Also you just bringing it up in this thread and talking about Christianity in this forum as much as you do must be doing the same. You should stop.

I wonder how Salman Rushdie would view this line of thought.

You're comparing an empirical, testable and easily falsifiable example like the capital city of a country, to a 2000 year old religious meme? Something that you agree only exists in our heads? Apples and oranges. Let me ask you this though, what would have to happen to change the capital of Spain to a new city, how would that become 'real'?

Sometimes I wonder if you have blonde moments sometimes, which is possible no matter how smart you are, or whether you just think that I'm really thick (more likely). Do I think that simply repeating something like your Barcelona example will cause everyone to think it true? No, of course not. Does repetition play a powerful role in belief, yes it does Zumby and you well know this, are you just playing to the gallery here? I know that you (appear to) hugely underestimate the power of repetition and the psychological methods involved in affirming messages and beliefs or I wouldn't be able to do parts of my job.

Here's another idiot who thinks like I do -

And another one -

Take that to the obvious conclusion that if you completely remove the stimuli, the belief will completely fade in time. The opposite isn't always true, Zeus is a good example, we know a lot about Zeus but we don't believe in him, but if you don't provide the stimuli the belief is sure to die out.

Repetition: The Key to Spreading Lies

It really took this long for that to occur to you? Have you never come across the concept that denying rumours can give them a credibility that they never deserved in the first place? See the quote below. Sometimes though, the belief becomes so accepted that something has to be said and the risk of helping to perpetuate it is outweighed by the need to deny it's truth.

I don't think that this applies with religions like Islam and Christianity though, they're too established.


Correct. Completely remove the stimuli, the belief will completely vanish in time.

Or:

I am slow and a bit dumb.



Good to see this will be your last post in this forum then. TC.

Lol at you thinking this thread is going to perpetuate Satan. Holy **** .

My point was that it had occurred to me....

Did you actually read my last reply to you? This suggests that even if you did, you didn't understand what I was saying. That might be my fault so I'll try to clarify.

Sometimes the best response to false information is to ignore it and don't dignify it or give it weight by denying it. Sometimes the false information is so entrenched that a response is necessary in order to combat it, as is the case with the main religions. I'm an anti-theist, my actions are intended to oppose religion and I can't do that by not saying anything.

Clear?

lol at this if that's what you think I'm saying. Holy **** too.

It just occurred to you i didnt know this. Ok....

Its called sarcasm at your squirm.
Cool then we can talk about Satan since he is entrenched and your earlier suggestion that we dont is bs.


Wonder where i got the idea you think this thread is perpetuating Satan.


That could be it.

So meme theory (and equivalent theories of belief-formation) only applies to non-empirical claims? Citation needed.

As I've told you before, your aversion to analogies just makes your positions look weak. An argument or theory that works across a wide domain of data is considered (particularly in science) better than one that only applies very narrowly.

Furthermore, the entire point of us creating these analogies is to take your claims about religion and point out that they don't work when applied elsewhere. So it's no good at all to just retort that religion and non-religion is different. We already know that. What we want is for you to explain why the difference is relevant.

And if you really insist on an analogy that is still non-empirical, then one of the best counter-arguments actually comes from your own musings: Zeus. Zeus was not disproved empirically, so why don't people believe in him anymore? Your position implies that people don't believe in Zeus because people don't talk about him. But how do you avoid the problem of underdetermination here? i.e. isn't is just as plausible that people don't talk about Zeus because they don't believe in him?

In very typical Booshian style, you make a wild claim (that Christianity is freerolling by the mere fact that Satan is talked about ITT) and then when challenged you respond by asserting that your opponent is denying some sensible general claim (that repetition plays a role in belief).

This quote isn't relevant to the point at hand, and as Aaron(?) pointed out in the other thread, no-one has denied that religions market their ideas. The religious call it proselytising, for Frith's sake.


OK, let's try bolding a different part of that quote:

So it turns out that quote supports the idea that contradicting a belief (as pr my Barcelona example) is a way of weakening a belief, and if that is true then it can not be the case (as you have claimed) that simply ANY repetition of an idea reinforces the belief.

See above. The publication of "The Greek Myths" by Robert Graves would surely have increased the exposure to the idea of Zeus, but without a corresponding increase in belief in Zeus. So your model is false.


Repetition: The Key to Spreading Lies[/QUOTE]

You have to remember that he doesn't read my posts because I'm on his ignore list. Something about saying that he was creating false a model of human behavior ("I never used the word model" -- MB) stressed him out and so he doesn't want to deal with me anymore.

There's a real irony to MB posting this given his posting history.

What I'm trying to describe is not as simple as the 'model' that you have shown to be false but I'll admit I'm struggling to present a coherent and better organised version of it. I'm not going to post again until I think I have something like that.

Whilst doing some research, I came across this article about Beliefs - Why Bad Beliefs Don’t Die. If it were a post I'm sure you'd TL;DR it but if you have a few minutes to spare I think it's worth a read and I'd be interested in your opinion of it.

Apologies for the snarky response, but I feel it is going to help you more than a longer more friendly approach:

That article uses examples of belief as cognitive 'maps' of the sensory world outside direct sensory experience. For example, beliefs can represent the physical dangers outside of a cave even when ones direct sensory experience (inside the cave) contains no danger.

Well, this is an empirical, falsifiable model of belief so by your own argument, it cannot be used to support any theory about religious, un-falsifiable beliefs. Apples and oranges innit.

Same for the article you linked about vaccination dangers. The danger (or lack of danger) of vaccinations is an empirical, falsifiable belief, so any results of that study cannot be applied to religious, un-falsifiable belief.

You know, the major problem here is not that you failed to realise that your best response was to point out that - according to the studies you've read - empirical beliefs actually can be influenced by repetitions. The problem is that you are wildly inconsistent, if not hypocritical. You are perfectly happy to cite experiments on empirical beliefs and then make inferences from those to non-empirical beliefs IFF it suits your criticism of religion. If it doesn't suit you, then suddenly you are of the mind that non-empirical beliefs are "apples and oranges" to empirical beliefs. The same goes for virtually all your other arguments in RGT. You will adopt a particular epistemology/metaethics/etc when it suits your anti-theism and just as quickly swap it for another when a different anti-theist argument calls for it.

For example, you have been happy to adopt consequentialist morality when it allows you to say "religion is a net negative". But you explicitly deny consequentialism and adopt deontology when you want to say "it is always wrong to tell children that something is true when it might not be, even if the consequences are good". Then when challenged - in the same thread! - about the coherence of that view, you switch to cultural relativism.

Another example is that if an article even hints at a positive story on religion, you then claim that it must be an example of a pro-religion agenda. But when a news source prints a negative article about religion, you focus entirely on the content of that story, and have no questions about whether the author is pushing an atheist agenda.

For the record, I haven't accepted (and didn't publicly reject, until now) your assertion that I made the argument that meme theory (and equivalent theories of belief-formation) only applies to non-empirical claims'. I'm unable to explain why I consider a belief in the name of a city and a belief in the Christian spirit of evil to be different or how I think that repetition differently impacts on those beliefs, perhaps because there is no difference. So, I retract my comment about empirical examples because it was badly worded and confused the issue. Of course beliefs about empirical claims can be enforced or weakened by the use of repetition, I've never thought otherwise. I apologise for the time that I consider you wasted proceeding with your responses on that basis. You did however stop me from posting further until I have developed a coherent version of what I'm trying to say. One thing I will say now is that it's not as simple as 'any repetition will strengthen any belief'.

As for the comments in your post, regarding my apparent inconsistency and biases, replies to that can definitely wait for the moment, but again that doesn't mean that I've accepted them. When I've applied what I'm learning about morality to what I think, I'll be better placed to explain it, perhaps we'll have some common ground then, until then it's not worth trying.


[offtopic]

As an aside, I discovered Daniel Dennet's 'Breaking the spell' in my book collection the other day while I was doing some clearing out. I have no idea how it got there but I'm really looking forward to reading it.

[/offtopic]

Jesus died for our sins. As long as you accept Christ as your savior you will be forgiven

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I estimate the probability of this actually occurring as approaching 0.

Zumby,

Your post #62 is well stated and I concur. There is plenty of heated debate with MB but I feel like your post really outlines the issues well. I think most of us are guilty of confirmation bias from time to time the hard part is working through it.

So Christians are forbidden to engage in games with incomplete information and play to win? Winning money, while playing a game is obviously evil.

I'm pretty sure that if we follow this logic to it's end - all Christians should probably commit suicide to please the lord.

Solid trolling btw; too bad it's probably unintentional.

If the bolded is a reference to what Zumby said below:

... then I don't think it's the case. When I'm actually using the content of anti-religious articles to support a position, I'm very wary of the motives of the author. In fact that's something I rarely do. And when I link what I consider to be a pro-religion article, what I'm usually doing is using it as an example of how religions influence how people think, either consciously or subconsciously and don't really care either way what the actual article content is. The BBC thread is an example of that.

Of course anti-religious pieces may have been written by someone with a consciously pro-atheist agenda, in fact I think that's more likely than a pro-religious piece being written by someone with a religious agenda because the atheist is more likely to making a conscious decision to contradict something that's generally accepted, where the theist may simply be rolling, with less conscious analysis, with the predominant cultural meme.

I don't think across 3 forums 12 years and 25k posts I've encountered a poster with as little self awareness.

And you were around in the Splendour days...

I'm shocked Splendour hasn't returned I doubted they'd be the type to stay gone, unless....

MB appeared around about the time that splendour was banned no ?

If MB is Splendour, she has attained god-like troll status, imo.

This is what I meant:

and this does seem like the case:

I am not singling you out MB as the only one that succumbs to confirmation bias, Christians are notorious for confirmation bias.

It's ok, if I'm doing it I need to know.