GENIUS FORUMS

The below is a few bits extracted from:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/atheism.html
which is quite a bit longer.

I find it interesting that even among people who are atheists, it is apparently rude to say you are an atheist. There are arguments against atheism on social grounds, or political grounds - but there don't seem to be any arguments based on the actual truth of the matter.

Still, it's good to see atheism being discussed in a major publication.

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Dawkins looks forward to the day when the first US politician is honest about being an atheist. "Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists," he says. "Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn't add up. Either they're stupid, or they're lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they've got a motive! Everybody knows that an atheist can't get elected."

When atheists finally begin to gain some power, what then? Here is where Dawkins' analogy breaks down. Gay politics is strictly civil rights: Live and let live. But the atheist movement, by his lights, has no choice but to aggressively spread the good news. Evangelism is a moral imperative. Dawkins does not merely disagree with religious myths. He disagrees with tolerating them, with cooperating in their colonization of the brains of innocent tykes.

"How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?" Dawkins asks. "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?"

...

For the New Atheists, the problem is not any specific doctrine, but religion in general. Or, as Dawkins writes in The God Delusion, "As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers."

The New Atheist insight is that one might start anywhere – with an intellectual argument, with a visceral rejection of Islamic or Christian fundamentalism, with political disgust – and then, by relentless and logical steps, renounce every supernatural crutch.

...

I RETURN FROM OXFORD enthusiastic for argument. I immediately begin trying out Dawkins' appeal in polite company. At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. "Who here is an atheist?" I ask.

Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, "I am!"

But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: "You would be."

"Why?"

"Because you enjoy pissing people off."

"Well, that's true."

This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious. Most of these people call themselves agnostic, but they don't harbor much suspicion that God is real. They tell me they reject atheism not out of piety but out of politeness. As one said, "Atheism is like telling somebody, 'The very thing you hinge your life on, I totally dismiss.'" This is the type of statement she would never want to make.

This is the statement the New Atheists believe must be made – loudly, clearly, and before it's too late. I continue to invite my friends for a nice, invigorating stroll down Logic Lane. For the most part, they just laugh and wave me on.

...

AS I TEST OUT the New Atheist arguments, I realize that the problem with logic is that it doesn't quicken the blood sufficiently – even my own.

...

MY PILGRIMAGE is about to become more difficult. On the one hand, it is obvious that the political prospects of the New Atheism are slight. People see a contradiction in its tone of certainty. Contemptuous of the faith of others, its proponents never doubt their own belief. They are fundamentalists. I hear this protest dozens of times. It comes up in every conversation. Even those who might side with the New Atheists are repelled by their strident tone. (The founders of the Brights, Geisert and Futrell, became grim at the mention of Sam Harris. "We don't endorse anything from him," Geisert said. We had talked for nearly three hours, and this was the only dark cloud.) The New Atheists never propose realistic solutions to the damage religion can cause. For instance, the Catholic Church opposes condom use, which makes it complicit in the spread of AIDS. But among the most powerful voices against this tragic mistake are liberals within the Church – exactly those allies the New Atheists reject. The New Atheists care mainly about correct belief. This makes them hopeless, politically.

But on the other hand, the New Atheism does not aim at success by conventional political means. It does not balance interests, it does not make compromises, it does not seek common ground. The New Atheism, outwardly at least, is a straightforward appeal to our intellect. Atheists make their stand upon the truth.


If trained theologians can go this far, who am I to defend supernaturalism on their behalf? Why not be an atheist? I've sought aid far and wide, from Echo Park to Harvard, and finally I am almost ready to give in. Only one thing is still bothering me. Were I to declare myself an atheist, what would this mean? Would my life have to change? Would it become my moral obligation to be uncompromising toward fence-sitting friends? That person at dinner, pissing people off with his arrogance, his disrespect, his intellectual scorn – would that be me?


We sit in his study, in some creaky chairs, with the deep silence of an August morning around us, and Dennett tells me that he takes very seriously the risk of overreliance on thought. He doesn't want people to lose confidence in what he calls their "default settings," by which he means the conviction that their ethical intuitions are trustworthy. These default settings give us a feeling of security, a belief that our own sacrifices will be reciprocated. "If you shatter this confidence," he says, "then you get into a deep hole. Without trust, everything goes wrong."

It interests me that, though Dennett is an atheist, he does not see faith merely as a useless vestige of our primitive nature, something we can, with effort, intellectualize away. No rational creature, he says, would be able to do without unexamined, sacred things.


Dennett is an advocate of admitting that we simply don't have good reasons for some of the things we believe. Although we must guard our defaults, we still have to admit that they may be somewhat arbitrary. "How else do we protect ourselves?" he asks. "With absolutisms? This means telling lies, and when the lies are exposed, the crash is worse. It's not that science can discover when the body is ensouled. That's nonsense. We are not going to tolerate infanticide. But we're not going to put people in jail for onanism. Instead of protecting stability with a brittle set of myths, we can defend a deep resistance to mucking with the boundaries."


The New Atheists have castigated fundamentalism and branded even the mildest religious liberals as enablers of a vengeful mob. Everybody who does not join them is an ally of the Taliban. But, so far, their provocation has failed to take hold. Given all the religious trauma in the world, I take this as good news. Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn't necessarily mean we've lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong.

I actually attended an athiest metting a few weeks ago for the first time. For the most part they seemed like reasonable people, some more than others. The problem I had with them was that they were simply content with being an athiest. It seems that when one becomes a athiest they are bombarded with many difficult questions. For instance when I realized I was an athiest, I thought to myself, where do I go from here? The people I met at this atheist meeting didn't seem to interested in where to go from here. All they wanted to do was keep religion from imposing itself on their lives, and the US government. These things are all well and good, but it doesn't beg the most intimate questions about the nature of existence and reality itself. I don't understand how someone can not feel obligated to at least attempt to answer these questions. Maybe they were just too old, but the athiest movement will not solve anything on the grounds of Athiesm alone. It reminds me of the South Park episode I watched the other day on Comedy Central. Where in the future, instead of wars between different religious groups, there were wars between different groups of athiests. It doesn't seem too far fetched.

Nick Treklis wrote: Where in the future, instead of wars between different religious groups, there were wars between different groups of athiests. It doesn't seem too far fetched.

These atheists are just as fanatical and destructive as any traditional religion could be. They have an agenda too. They don't like the traditional morality of the masses getting in the way of what they want to do with society. Restrict our rights, control our numbers, use our children in mad science experiments, etc. Traditional morality does not allow what they wish to do to the rest of us.

"do parents have the right to enforce their views on their children?" yes. See. They want to become the father figure for the world. They are pure ego run amock.

Nick Treklis wrote:The people I met at this atheist meeting didn't seem to interested in where to go from here. All they wanted to do was keep religion from imposing itself on their lives, and the US government.

That sounds more like an anti-theist than an atheist.

Nick, you seem to want to "go the extra mile" and start actually persecuting religious people? is that true? Where do you want to go from here? Do you think the beliefs of religious people are "holding back" society?

millipodium wrote:Nick, you seem to want to "go the extra mile" and start actually persecuting religious people? is that true? Where do you want to go from here? Do you think the beliefs of religious people are "holding back" society?

I don't persecute anybody, nor do I encourage it. As far as where I want to go from here, you might have got a general idea about it when I mentioned in my previous post, the idea of understanding the nature of existence and reality. Do I think religion is holding society back? Not necessarily, the only thing holding society back is the ignorance of each and every individual. With that said I have made it my job to destroy ignorance, promote wisdom, and encourage others to value Absolute Truth above all else.

Nick Treklis wrote:

millipodium wrote:Nick, you seem to want to "go the extra mile" and start actually persecuting religious people? is that true? Where do you want to go from here? Do you think the beliefs of religious people are "holding back" society?

I don't persecute anybody, nor do I encourage it. As far as where I want to go from here, you might have got a general idea about it when I mentioned in my previous post, the idea of understanding the nature of existence and reality. Do I think religion is holding society back? Not necessarily, the only thing holding society back is the ignorance of each and every individual. With that said I have made it my job to destroy ignorance, promote wisdom, and encourage others to value Absolute Truth above all else.

What if the absolute truth is that there is a god?

Dude, either make that argument or shut up.

No God? nobody actually believes that........

millipodium wrote:What if the absolute truth is that there is a god?

Define God.

acid,

No God? nobody actually believes that........

I assure you, acid, some people actually do.

As far as God is an intelligent super-being, there is no more reason to believe in him than not to believe in him.

Unless you take God in the broadest possible sense (as a synonym for Reality or The Totality), and give no features to him other than can be logically deduced, such will always remain the case: there is no more reason to believe in him than not.

Nick Treklis wrote:

millipodium wrote:What if the absolute truth is that there is a god?

Define God.

Think of god as whatever it is your saying you don't believe in when you call yourself an atheist.

"Define god" - how sickening and trite, Nick. Really. You can do better.

trevor,

are your serious?

Yes, acid. On all three points I made.

1. Atheists exist. They do not believe in gods or God as these concepts have been presented to them. They do not pray for divine assistance, nor do they worry about their everlasting soul or the afterlife (except in the case of Buddhist literalists).

2. Certain beliefs of what God is either are no more likely to be true than false, or may even be downright wrong. I am not above telling people that the type of god that they decided to believe in is backward, not fully thought out, contradictory, no better than Greek mythology, or just dead wrong.

3. There is only one God that is certain to exist, but it does not necessarily have divine intelligence. God, in this case, can by synonymous with "Reality", and hence spoken about by both theists and atheists comfortably.

are you questioning whether or not "God" is conscious? if you acknowledge the existence of an unconscious God, I don't know why you wouldn't acknowledge that there is no reason not to believe in a conscious God. a thinking God versus a non-thinking God hardly seems to be a question to agonize over.

If God is Reality (and this would be the most useful place for the concept, since there is no higher appeal than reality... the question of whether reality is real or not, and hence whether God is real or not, is totally irrelevant at this level), then as Reality, it is impossible to figure out whether he is intelligent or not. Is the Totality of all existence intelligent? That question cannot be answered using logic, since intelligence itself is empirical. There is no way to be 100% certain that Reality/God is intelligent -- or unintelligent, for that matter.

So you are right, it is not worth agonizing over. There are other features of Reality that can be determined using logic alone, such as the nature of causality or whether or not things within Reality exist in-and-of-themselves (inherently).

sounds like you are talking about the innate differences between man and animal. man is intelligent, while animals are instinctual. if you don't believe that man is above animal, then you aren't even thinking like a man. the existence of man proves the existence of a higher being. the development of and refinement of a higher wave-length. it's possible to deny something at any level, but there is really no point, except your own animal ignorance.

I'm not talking about that at all.

the existence of man proves the existence of a higher being.

In what sense? A more intelligent being that manipulates the ordering of nature and the evolution of species? If that's what you mean, then the existence of man does not prove such. A higher being is not needed to explain order: only one force is needed to explain how a perfect cone is built by falling sand particles.

Refinement is more than adequately explained by a thorough understanding of natural selection. On my old computer, I had a small program that simulated evolution on the scale of random lines of code. Through mutation, survival, and a simple reward system, eventually these "organisms" could add, subtract, compare, and many other such complex functions that you would imagine only a computer programmer could develop.

This was merely a simulation of some of the basic concepts of natural selection. But, since each of those characteristics were in nature, it is obvious that natural selection is not only capable of creating refined, complex life... it happens.

No appeal to divine intelligence is necessary. At all. However, as I said, it is literally impossible to prove either that reality is intelligent or unintelligent. These are empirical concepts, and it is impossible to measure reality for the simple fact that everything you would use to measure it is already contained within it, and hence inadequate for the task.

The only tool we have is logic.

it's possible to deny something at any level, but there is really no point, except your own animal ignorance.

It is not possible to deny everything, however. It is not possible to deny the principle of self-identity, or that reality is not nothing whatsoever.

It is, however, possible to deny divine intelligence. It does not even require ignorance to do so; in fact, it helps if you don't have ignorance.

In one sense you are right. You obviously care about what you are talking about, so that means that it is legitimate. If you are going to say that there is no higher being that is known as, God, however, then you are going to have to go much deeper than you are going to really convince anyone of that argument. There is a reason that the vast majority of people will say they believe in God. Because he has proven to be a constant over the yeas of civilization. Just as the president of America exists, so does God because he is there in the objective reality of the people. Laws of physics will change, and they have changed since we began to keep track. There isn't much hope in disproving God, so you are already starting at a disadvantage when you begin the argument. Here we are speaking in the sociological sense, the mind of society so to speak, and it says that God is real. You can skirt around the issue, but where are we left if we deny the supremacy of the consensus?

There is a reason that the vast majority of people will say they believe in God. Because he has proven to be a constant over the yeas of civilization.

Are you sure that is the reason? Or is that merely your reason?

There isn't much hope in disproving God, so you are already starting at a disadvantage when you begin the argument.

I have no disadvantage, since there is no hope of proving the existence of a Judeo-Christian God, either. In fact, it is actually logically necessary to assume that something does not exist before assuming that it does. This is the case for everything except Reality itself.

You can skirt around the issue, but where are we left if we deny the supremacy of the consensus?

Logic is not based on consensus. There is true, and there is false. Those who are not concerned with logic, but are concerned only with faith or keeping up appearances in front of their neighbours, are not qualified to have a definitive opinion on the issue of God. They do not care about truth, but only with tradition, their emotions, and fashion.

I am concerned with truth. I have given an example of a God that cannot be disproven. If that is not sufficient for you, if you must believe that God is intelligent despite having no logical reasons for believing so, then your opinion is not founded on any interest in truth, either. It is wishful thinking.

If you are going to say that there is no higher being that is known as, God, however, then you are going to have to go much deeper than you are going to really convince anyone of that argument.

If there is a higher being known as God, then it is an existent within reality, and is not the greatest conceivable thing. As a being within reality, it may as well be a super-powerful alien. That is hardly worth worship.

If God is to be considered the greatest, most inclusive thing ever, then God must be Reality. In that case, there is only so much you can say about him before you begin to lie. You cannot give him any empirical characteristics, because these are subjective and must be measured. It cannot be established with absolute certainty that he is either intelligent or conscious. He could as easily be the mindless Logos of ancient Greece as the benevolent all-good God of medieval theology.

There are, however, things that are not measured. They are founded in logic. Such things include causality, what it means to be, the concept of infinity, and nothingness.

acid wrote:If you are going to say that there is no higher being that is known as, God, however, then you are going to have to go much deeper than you are going to really convince anyone of that argument.

Deeper? Are you serious? You think your point of view is deep in some way?

There is a reason that the vast majority of people will say they believe in God.

Yes, it's called delusion and egotism.

Because he has proven to be a constant over the yeas of civilization.

Are you a Xian? You must be some sort of Monotheist because only they are capable of saying something like this. What do you mean "he"? What culture ar you referring to? The polytheistic Greek? The polytheistic "Hindu"? The atheistic Buddhist? I don't see anything constant in God beliefs at all other than the egotistical psychology that drives them. Plus, you seem to be forgetting that the humanist perspective is still youthful and growing, especially in Europe.

Just as the president of America exists, so does God because he is there in the objective reality of the people.

Ok, so show me this God. There's bucketloads of empirical evidence for the President, there's exactly none for God. To be candid, you should be embarrassed by the vapidity of that argument.

Laws of physics will change, and they have changed since we began to keep track.

Name a single law of physics that has changed. Please keep in mind whilst coming up with an example that such things are called "laws" precisely because they have no changed.

There isn't much hope in disproving God, so you are already starting at a disadvantage when you begin the argument.

There isn't any evidence for God so there's not much to disprove, plus you can hardly disprove something that isn't even properly defined in people's minds. But hey, tell me what God is and I'll disprove it.

Here we are speaking in the sociological sense, the mind of society so to speak, and it says that God is real.

What God and what society? Where does the humanistic outlook of Toaism and Chinese culture generally fit into this little idea of yours? Entire societies have believed in all sorts of things that are wrong. Your argument is too crappy to even be weak.

You can skirt around the issue, but where are we left if we deny the supremacy of the consensus?

Can you show me that people are not given to delusion? If you can't then your consensus argument doesn't mean much. Obviously from the point of view of a monotheistic culture, the ancient Greeks were all totally deluded. That alone blows your whole consensus argument away. The fact that through history most peope have believed in some form of a God figure shows nothing more than through history people have needed such a notion to fill in gaps in their understanding of reality and to sublimate certain universal emotional needs. The diversity of those God beliefs actually undermines your argument for the meaningfulness of this consensus you're talking about.

Dan Rowden

huh?

I said if you can tell me what God is I'll disprove it. All you're really saying is that an historical belief in some kind of ultimate being has existed. You need to understand that that is not evidence of its actual existence - it is merely evidence of a shared mentality. Your argument leaves you in a world of logical pain because it means that all things that have been historically believed should be taken as true (even though no evidence beyond the actual belief exists).

Dan Rowden wrote: The diversity of those God beliefs actually undermines your argument for the meaningfulness of this consensus you're talking about.

Dan Rowden

No it doesn't. That's just an assertion of yours.

Acid,

Please do not edit your posts after they have been replied to. It's not something you ought to make a habit of. The discussion was going along just fine.


Dan Rowden