Why are Atheists so Scary?

@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

Paradigm might be an overused term. Yet it is normative the terminology used for what I was expressing. And I totally agree that the educational system can and probably should speculate in the trans-natural.

Whether the educational system speculates on the trans-natural is unimportant to me. Educated people have plenty of room to speculate on the trans-natural. Education is not limited to formal schooling.

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@wandeljw,

very very true

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@stevecook172001,

stevecook172001 wrote:

GoshisDead wrote:

stevecook172001 wrote:

GoshisDead wrote:

....Have you seen me preaching to you. trying to tear you or your beliefs down, Call you stupid or silly, make outrageous claims on your morality, or even claim that your are wrong in anyway?....

And so here we have it...The central reason why religion is so distruted, so untrustworthy and so dangerous.

The very nature of religion means that the holders of such beliefs cannot seperate those beliefs from their own identity. Thus, to critcise the belief is to critisise the person holding it. It's essentially an infantile belief system in this regard. This would harldy matter except that it is held by adult humans who have used their religious beliefs as justification for more murder, mayhem and misery throughout the entirety of human civilisation than any damn thing else.

Point proven for all my previous posts. Human behavior demonstrated by every political power structure ever recorded scape goated onto a bogeyman.

In a world without falsifiable belief systems (including most perniciously, religion), good men do good things and bad men do bad things

However, it takes a non falsifiable belief system to make good men do bad things.

A beleif system make no man do anything. It can be a justification for bad behavior, as can almost anything else.

Since I am all citing stuff.
Read Demonic Males: Richard Wrangham in which he proposes that the 'evil' demonstrated in humanity is present in the higher primate world.

Not necesarily my argument but one that could relate to this.

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@Thomas,

You like my feeble attempt at drama? lol
I am happy you are willing to post citations. If I feel I need them I will ask. I appreciate that, sorry for the drama.

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@GoshisDead,

No worries---no harm done.

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@GoshisDead,

If Thomas had called me a "drama king" I would repeat a line I heard a gunslinger say in an old western movie: "Smile when you say that!"

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@wandeljw,

The Virginian, book by Owen Wister (and later movie and tv show)

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@ossobuco,

That is correct! Owen Wister created that memorable line for his novel. It was later used in the movie.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

If Thomas had called me a "drama king" I would repeat a line I heard a gunslinger say in an old western movie: "Smile when you say that!"

Well for as much as I try to expalin unbiasedly I do tend to get wrapped up in my own explanations, I'm narcissistic like that.

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@squinney,

squinney wrote:

Well, I can't seem to come up with any search terms to find out if there has been a study of the intuitive belief in god. Does anyone know of such a case?

Has every generation in every area of the world always had a god concept? I can't imagine how one would test such a theory today given the inhumanity of isolation at birth. What about the boy raised by wolves? did he believe in a god when he was discovered?

Bear once poured gas in the ground and set a hornets nest on fire after numerous attacks and failed other methods. He commented that one day the one or two survivors will look back on this day and tell their children of the great "god" that took revenge on their kind due to their bad behavior. Perhaps had Bear applied salt, these future hornets would also have a bible as proof?

It seems to me most cultures come up with some sort of creation myth, and things to appease and ask help from, but these take many forms.

I also think people seem as prone to attribute misfortune to magic and sorcery as anything.

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@wandeljw,

I read the book five times, when I was about thirteen. I was trying to learn about... wait for it... sex. I was a very sheltered thirteen year old, and there was a sweet and tender love scene with just about no description; this enthralled me.

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@GoshisDead,

Just as a side comment, I was raised in a luke-warmly religious family (found out my mother was actually agnostic at around the same time I ditched religion) but got sent to a church-based school.

So...I was taught all the christian stuff, but for me doubt came way earlier than you are talking about.

It wasn't so much initially that I doubted the whole god thing,. but I was struck by how little this apparently astounding information affected everyone! It seemed as though, if all the Jesus stuff was true, that people should be walking around with very little in material possessions and be focusing on loving their neighbours, giving to the poor, and meditating on the world to come.

Then, as a kid, I loved myths and legends from all cultures, and also Mary Renault's books on ancient Greece.

I recall one day, when I was about 8, perhaps, being absolutely struck by the fact that other peoples believed in their gods and just as firmly as I was taught to believe in "mine".

That was the beginning of the end.

Reading history kind of did the rest.

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@dlowan,

I had an anth professor, that lectured an entire lecture about all cosmologies can be categorized in one of six general mythoses, including the big bang. but for the life of me can't find my notes with his reference material. Anyway having perused a great many he seems to be right. Although in saying so definitively it brings up an issue of arbitrary classificaton. I just thought it was interesting.

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@GoshisDead,

Quote:

I'm wondering, are emotions so high here that I cannot place a situation in a possible socio-political context via average biological and anthropological research?

There CAN be a lot of emotion here...for me it began when a group of Christians here were condemning Islam for being ridiculous in terms of the god they believed in (all combined with disputed about actions in Iraq etc.) and being quite foully derogatory of them, while embracing the same bloody god!!

Also, the effects of the Christian fundamentalist power in the US especially were very distressing to me.

But, we CAN, (or most of us can) have perfectly rational and calm disagreements about religion also.

I think the waters here got turbulent because we had a brand new person carrying on about atheists as some of the worst of our evangelist members have (and Muslims as well as Christians) and we had no way of knowing that this person was more incoherent than attacking. (And some of the folk on this thread always react the same way anyway to theist stuff.)

There have been lots of negative comments about this forum and its members by you guys....quite understandable and all, but still wearying after a bit, and that probably became part of the tone?

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@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

I had an anth professor, that lectured an entire lecture about all cosmologies can be categorized in one of six general mythoses, including the big bang. but for the life of me can't find my notes with his reference material. Anyway having perused a great many he seems to be right. Although in saying so definitively it brings up an issue of arbitrary classificaton. I just thought it was interesting.

Not surprising, as, in my view, these systems are all created to deal with the same basic fears and searchings.

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@squinney,

squinney wrote:

Well, I can't seem to come up with any search terms to find out if there has been a study of the intuitive belief in god. Does anyone know of such a case?

Has every generation in every area of the world always had a god concept? I can't imagine how one would test such a theory today given the inhumanity of isolation at birth. What about the boy raised by wolves? did he believe in a god when he was discovered?

Bear once poured gas in the ground and set a hornets nest on fire after numerous attacks and failed other methods. He commented that one day the one or two survivors will look back on this day and tell their children of the great "god" that took revenge on their kind due to their bad behavior. Perhaps had Bear applied salt, these future hornets would also have a bible as proof?

Hmmm...there's been a whole lot of discussion about the so-called "god-spot" in the brain.

Not sure where that particular debate has got itself to.

Brain imaging throws up information so fast these days that everything changes in its details before the books get out!

Edit: Here's some pop science on it. Looks like it may have disappeared already! Or maybe just transmogrified?

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1682610.htm

http://neurowhoa.blogspot.com/2009/03/no-more-god-spot.html

http://www.livescience.com/health/060829_god_spot.html

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@dlowan,

Indeed there has been some enmity. Yes its a hotbutton issue. Yes I'm not surprised at the emotion. I was however surprised at some of the meaness. But this is not yet my place, maybe I'll get used to it. there are all sorts of language situations where mean is a manner of commeraderie. Every forum or online community I have ever been to has had some glitch I didn't agree with in its acceptable communication styles. I'll figure out this one in a way that I feel more comfortable posting. It's not really a big deal.

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@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

I'm wondering, are emotions so high here that I cannot place a situation in a possible socio-political context via average biological and anthropological research?

I've explained this elsewhere for the philosophy refugees, but i'll have at it again. We've had fundamentalist christians and muslims ranting here for years. A few years ago, it got really nightmarish. Christians were following atheists around for the explicit purpose of attacking them every time they posted (i know, i was one of them). Muslims were going ballistic when Mohammed was criticized (something i enjoy doing when the loonies show up).

But the worst was that some of the fundamentalists started telling people at other religious fora that they should come here and join the fray. One of them lied about, denying that she had done it, but she was tracked down and exposed at at least one site where she had posted her call to action. She indulged in other despicable behavior as well.

It got really bad. This site is not a good place for people to set up a rant about atheists, nor the excellence of their preferred confession.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

That was a useful post on the various charities, Set.

Thanks. Talk to Dys about it sometime--we have discovered that we have the same 0pinion on this subject.

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@stevecook172001,

stevecook172001 wrote:

However, it takes a non falsifiable belief system to make good men do bad things.

That's an interesting take on things. I've long held that religion never made a bad man good, nor has the want of the "benefit" of clergy ever made a good man bad.

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