Atheism

So you're saying every religion is arrogant? Harsh but fair.

I don't know because the video wouldn't play for me. But it isn't preaching to point out that science can't save souls because science doesn't recognise the existence of souls.

And it is not preaching to report on my own experience that militant atheists believe, or act as if they believe, that they have superior intellects, more knowledge and better understanding and are contemptuously arrogant in expressing such beliefs.

People wouldn't put me on Ignore if I only preached surely? Preachers are easy to deal with. farmerman welcomes Christian preaching on the evolution threads. It's Christian social consequences of the sociological and pysychological type that he parades his avoidance of as a badge of honour.

Diderot was a serial adulterer. His sister was a nun. He was married to a Roman Catholic and a close friend of Rousseau. He was pessimistic about the value of technological progress. Which makes quoting him on cyber gizmos somewhat ridiculous.

Heinlein was a proponent of polyamatory which might be called general promiscuity. That is "cheating" and jealousy are not factors worth considering. Not many ladies will buy into that. And with far-fetched science fiction he breaks Henry Fielding's rules on what it is legitimate to write about for an adult audience. Some of his books deal in a positive light with incest and sexual relations between adults and children.

The Harvard Lampoon could probably be mined for a quotation to suit any purpose. It is an undergraduate mag. which is said to contain what one assumes is undergraduate humour. It has a reputation for bachanalian parties but I don't know if they are Peyton Place style or that of Eleusis. To really qualify as bachanalian they ought to be the latter but I very much doubt they are. Undergrads often pose as more daring than they actually are by using word magic and some secrecy. The HL will be posh I suppose. I would guess it is characterised by that arrogant, superior, sneering priggishness which is common in those whose parents have bought their education often with money which derives from questionable sources.

I don't preach at all. I'm a scientist. Why is it preaching to ask militant atheists if they want a completely atheist society. It is preaching to refuse to answer the question and carry on with the carefully selected quotations as if it needs no answer. If atheists don't want to see a completely atheist society they are arguing about what is the best colour for a car.

If I was promoting atheism it would be for no other reason than that I wished to see a completely atheist society. I can't see the point otherwise.

Obviously religions are arrogant. But the Christian religion has something to be arrogant about from a Darwinian point of view.

Yeah, well- then I guess you understand why he's annoying.
He's engaging in the same behavior he apparently abhors in religionists.

And yeah - anyone who tells anyone what they should believe and why they must believe it and why if they believe something else they're ignorant is arrogant.

I don't care why you believe or don't believe what you do or don't believe. And I certainly haven't convinced myself that I know WHY you do or don't believe what you do or don't and how it makes you feel .

Have you heard any religionists say they know why you personally, are an atheist?
If anything I think it's recognized as a difference in experience and/or priorties as opposed to the accusations of stupidity and ignorance this man engages in.
This guy has a major superiority complex.

Hi Aidan - I actually didn't think he was telling me to believe anything - but he was expressing strongly what he believes - personally I don't see anything particularly exciting about knowing I'm made of atoms created by stars exploding, but maybe that's just me.

I have had religionists tell me why I'm atheist - maybe four pages ago on this thread someone called AJC## said it was because I hadn't opened my heart or my mind. By your logic anyone saying why atheism is bad is telling me personally that I'm bad, just as you thought this guy is talking to you directly and personally. I thought he was aiming it at a particular segment that don't really understand the nature of the observable universe, for example I had a high school friend who told me about the look of amazement his father (a very successful restauranteur) gave him when he explained that the stars were just suns like ours but much further away. His father wasn't stupid.

Not defending the guy, but I acknowledge his "difference in experience and/or priorties".

Well, I'll have to listen to it again- but I know there was one point where he pretty much stated, 'This is what I experienced and this is what I know and this is the conclusion I've come to and it seems to me that if someone comes to another conclusion, it's because they don't know what I know - in other words, they couldn't actually have this information and have interpreted it differently. They must not have the information.
(that's very broadly paraphrased).

I must have missed that - stupid thing to say if your paraphrase is accurate.

The problem with introducing videos and quoted pages from other sources is, we are then asked to defend everything that is asserted. Which is why I rarely watch or read these things. If I am to explain or defend, I want to do it for myself, where I know for certain why I posted. Not criticising others here, but speaking for myself.

I felt it cast a quite a beautiful light on the grand nature of the universe. He in better words than I've been able to summon described the dynamics of a question I've been curious about: "Why do we need or want more than this?" The universe is special enough, beautiful enough.

One of the criticisms the narrator makes that I think is spot on is that given the grand promises of religion and eternity, the feeling of connection with the universe in a very real sense is still far larger than anything religion offers. In short, religious sales pitches are still small thinking compared to what we are already a part of. I think the message is good. It unapologetically flies in the face of the self important notion that the cosmos is here for us, and grants an epic perspective.

I think he's right about the lost perspective on the universe (literally, the universe) that religion creates. There is pride in being alive and finite and without any divine interest. There is pride in being a part of nature. Religion makes nature our playground; makes it sub-servant to us. That kind of arrogance deserves to be called out. Religion is not beyond contempt.

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Which is generally recognised by psychologists to be an act of bombast and bluster to disguise an inferiority complex in proportion to the efforts used to maintain the act.

I think hinge has me on Ignore, or an effective variation of it, Rebecca. I have offered a few suggestions but if hinge hasn't seen them he can't possibly be expected to respond to them.

But I would have been speaking generally and not in any one particular case. A pub pal of mine found a Hammer and Sickle badge in the mud of a rugby pitch when he was 13. He polished it up and pinned it in his lapel. He didn't know what it meant. His teacher saw it and designated him as a result to represent a communist in a debate the teacher had planned, they save having to teach do student debates you see, to increase their awareness of the election campaign which was going on at the time. In defending Communists he became one and for life. Atheism was part of the package.

I've got him wobbling but it has taken a while so maybe it's not for life.

Psychoanalysis is required to elucidate our motives for being a large number of things so deeply buried in our psyches are the kick-off points. Neville Cardus, the famous writer on cricket, admitted in his autobiography that his obsession with lingerie could be traced back to being cuddled and mollycoddled as an older toddler by three ladies of dubious reputation, one of them his mother, whose frilly underclothing was constantly drying on the ceiling racks and fireguard in the warmest room. It's a complex picture actually. But pleasure in some form is involved. Conditioning with pain doesn't last as long.

Anybody sat in a warm room typing messages to others ought to praise to the skies the arrogance involved in making nature subservient to us. We spend billions every year trying to make it still more subservient that we already make it.

There isn't much I can think of in my day that doesn't involve the subservience of nature to us. What have you got in mind fa?

The twin pillars of the subservience of nature to our will are religion and science.

An odd criticism to place on a man who made a 15 minute video on how insignificant we are, and criticized the institutions that assert there superiority over all things by virtue of divinity. More odd from you, who puts out great effort in threads like this. "Bobast?" It's absurd reading that you even typed such a word.

Your words speak too much.

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Actually, I believe spendi's words speak too little. He doesn't say much with all his verbiage. He uses too much extraneous words and ideas that has very little meaning to the subject of discussion.

Oh sure. The words say precious little about the topics, but volumes about the spendius.

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Have you really no idea just how ridiculous that pose actually is fa? Not having seen the video I was prepared to think it contained something less ridiculous than that from it having been thought fit to be brought to our attentions. Our very presence on here, and his with the equipment and production, is posited on our, and his, significance.

Do people with an overwhelming sense of insignificance make videos? I'm inclined to think not. Perhaps an overwhelming sense of insignificance is significant.

All verbal and physiognomic expressions are autobiographical. If they are to be done at all they should be done with gusto. You really do need to engage with a better class of literature fa.

But what if one's 'religion' has inspired in that person a sense of humbleness and connectiveness to the universe in a very real sense? What if that is what one's religion offers or provides? What if one chooses to call that 'worship' and 'religion' instead of 'science?

Read my signature:"The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades, these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts." (Gravestone inscription, Cumberland, England)

Why do we have to call it what he calls it or be labeled 'ignorant'?

Because he's a significant person. He sets himself up to be.

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