of Muslims" and "exploring the statistical trends in Muslim societies" and you know it; further, this thread is about religion broadly, not Islam alone. Crystal Geometry posted:I agree, if things were much simpler than they are we would be able to understand them in a more simple way. I'm not saying value judgments on religion can't be made, but breaking down an entire aspect of most (all?) human cultures into a good - bad framework probably loses something in the process. Then think of it as a "better" or "worse" framework"?
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Jul 7, 2016 20:03
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Please. There is a yawning gulf of difference between "irrational fear of Muslims" and "exploring the statistical trends in Muslim societies" and you know it; further, this thread is about religion broadly, not Islam alone. "please, there's a yawning gulf of difference between 'irrational islamophobia' and 'rational islamophobia', also why are we talking about muslims at all anyway *tugs collar*"
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Jul 7, 2016 20:09
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Popular Thug Drink posted:"please, there's a yawning gulf of difference between 'irrational islamophobia' and 'rational islamophobia', also why are we talking about muslims at all anyway *tugs collar*" Yeah, those are not the words I said. It's real easy to disagree with someone when you make up something disagreeable and pretend they said it. Please participate in this discussion honestly.
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Jul 7, 2016 20:14
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You know the "statistical trends" argument reminds me of some arguments the alt right makes.
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Jul 7, 2016 20:15
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Really? You don't think the core Jain doctrine of nonviolence would temper the violence, even a little? Don't be naive.
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Jul 7, 2016 20:18
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Yeah, those are not the words I said. It's real easy to disagree with someone when you make up something disagreeable and pretend they said it. Please participate in this discussion honestly. i was just checking to see how much this thread was focused on one of the biggest tentpoles of New Atheism, that is rationalist, objective, purely scientific discussion of islamic violence and depravity, and from there i've lost interest e: i'm an atheist and i really dislike dawkins et. al for hiding behind atheism to push their political stances while pretending to be the only rational thinkers in the room boner confessor fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 20:18
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Better or worse for society, applied to religion as a category, does not make sense. Systems of faith manifest diversely in society. You can compare different religions and you can come up with meaningful (not necessarily justified) ways of making better-worse judgments about different religions. Trying to sum the effects of all religions together and then using that to say that systems of faith are better or worse for society is stupid. Religion can manifest positively or negatively. Take issue with those manifestations, not the idea of religion as a whole.
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Jul 7, 2016 20:24
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twodot posted:Are you asking "If we made everyone think nonviolence is good, would we have the same amount violence?" or are you asking "If we made everyone say they are a Jain, would any of their behaviors change?". I would wager that people who value nonviolence are less violent generally, but people who think violence is a good conflict resolution tool aren't going to change their mind about that just because you convinced them some supernatural phenomena exist. ...???? Obviously the first? That's what being a Jain is. Again, I feel like you're viewing this backwards. We're not starting with violent people and asking them to pick a religion, we're starting with an ideology and mapping its consequences. Do you think that religious beliefs do not manifest themselves in any way into a person's actions? Or do you think people don't really believe what they say they believe? Popular Thug Drink posted:rationalist, objective, purely scientific discussion of islamic violence and depravity Is there something wrong with this I'm missing? Especially in conjunction with the same discussion concerning all other religions? Crystal Geometry posted:Better or worse for society, applied to religion as a category, does not make sense. Systems of faith manifest diversely in society. You can compare different religions and you can come up with meaningful (not necessarily justified) ways of making better-worse judgments about different religions. Trying to sum the effects of all religions together and then using that to say that systems of faith are better or worse for society is stupid. Religion can manifest positively or negatively. Take issue with those manifestations, not the idea of religion as a whole. I addressed exactly this in the OP
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Jul 7, 2016 20:26
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Is there something wrong with this I'm missing? Especially in conjunction with the same discussion concerning all other religions?  you can't rationally discuss how much something scares you
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Jul 7, 2016 20:28
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Popular Thug Drink posted:
That's not at all what you said though? You said discuss "islamic violence and depravity". That's a matter of statistics, is it not?
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Jul 7, 2016 20:32
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Is there something wrong with this I'm missing? Especially in conjunction with the same discussion concerning all other religions? The fact that it's never actually rational, objective, or purely scientific, it just has a wafer thin pretense of being such. Basically: Crowsbeak posted:You know the "statistical trends" argument reminds me of some arguments the alt right makes.
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Jul 7, 2016 20:33
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:That's not at all what you said though? You said discuss "islamic violence and depravity". That's a matter of statistics, is it not? it is not how do you objectively determine if violence committed by a muslim is islamic? how can you build a depravity index? all of this has to be modeled, and models are inherently subject to the biases of their creators
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Jul 7, 2016 20:38
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:2) Are our religions doing harm, or more precisely, doing more harm than good? This, I feel, will comprise the lion's share of our discussion in this thread, though perhaps not enough to eclipse the other questions entirely. I think it is beyond debate that our religions do both harm and good in various situations, and determining which side has the higher score can be incredibly difficult, especially given that there are other factors, like poverty or political instability, which may or may not play a role in the obvious examples of seemingly religiously inspired violence. It is also hard to determine how heavily the religious precepts themselves weigh in on these sorts of occurrences, and claims run the gamut from "they are the only factor" to "they aren't a factor at all". Further compounding the problem is how varied our religions are in their prescriptions. "Religion" is a word like "drug": are we talking about Tylenol or crack cocaine here? If the side arguing that religion is vitiating our society is thinking "radical Islam" and the side arguing for religion's benignity is thinking "Episcopalian", we will inevitably talk past each other. Let's strive to be specific here. So we should simultaneously be specific about which religion we're talking about, but you want to establish a general atheist's stance towards religion as a whole somehow? I don't understand how this would work.
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Jul 7, 2016 20:39
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:...???? Obviously the first? That's what being a Jain is. Again, I feel like you're viewing this backwards. We're not starting with violent people and asking them to pick a religion, we're starting with an ideology and mapping its consequences. Do you think that religious beliefs do not manifest themselves in any way into a person's actions? Or do you think people don't really believe what they say they believe?
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Jul 7, 2016 20:41
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Popular Thug Drink posted:how do you objectively determine if violence committed by a muslim is islamic? Control for other factors? This may not be actionable - there may not be enough examples in the world at the moment with which to compare - but it's possible in theory. Also, when a terrorist says that a cartoonist deserves to die for drawing a picture of the prophet Mohammed (and then follows through with that claim by killing them), I consider that to be pretty clearly motivated by Islam. If it isn't, what is the reason? Were they lying about their motivations? Would a practitioner of any other religion have done the same? It just happened to be a Muslim? quote:how can you build a depravity index? all of this has to be modeled, and models are inherently subject to the biases of their creators I'm sorry, are you really trying to make the case that objective information can never be obtained, because people have biases? twodot posted:Religious beliefs can not survive in a society that doesn't already approve of them. They are manifestations of cultural beliefs, they don't drive cultural beliefs. There's lots of people who say "I believe Jesus existed as described in this book, and we should strive to be like him", but then go on to do very un-Jesus things. I don't much care whether that means they don't actually believe some piece of that statement, or whether that belief simply doesn't drive their actions. Again, this follows an assumption that a culture emerged first, then a religious belief was superimposed on top of it. Why wouldn't the religion inform the "cultural beliefs"? Religion is not separate from culture.
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Jul 7, 2016 20:54
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Control for other factors? This may not be actionable - there may not be enough examples in the world at the moment with which to compare - but it's possible in theory. "it is in theory possible to build a statistical model which proves islamic violence. anywhere here's an anecdote which springs to mind for some reason..." quote:I'm sorry, are you really trying to make the case that objective information can never be obtained, because people have biases? lol look at this dude talking big game about statistical models and he doesn't even know about hedonics. try to tell me the objective, scientific value of the house you live in. go ahead and try sorry man this thread is just too silly boner confessor fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 20:57
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I'm sorry, are you really trying to make the case that objective information can never be obtained, because people have biases? It's been a while since I took a science class, could you remind me what the unit of measurement is for depravity? But, ignoring that depravity isn't even well defined, much less objectively so, even if we could objectively quantify it that information would never be used objectively, it would only be used to prop up existing biases. "See, I was right to treat Muslims like sub-human scum, this proves it!" would be the only thing we'd ever hear about it.
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Jul 7, 2016 21:00
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Again, this follows an assumption that a culture emerged first, then a religious belief was superimposed on top of it. Why wouldn't the religion inform the "cultural beliefs"? Religion is not separate from culture.
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Jul 7, 2016 21:05
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Who What Now posted:It's been a while since I took a science class, could you remind me what the unit of measurement is for depravity? Thank you for doing me the disservice of thinking that I want to treat Muslims as subhuman. Also, sorry for not excising my quotes carefully enough, but the original post said violence and depravity. We objectively measure violence all the time and you know it. Popular Thug Drink posted:"it is in theory possible to build a statistical model which proves islamic violence. anywhere here's an anecdote which springs to mind for some reason..." Yeah, could you maybe stop this annoying habit of pretending I said something stupid, and address my post instead? I asked some valid questions: GAINING WEIGHT... posted:If it isn't, what is the reason? Were they lying about their motivations? Would a practitioner of any other religion have done the same? It just happened to be a Muslim? twodot posted:Religion literally can't exist without people creating it, people aren't going to create or adopt a religion at odds with their other beliefs. And those beliefs can't exist without people having them. Do you think people are never motivated by their religious beliefs to do something they might otherwise not have done had they been a practitioner of a different religion?
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Jul 7, 2016 21:10
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Yeah, could you maybe stop this annoying habit of pretending I said something stupid, and addressing my post instead? I asked some valid questions: i addressed your post: you said something stupid because you seem to think data points on human behavior and motivations can be collected or assessed objectively. i seriously doubt you know what you're talking about and this entire totemistic mentality of "oh we can just science us up an answer" is a big reason why people mock new atheism
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Jul 7, 2016 21:11
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Thank you for doing me the disservice of thinking that I want to treat Muslims as subhuman. I don't believe that you want to treat Muslims as subhuman, I think that a significant portion of New Atheists would because they already do and they make no effort to hide it. So, again, even if we have objective stats that clearly link belief X to action Y (and we don't) those stats won't be used for anything other than propping up existing bigotry.
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Jul 7, 2016 21:16
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Popular Thug Drink posted:i addressed your post: you said something stupid because you seem to think data points on human behavior and motivations can be collected or assessed objectively. i seriously doubt you know what you're talking about and this entire totemistic mentality of "oh we can just science us up an answer" is a big reason why people mock new atheism You think it's impossible to understand people's motivations?
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Jul 7, 2016 21:16
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:You think it's impossible to understand people's motivations? it's certainly not possible to build a multivariate model on a dataset that depends on human beings not lying to you about why they did violence on someone. or that you can objectively and without bias construct a model which simulates that data "Computer: What evil lurks in the heart of man?" proccessing boner confessor fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 21:18
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Can you talk about the specific generalizations you dislike? Sort of. I can't list specific examples, I didn't follow him ever since I disavowed him as a teen, but I can tell you what I didn't like before. -Harris takes every quote from the Quaran at its basic, most literal interpretation. Then he uses it to lambast the worshippers of Islam. If they do what the Quaran says, they are violent psychopaths. If they do not, then they're not true Muslims (though we should beware anyway) -He hates the left. He believes it's regressive and apologetic. The idea to him that you can accept Muslims and decry their violent extremists is completely to foreign to him. Anyone who does this is a wolf in sheep's clothing. -Like most pop-atheists, he tries to score points by needlessly giving religious poo poo. Like Draw Muhammad day and other petty poo poo. Are you against this because you think this is an excuse for people to be dicks for now reason? Then you're a free-speech hating fascist. -He is super into bootstraps. If the middle east only decided to put aside their barbaric ways, they could ascend to the level of us enlightened first world people and we'd have a lot less problems with them. While he acknowledges western fuckery in the region, he is more quick to blame the culture than the West's involvement. He even had the gall to say that if they weren't so barbaric, the West would never have tried to stir poo poo up in that region, which is what really made me go "yeah ok gently caress off bud" as a kid. drat if I can find that loving article though. It was released a few years after 9/11. It struck a chord with me because I was on the Muslim hate train along with everyone, and yet this was beyond the pale. GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Or do you think people don't really believe what they say they believe? Yes! Absolutely! ISIL don't really believe in Islam, they take the parts of it that justify their own actions and throw out the rest! Westboro Baptist Church believes gays are bad cause of God, but they ignore the major tenets of their faith to spread hate! Buddhists believe in peace and enlightment, yet they have their own terrorists and gave rise to the Aum Shinrikyu doomsday cult! People pervert teachings left and right to fit their world view. You cannot have a morality given by religion. Every moral decision is ultimately made by you. Your internal morality can be influenced by religion, but it is, usually, not the only source. GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Really? You don't think the core Jain doctrine of nonviolence would temper the violence, even a little? Don't be naive. Oh boy time to use my favorites folder! No, I do not think that at all. Religious extremism is caused by a perceived injustice, not because of religious fervor. This comes from disenfranchisement, persecution or other factors that piss of everyone regardless of faith. http://www.academia.edu/2158177/Preventing_Religious_Radicalisation_and_Violent_Extremism_A_systematic_Review_of_the_Research This article goes to the core of the matter, the Daesh. People join them because it gives them the chance to be a hero, or to right an injustice. To stand up for the little guy. The majority of the Daesh have no idea about the basic tenets of the Quaran (like the Five pillars) and yet they still proclaim to be the true Muslims ready to kill some safawis. Who What Now posted:I don't believe that you want to treat Muslims as subhuman, I think that a significant portion of New Atheists would because they already do and they make no effort to hide it. So, again, even if we have objective stats that clearly link belief X to action Y (and we don't) those stats won't be used for anything other than propping up existing bigotry. This would go a lot better if you can prove it. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 21:21
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twodot posted:This doesn't seem right. It's certainly possible to make a violence index and see how it correlates along different demographics, while controlling for whatever confounders you are interested in. I think the real problem is: I mean, you could do a useful study that may strongly suggest religion's influence on human behavior, but when you take into account the number of variables and the extent to which all those variables interact with each other, it quickly becomes a problem that we can't really get a concrete answer to. For example, you can't just have as a variable "is Christian"; there are many different ways a person can be Christian, so you could potentially end up with a result where the statistics say the religion doesn't have an impact but some subset of those who identify with the religion in a particular way do show a causal relationship (not that I think this is actually the case). It's sort of like the problem of determining the way biological processes are influenced by genes. We can see if there's a correlation and control for some of the more obvious factors, but computers aren't really fast enough to control for all known variables and give a concrete answer to "exactly how does this gene fit into the big picture of 'biological process A'."
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Jul 7, 2016 21:24
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As an athiest: Don't buy anything Hitchens and Dawkins are selling. The ones who tend to use their religion as a battering ram to call for violence and hatred usually follow their religion the least, or take it to such extremes that chances are they really are not acting in the method their religion prescribes. We have to find some middle ground between ensuring religion has reasonable restrictions placed upon it (i.e. not allowed to condone or enact violence and violent methods) versus ensuring they have reasonable allowances to practice said religion.
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Jul 7, 2016 21:27
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Who What Now posted:I don't believe that you want to treat Muslims as subhuman, I think that a significant portion of New Atheists would, because they already do and they make no effort to hide it. Some New Atheists are xenophobic, yes. Some New Atheists are critical of a culture they see as objectively harmful. I mean, to flip the script somewhat, you would be critical of white racists in the southern US right? Because you see their viewpoints as harmful, and not because of a fear of white people, or that you want to treat southerners poorly? I think there is an incredibly harmful automatic association made between "criticism of Islamic precepts" and "Islamophobia". If the Quran says something deplorable, and a significant number - even if it's a minority - of Muslims practice that deplorable thing because it is found in the Quran, is it unreasonable to say "that part of Islam is not so good"? And ask that same question about Christianity. There are many churches that bar women from holding any position of leadership because of what it says in (I think) 1 Timothy. Isn't the ideology at fault there? Is it Christiophobic to say so? Popular Thug Drink posted:it's certainly not possible to build a multivariate model on a dataset that depends on human beings not lying to you about why they did violence on someone. I just wonder why you think it's a bad assumption that the person who says they are doing [bad thing] based on their religion is telling the truth. We can get to the practicality of a full-fledged model in a second, but we are clearly still disagreeing on fundamental elements of it.
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Jul 7, 2016 21:28
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