Your evidence was hardly lacking in controversy Doggg.

Those types of games have a purpose, and it's to demonstrate how we behave. The Public Goods game is another example of altruism and our bias towards being selfish once we realise that a member of the group is being selfish.

Then you are missing out on some very interesting psychology. Don't you want to understand why we behave as we do?

Is this you selectively discrediting psychologists again? whoops!

Also, since you love painting people coming down on you as "you being persecuted by Atheists" can you find one regular theist poster who respects your opinion or thinks you add value to the forum? If you can't, why do you think this is?

MB,
I kind of lost track of this thread over the weekend and didn't follow it (it was a long wknd in Canada). As the debate seems to be winding down here are my closing thoughts on this (lol so official).

My appeal is that you try and be more open minded. Everyone thinks they are right, whether we are Christians, Sikhs, or Atheists. If you went ahead with your proposed "Atheist Aid" I could hardly hold this against you. Instead I would conclude that you are sincerely living out your convictions flowing from a secular humanist point of view. If part of your aid work included propagating your atheist point of view this too is acceptable, after all you think you are right don't you?

Questioning the intentions of religious organizations is good, just be careful not to paint with too large a brush. Each group is different and furthermore each group is filled with different individuals.

+1

I concur with post #218 as well

I do try to be open minded.

If you felt about Atheism the same way that I feel about religion, I sincerely doubt that you'd be as kind and accepting of my proselytizing under the guise of (or to be charitable 'during') doing good. My convictions being sincere or my belief that I'm right, IMO, has no bearing at all on whether or not it's acceptable to spread them. It's the nature and impact of those convictions that matters.


Absolutely, each religion is different as are the followers within that religion and I'm not simply writing everybody off (I even have some religious friends ) but when we're talking about such a vast and far ranging subject, especially one so firmly entrenched into our culture and psyches, I find it difficult to use anything other than the big brush.

Where I constantly struggle, is to distinguish to people reading posts between Religion (the idea of it, the organisational aspects, the official hierarchy etc etc) and individual followers, the individuals who consider themselves religious and I'm usually speaking of the former.

Duco's point that bad things would still happen if religion doesn't exist is missing the point. Religion does exist, it makes people, a lot of people, do bad things. It's not the only thing on my list but the others aren't related to religion and this is RGT.

People do bad things every day. Good people do bad things every day. If religion disappeared, do you really believe that people will altogether stop doing bad things?

This, imo, is like a doctor examining a sick patient, and instead of treating him for his illness, he advises the patient to change his name.

Stop worrying about the world and how to fix it. You can't. Man's problems and issues are deep inside of him, and cosmetic applications will not do. They have already been tried, and the results have been disastrous. You need to change yourself before you can change anybody else.

This is exactly what is happening. They are looking to get rid of people. Ideas are criminalized in the name of a homogeneous sameness. They treat the sick as if he was well. They treat those who are healthy as if they were sick, because a healthy, vigorous man is not the same as them, not fantasizing as they do-- he will be exiled-- healthy or not. They want a world where people are in lockstep, blithely reciting the same creeds and singing the same songs with the same voice: one person, one idea, one creed, one color, one race, one gender. They examine the graffiti on the human wall and just put a fresh coat over it. There. All is better.

Till another man comes along and exercises his freedom, his independence, and scrawls on it.

The problem of man is not cosmetic or superficial. Say what you want of the Judeo-Christian perspective-- it sees the sh*t-sink for what it is. They, on the other hand, are like children at play with toy cars and toy soldiers on the floor: they think they can create a new world, but never realizing that in order for that to happen, you need a new heaven and a new earth and a new man altogether. So they pretend-play, reducing man's value and ultimate integrity, seeing man as so much putty in the hands. And as history has shown us, this is a dangerous and reckless perspective. And as long as these types exist, and this perspective on man persists, we can be sure that the world will remain a sh*t-sink.

Whatever man's problems are, they are in his heart, and who can change the heart of a man?

I think what LemonZest is saying is that the way that you feel about religion is preventing you from being more open-minded--in other words, you should change the way you feel about religion.

You just need better conversational tactics. For instance, when discussing a deeply-held disagreement, even if you are not actually open-minded, it is useful to argue as if you were open-minded. Thus, instead of trying to convince people that all the seemingly good things that religion does are really bad (which makes you seem close-minded), you should just focus on the obviously bad things that religions does as being bad . You should also try to stay away from arguing for claims that are too general or open-ended (such as that religion is overall a net negative) even if you actually believe those claims. Claims like those are not very open to analysis or empirical data, and so mostly people's views are just a reflection of their tribal memberships. Your goal here should be to, as much as possible, try to avoid conversations that trigger tribalism as doing so has opposite effect to what you are trying to achieve.

Don't really know what to say about this. I can't change how I feel, but others might be able to and have done in some areas. I could now easily take the Theist side in any religious argument, and have done recently in other places, when I've encountered the same arguments that I used to make. I've had my eyes opened to what I didn't know and to the certainty that there's even more that I still don't know, I've paid that forward to some extent.

I can't say that I'm as open minded as it's possible for me to become since I don't know what that could be but I'm way more open minded than I used to be.

OrP, I've moved from 'nothing religion does is good' to accepting the 'net negative' position while I've been posting here.

Also, I've taken that new position but due to what I've learned posting here it's not carved in stone like it might once have been (just the fact that I'm seeing it taking a position is new), I'm now open to the possibility that I'm simply wrong and there's an argument out there somewhere that will prove it. It just hasn't happened yet. I've also accepted that it's just about impossible to prove or disprove 'net negative'.

I'm not sure what people think I'm 'trying to achieve'. I long ago gave up the idea of changing minds, now it's more about seeing what part of any ideas that I have come out of the other end of the meat grinder.

Just some friendly advice. You get picked on a lot here in part because of how you present yourself to people and those were a couple of things that I thought might lessen that.

That's how it was taken.

Don't really know what to say about this. I can't change how I feel, but others might be able to and have done in some areas. I could now easily take the Theist side in any religious argument, and have done recently in other places, when I've encountered the same arguments that I used to make. I've had my eyes opened to what I didn't know and to the certainty that there's even more that I still don't know, I've paid that forward to some extent.

I can't say that I'm as open minded as it's possible for me to become since I don't know what that could be but I'm way more open minded than I used to be.

I think it is great that you are pursuing open mindedness.

Absolutely, each religion is different as are the followers within that religion and I'm not simply writing everybody off (I even have some religious friends ) but when we're talking about such a vast and far ranging subject, especially one so firmly entrenched into our culture and psyches, I find it difficult to use anything other than the big brush.

I don't follow your thought process here. Why does this prevent us from taking a specific nuanced approach?

Where I constantly struggle, is to distinguish to people reading posts between Religion (the idea of it, the organisational aspects, the official hierarchy etc etc) and individual followers, the individuals who consider themselves religious and I'm usually speaking of the former.

Sorry to be a broken record but I think the key here is to write out what you mean and make the distinction.

If I'm questioning a human tendency to believe in that for which there is no evidence, how does it help to choose Catholicsim over Islam? That would be like me discussing our tendency to gamble and restricting the conversation to Craps, it's really irrelevant which gambling game I choose when what I'm addressing is the issue of gambling itself.

Ok, so you want to describe not the individual followers of a religion but the religion itself, the meme, the idea, the organisation of it, what word do you use?

Sometimes I'll mention individual followers but only as examples of how religions cause people to behave. See, I used the word 'religions' there, what else could I have used?

If I'm questioning a human tendency to believe in that for which there is no evidence, how does it help to choose Catholicsim over Islam? That would be like me discussing our tendency to gamble and restricting the conversation to Craps, it's really irrelevant which gambling game I choose when what I'm addressing is the issue of gambling itself.

Gambling
- Craps
- A type
- B type
- C type
- Roulette
- A type
- B type
- C type
- Poker
- A type
- B type
- C type
- Blackjack
- A type
- A1 type
- A2 type
- B type
- C type
- etc.

It makes more sense IMO to discuss specific games than just continually referring to gambling. The discussion is more meaningful. Making generalizations will result in often being incorrect. If someone continually makes very general claims about "gambling" it makes me think they don't really know the games or the industry.

IME people make generalizations to make up for a lack of detailed knowledge. Religions are not homogeneous.

Ok, so you want to describe not the individual followers of a religion but the religion itself, the meme, the idea, the organisation of it, what word do you use?

Sometimes I'll mention individual followers but only as examples of how religions cause people to behave. See, I used the word 'religions' there, what else could I have used?

Is your beef with the doctrinal beliefs?
tenets?
creeds?
rituals?

Also it is important that a causal connection can be made. Just because an atheist does something bad it doesn't follow that their atheism caused those actions.

If you lived in a world where each of the Leaders of the various countries went around stark naked but were assured by their staff and subjects that they were actually dressed in various forms of finery, would you care what those clothes were supposed to look like? This is how I feel about belief in deities, so it makes no difference which deity it is.

There's no causal connection required because we're talking about what it says about the believers state of mind if it turned out that all those Leaders are actually naked and there are no clothes. So, are those people simply 'wrong'? Or are the implications and consequences of their belief such that they might be considered deluded? (If they went to war over it, if they constructed elaborate ceremonies around it, if they lived by collection of stories about their leaders clothes, if they taught their children to think the other country's leaders were actually naked but theirs wasn't.... etc etc)

Are you going to supply an example of something that you would be prepared to use the word 'deluded' about? I'd really like to come at this from the other direction with you and figure out where your threshold is.

If you lived in a world where each of the Leaders of the various countries went around stark naked but were assured by their staff and subjects that they were actually dressed in various forms of finery, would you care what those clothes were supposed to look like? This is how I feel about belief in deities, so it makes no difference which deity it is.

There's no causal connection required because we're talking about what it says about the believers state of mind if it turned out that all those Leaders are actually naked and there are no clothes. So, are those people simply 'wrong'? Or are the implications and consequences of their belief such that they might be considered deluded? (If they went to war over it, if they constructed elaborate ceremonies around it, if they lived by collection of stories about their leaders clothes, if they taught their children to think the other country's leaders were actually naked but theirs wasn't.... etc etc)

Are you going to supply an example of something that you would be prepared to use the word 'deluded' about? I'd really like to come at this from the other direction with you and figure out where your threshold is.

Religions are not homogeneous. It is easy to lump in all religions together and make generalizations. I recommend a more specific line of reasoning. Without being specific your statements are completely unsupported and nebulous.

Forget my statements then, let's just examine what constitutes deluded for you. I'll come back to what I'm saying if I think it's appropriate, for now we don't need it.

So, are you going to supply an example of something that you would be prepared to use the word 'deluded' about? I'd really like to come at this from the other direction with you and figure out where your threshold is.

Here is my copy and paste response from the Exodus thread:

Not sure I would ever use the word "deluded". I might say someone was "delusional" if they were seeing things or like in a drugged up state or something. I am not really interested in a discussion around the word "deluded". If you want to use it go ahead.

My main point was that the word seems to be easily misconstrued. For that reason I would try to communicate what I mean in a different more clear way.

If that's the best I'm going to get I'll go with it.

So someone who is 'seeing things' might be delusional. Ok, why? Why are they delusional and not just 'wrong' or engaging in a 'false belief'?

(Feel free to elaborate on what 'seeing things' constitutes for you, just to make sure we have a common assumption there)

Using "false belief" is better because I don't lose my audience by offending them or confusing them about what I actually mean.

I am not really interested in a discussion about how we use the word "deluded". I have told you why I don't think it is a great word to use. If you want to keep using it that is fine.

Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to any particular disease and have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both physical and mental). However, they are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, paraphrenia, manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion

Nice, but let's call a spade a spade. Prevarication (in the sense of creating a wrong impression) and ducking strong words to avoid offence doesn't actually help us tackle issues. If deluded is the word that fits, we should use it.

You can tell Raelians that if they're wrong about the UFO drivers who gave them the 'Truth' then, well, they're wrong. I'll tell them that if they're wrong, there's a good chance that they're deluded.

Ok, I mistook your repeatedly engaging with me on the subject as an interested in discussing it and I thought I'd almost got you to give an example of when being wrong becomes something much than just being wrong. Guess I was wrong. If I was the only person who thought you were going to do that, I guess I was probably deluding myself. No probs.

Peace.

But you shouldn't call a spade a club. The word "delusion" carries with it connotations that do not fit the situation of being "wrong." Being "wrong" or holding a "false belief" is not equivalent to being "deluded." Delusion entails some level of deceit or subversion in the process of coming to the belief which is absent from simply being wrong. Being wrong just means that the statement is not correct. Also (as pointed out by LemonZest), the term delusion carries specific medical connotations which are also not appropriate to the situation.

The distinction between you and LemonZest is that you really believe that people are deluded (whether you're right or wrong in your assessment is irrelevant at the moment), whereas LemonZest may simply believe they are wrong. You are putting up a front of being "honest" (honest with what you believe about the situation) when you should really be putting up a front of being "open" (open to other interpretations or ways of understanding the situation).

+1

It depends on the person. I would prefer to marry an Atheist or Agnostic as I tend to relate to more intelligent people anyways. I have dated Christian and Jewish girls in the past but none of them went to religious services. I could do this again as long as they are okay with not taking any future children to religious services. I would never be able to live with myself if I subjected my child to such hateful nonsense especially considering the huge effects it could have on their mind during its most vulnerable period.