Atheists... Your life is pointless

Sorry Setanta
I meant my question as a clarification of terms. To be used as we continued our discussion.
I looked over the article you linked to.
I am more familiar with the terms strong atheism and weak atheism, but I would be agreeable to either now that I see the two are equivalent to "explicit" and "implicit".

I suspect you also KNOW I am willing to discuss that with you rationally, quietly, and politely.

Right?

I meant something more along the lines if you thought that having a term for that position would be helpful to have in the lexicon.

Would it be good to create such a term so that it could be used in any discussion such as this.

A linguistic short-hand, if you will.

Izzy the Holocaust was all about religion and one religious cult’s hate for another. The religious hate erupted in Germany during WWII had festered for almost 400 years. The Jews were not the first causalities of this religious war the first causality was reason when Martin Luther decided his imagination was superior to those of other religious cult members. Martin Luther virulent hate of the Jews was well known and stained every Germany generation through WWII.

The Jews are simply a religious like all other religious cults; they were not a nation, not a race but simply a religious cult. When a religious cult is the victim of a crime another religious cult is the driving force behind it. When Hitler came to Vienna he had no idea what a Jew was or what one looked like but the hate literature of the time much like was published by the KKK in America soon instilled in Hitler the hate of a religious cult. Germany hate merchants divided Germany into Jews and Germans. The Jews were not Germans according to the merchants of hate.

In America the medical establishment gave syphilis to blacks just to watch them die and document the stages of their death no doubt the good doctors were in church every Sunday. The CIA put deadly disease in the New York subway just to see how many people it would kill. Our society produces a certain amount of psychopaths but religious cults offer psychopaths a path to power where followers do not question God’s representative on earth. Every so often a psychopath or group of psychopaths rises to power but not bathed in the light of supernatural power.

Wouldn't the only distinctions be ones of the personality, education and class of the various believers and the consequences of them?

There is also the question of whether the beliefs are genuine or put on for various reasons.

Dreadful bore.

Please also note that in my post i referred to "implicit theists," which is probably not a common term with anyone, but i more or less coined it here because i know there are theists who don't state that they know for a fact that there is a god, but that they believe. I believe that can reasonably be a corollary to the implicit atheist position.

I dislike the terms strong and weak for atheists. That is because there is, whether intended or not, a pejorative nuance. In my experience, the explicit atheists often tend to be militant, and sometimes aggressive, and it would be just like those types to attempt to paint the implicit atheist as somehow less forthright, or lacking in moral courage. I consider it simply to be an honest position. I'm about 99% sure that there is no god, because the proposition is so absurd--but there's that one percent which i won't disavow, nor will i be dishonest about it.

People tend to be too hardline, in my never humble opinion. So theists will claim that the behavior of the Soviet Union is evidence that atheists are just as murderous as theists. I will be quick to point out that the Soviet Union never went to war with another nation because the other nation would not espouse atheism. At the same time, there are atheists who rant about the murderous nature of theists. I am quick to point out to them that although religion may be the casus belli , no war ever continued or was sustained on religious bigotry alone. So, for example, several popes attempted to get a crusade going against the so-called Cathars--but it didn't work for them until Innocent III told Philippe II, the King of France, that the lands and movable property of the heretics was forfeit, and then, although Philippe was lukewarm, many French members of the nobility were ready to go to war. After reverses in the military campaigns, Philippe's successor, Louis VIII put new life into the "crusade," which in the end, lasted more than 40 years. What we think of as southern France was actually a separate region (there was no concept of nations in those days), with a distinct language--Occitan--and direct feudal ties to Aragon (in what we call Spain) rather than with France. Languedoc stretched from northern Italy to Spain and was the industrial heartland of Europe in the 13th century--very rich pickings, indeed.

During what we call the Thirty Years War (actually 14 or 15 separate conflicts, often unrelated to one another), the Imperialists seemed to have won by 1630, when the Swedish King, Gustav II Adolf, usually referred to as Gustavus Adolphus, landed in northern Germany, and proceeded to kick Imperialist ass. The nominal ruler of France was Louis XIII, but he was a weak reed, and the country was really being run by Cardinal Richelieu. He had become alarmed at the Imperialist successes because the Holy Roman Empire was in the hands of the Austrian Archdukes, who already dominated northern Italy, and the threat of the Austrians consolidating control over what we think of as Germany was too great in his mind. So Catholic France paid subsidies to Protestant Sweden to keep them in the war against Catholic Austria. Religion may be used as an excuse for wars, but money and power are what drive wars, not religious bigotry.

I've given simplistic answers in history threads to obviously clueless students in the past, but as time goes by, i lose patience more and more with simplistic descriptions of complex events or ideas.

Those sociological class distinctions do exist among believers and non-believers.
I honestly don't know what the specific correlations are between socio-economic classes and different types of belief.

Yes there probably should be some discussion of the strength of the belief. And as you mentioned, if it is even genuine. For many it may require a sort of Orwellian doublethink.

That's an evasion because the hate has to be based on something concrete. You could argue about whether it was justified or irrational.

Wow that's a lot of writing on the subject.
Thanks.
I agree about the possible mistaken connotations regarding "strong" and "weak". So I think also that "explicit" and "implicit" would serve discussion better.
Do you find any utility in the Dawkin's scale with regard to a gross measure of certainty in a god?
So for instance, your 99% would put you at a "6" [De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."]

If i ever had a discussion with you in which you were truly polite, i'd keel over dead. I'm not suicidal, so i'll pass.

I think your interests are much more aligned toward history than mine.
I find possible correlations between various religious beliefs and wars interesting but I lack sufficient knowledge regarding such things to contribute much in the way of discussion.

Not really--i'm not a fan of pat categorizations. I also consider Dawkins to be a nut bag, and to have the character of a bully. I pay as little attention to him as the world allows. I find the categories which i have mentioned useful because the alternative is much like attempting to herd cats--there are just so many nuances that one would be obliged to get down to individual cases. This would be especially so with theists, of whom there are thousands of flavors.

Izzy most news organizations are owned by corporate interests and have a corporate agenda. CNN was at one owned by Ted Turner and the news on CNN would reflect his views. This type of news is all about sound-bites they have about 30 seconds to make a point. Some stories require more than 30 seconds of air time and do not lend themselves to television news. I have done a number of interviews with the local television stations over the years in my capacity as union president and the interview may take 10 or 15 minutes to film but only 10 or twenty seconds ever makes it to the news and then only what they want to use to make to suit their agenda. Printed news has many advantages over TV news. To start CNN and BBC chose what is news and what will fit into a 30 minute broadcast. With printed news you chose what news stories to read and they can even be longer than 30 seconds.

The information about the child molesting priests comes from two separate grand jury reports. The grand jury report from Philadelphia is 30 pages long, detailed and unedited except for names of victims. This type of coverage will never be seen on a television show.

Eugenics was a natural out- growth of free market capitalism with the drive to improve production methods it was inevitable that labor one of the main inputs besides raw material and machinery would become the subject of improvement. If they could improve the machinery they could improve the labor. Today happiness psychology strives to improve labor by making the public believe they are happy as their standard of living is in free fall. They know happy workers produce more.

Izzy it is what I call the idiots defense in court. You bring someone up on charges and their defense is not that they didn’t commit the crime but that they know of others who committed the same crime and were not caught. Their theory of defense is that if not all law breakers are caught that it is a form of discrimination to prosecute them. It never works but many try. We have unsolved murders in town as do other communities but that is not a successful defense when caught for murder.

The fact bad things happen in this world and will continue to happen but that does not mean we should stop trying to rid the world of the evil of religious cults because psychopaths walk among us.

Not to mention categorizations end up leading to affiliation.
For instance I doubt either Catholics or Mormons enjoy sharing the same heading of "Christian".

Well, I used to call it "the agnostic position"...and caught a lot of static. The I started calling it "my agnostic position"...and caught a lot of static.

So now I just describe my position.

If you can coin a word...I'll consider it.

I like "principled agnosticism".
The principle being that all knowledge is tentative.

Frank the idea that religious cults should never be criticized has pervaded society for thousands of years and no doubt has its roots in all of those people who were executed for speaking out against the absolute ignorance of religion. You say that you have spoken out against religion. What exactly was “a lot worse” than child molestation that you criticized religious cults for? What was “a lot worse” than child molestation. There hasn’t been anybody burnt at the stake for a couple hundred years? Cult members have toned down their murderous ways a bit.

I covered the nightmare business in a previous post. That was poorly worded on my part. Their “worst nightmare” of course was when the child molestation epidemic became common knowledge.

Frank just because the color gray exists does not mean that black and white cease to exist. If someone was attacking you with a knife you would be justified in killing him but surely none of these children were attacking the priests. By writing off every moral lapse as a shade of gray we do a disservice to all. Sexual harassment is far from molestation and that is an evolving field. Harassment is usually verbal in nature while touching would be considered sexual assault. A remark could be taken more than one way but a hand between your legs can’t.

If churches want to portend to be moral institutions than they like Caesar’s wife must be beyond moral reproach. To harbor or protect child molesters is one thing but to facilitate the future rape of children to “protect the institution” is quite another.

This situation was similar to the old saying, “It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” It was better to turn the priests over to authorities than to protect them and blacken the entire administration of the church. If each child molesting priest had been arrested and tried for his crimes it would have made news in his local community for a few days at most but when left to fester it became a national scandal that has gone on for years. How it was handled removed all doubt from many people’s minds.

Frank the main idea that kept religious cults alive for years is that they are the moral well spring of our society and in fact they are not. All of the moral seminary training did not make any difference whatsoever in the molesting priests they molested children at the exact same percentage as the general public. This is the moral foundation that keeps all religious cults afloat. The illusion will disappear if the foundation can be impeached. The evolution of weapons will let the religious cults put the world in a grave as they battle it out to see whose god is indeed the greatest.

I like the content of your post. However, it's "human nature" to believe in god(s). That aspect of humans will "never" change regardless of the atrocities committed by them. Their emotional committment will not allow people who believe in their religion to change no matter what bad news may sprout up from it. That's human nature; and MHO.

Check out my post 5,254,651 on page 279.

Regarding that it might be worth saying that sound business principles require that a market should not be glutted. No profit can be made in a glutted market. And if no profit can be made there is no motivation to produce anything other than what the self needs.

The sexual piety of ladies, created by the Church out of the Darwinian clay, prevents the market being glutted and thus drives up the price impious ladies can exact. Without such engineered piety the market would be seriously glutted due to biological factors colliding with economic considerations and the price ladies could exact would be driven down to a point when a tin of coffee from the PX would suffice for even a high-class broad.

Thus, and it's pretty straight-forward, impious ladies owe the Church a profound debt of gratitude. In the absence of pious ladies jealous of their reputation for virtue and innocence it becomes a level playing field and, in times of austerity, we men would find ourselves shaking ladies off our legs as they clutched at our trousers, pleading and wheedling like they do, every time we exited a terminal after a period of travel such as a boat trip ending in Naples docks.

That's the sort of thing I mean by "consequences". (A dread word to both soft and hard atheists. And to agnostics, who are incapable of framing any policy agenda due to the logic of their position.)

There are others. Quite a few actually.

And the pious lady does set a test for a man. It's severity being directly proportional to the piety. The lady who sneered "You couldn't afford it buster!!", was taking advantage of pious ladies. Without pious ladies she would not be able to find us. She would be picking turnips.

Imagine the State trying to inculcate that sort of piety legislating from within its debauched and corrupt zones of operation and Media climbing the impiety mountain at a rate of knots. We men would be all burned out, jaded and cynical by 22.