Any atheists in here?
POSTED BY: BlackCollarBrowncoat
UPDATED: Sunday, March 12, 2006 20:19
VIEWED: 38267
PAGE 9 of 18
Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
That's cute. :)
How about, "I don't believe in people of faith. Faith is simple a matter of delusion. Some of us are more deluded than others."
That doesn't really work... EVERYONE has faith in something.
Our currency's value is based on faith, as is the value of every common stock in the market. Frienship, love, trust, money, exchange, trade... EVERYTHING in this world of any worth is worth what it is worth based on people's faith in it. Faith that other people will also have faith and the value will go up; faith that we will not be betrayed; faith that when we hand over our money that we'll get an equal thing in return.
Faith/Belief is the most valuable thing in this world to anyone be they religious or not.
"Why is it that when I say 'believe' you automatically think I'm talking about God."
So, frankly, your statement just doesn't fly. Everyone is a person of faith.
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The most conservative studies show that the divorce rate in America is 50% and the divorce rate of couples that share and PRACTICE a common religion together is 1 in 1005.
(mind you the bible-belt counts for most of the divorces in the country, so it's not the zealous right-winged fundamentalists who are staying together out of fear. It's the sane liberal religious folks who make up for those fanatics and then some to make this statistic possible).
In Japan, some business executives DEMAND that their employees learn zazen sitting metitation because statistics show that it makes them better and more efficient workers with a stronger work ethic and a larger attention span.
So does religion turn on lights? No.
Religion helps people learn how to love and be loved in contructive and lasting ways.
In the end... which is more important to you?
Your electrical outlets or your marriage and your interpersonal relationships?
It works. It works for what is truly valuable in life.
Personally, I choose to believe in science and religion - as do most people of a decent education on either side of this argument.
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You're confusing "faith" with "consensus", "cooperation" and "reciprocity".
And in fact, we DON'T know that the value of stocks will go up, nor do we know that the value of currency will remain the same, just as we don't know that our love will be returned and our trust will be honored.
I guess you can say that now you've run into ONE person who has faith in nothing: me. What I have is an a priori assumption- one that I chose but to this day also admit may be totally wrong, about which I will have no way of ever "knowing" "for sure".
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Free as in freedom, not beer.
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Quote:Zazen sitting is not a religion.
In Japan, some business executives DEMAND that their employees learn zazen sitting metitation because statistics show that it makes them better and more efficient workers with a stronger work ethic and a larger attention span.
Quote:Except when they are killing each other in the name of religion.
So does religion turn on lights? No.
Religion helps people learn how to love and be loved in contructive and lasting ways.
You don't need religion to teach love, trust, and cooperation. Cooperation is an in-built human motive that lights up with pleasure when people behave mutually. Love is based on oxytocin. Trust depends (among other things) on the "theory of mind". All of these are natural human impulses, which we are trained out of under capitalism, which teaches that we are- and should be- relentlessly pitted against each other. I find both capitalism and it's counterpoint- religion- to be artificial and mutually reinforcing constructs.
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Free as in freedom, not beer.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Drop anything lately? Which way did it fall? Seems like more than a "theory" is at work here.
Common... any idiot can tell you that gravity is real. Science can't explain it. We have no idea why it happens. There's a popular theory by Hawking about space-time bends and density and before that it was a sub-automic particle known as the graviton.
Science is supposed to tell us why things happen. Religious Druids 2000 years ago could predict the weather, plot the movement of the stars, construct huge monuments, watch things fall to the ground when dropped....
Science doesn't discover these things! It's supposed to tell us why they happen and then be able to manipulate them for our benefit.
That being said. Science is wonderful.
I have a bizarre perspective on this as I am a rational scientifically minded computer programmer (amatuer archaeologist) with a Master's Degree in Comparative Religion. Makes me see both sides.
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Quote:Science does not tell us "why" things happen, science tells how "how" things happen. We can describe gravity and its interactions with our other consructs under various circumstances. In the future, we will probably develop more inclusive descriptions of "gravity" which will allow us to predict even more.
Any idiot can tell you that gravity is real. Science can't explain it. We have no idea why it happens.
The answer to "Why is there air?" could be legitimately answered with "To blow up basketballs". Keep asking the question "why" often enough in chain of questions and answers, and you wind up with either "because I said so" or "because god made it". (Most parents have gone thru this at least once!
) The question "why", by supposing intent, preordains (so to speak) a theist answer.---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.
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Zazen sitting is not a religion.
um... it is the principal form of religious practice in Zen Buddhism. It's the Christian equivalent of contemplative prayer.
You don't need religion to teach love, trust, and cooperation. Cooperation is an in-built human motive that lights up with pleasure when people behave mutually.
um... the world is full of evil and selfishness. Cooperation is not built in to us. GREED is built into us. Look at the world and see how often people corrupt all good things to get more stuff. I don't see a lot of Cooperation going on.
Love is based on oxytocin.
umm.... yeah. Not sure where to go with that one.
Trust depends (among other things) on the "theory of mind". All of these are natural human impulses, which we are trained out of under capitalism, which teaches that we are- and should be- relentlessly pitted against each other.
How exactly does capitalism train us not to be pitted against each other. Free Market. The whole point is to undersell and do better than the next guy. Have you looked at Microsoft or WalMart recently? Why do you think they are doing so well?
I dunno. I suppose you gould be right. However, what are the fruits of your world view?
To have things we love fall apart is so common in our world that we don't even think about it anymore. We just expect divorce, war, corporate buyouts, theft, murder...etc. Isn't that disturbing. And you think you aren't operating in a broken system?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Science does not tell us "why" things happen, science tells how "how" things happen.
The answer to "Why is there air?" could be legitimately answered with "To blow up basketballs". Keep asking the question "why" often enough in chain of questions and answers, and you wind up with either "because I said so" or "because god made it". (Most parents have gone thru this at least once!
True.
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Quote:
Originally posted by zeke023:
The most conservative studies show that the divorce rate in America is 50% and the divorce rate of couples that share and PRACTICE a common religion together is 1 in 1005.
(mind you the bible-belt counts for most of the divorces in the country, so it's not the zealous right-winged fundamentalists who are staying together out of fear. It's the sane liberal religious folks who make up for those fanatics and then some to make this statistic possible).
Interestingly a study into Divorce Rates in the US showed that as a whole it was the Atheists and Agnostics that seemed to come out best
Religion % have been divorced
Jews 30%
Born-again Christians 27%
Other Christians 24%
Atheists, Agnostics 21%
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
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Hurrah, hurrah, when things are at their worst
With cries of “Death or Glory” comes the mighty Twenty-First
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Quote:The you aren't looking. Most of us drive on the correct side of the street. Most of us pay our taxes. Most of us take care of our families. The average person is not violent or aggressive. When was the last time you were assaulted by the postman or battered by the grocery clerk?
um... the world is full of evil and selfishness. Cooperation is not built in to us. GREED is built into us. Look at the world and see how often people corrupt all good things to get more stuff. I don't see a lot of Cooperation going on.
Did you realize that without cooperation there would be no warfare? How else can you get someone to sacrifice their job, family, time, and potentially their health and life? If we were all so terribly selfish, wars would never even get off the ground!
You are right- evil people (like all biological populations, there are those three standard deviations away from the norm!) can- and do- commandeer our impulse to cooperate. I think this is a system flaw, not a biological one. There was an interesting study of a group of primates- I believe it was baboons- in which all of the most aggressive members- approximately half of the adult male population- was wiped out by bovine tuberculosis. (long story on how that happened, too much typing for now). It led to a radical cultural change in that particular troop- a change which has persisted through two-three generations of newborns and immigrants
Quote:Actually, that was my point, badly stated. Capitalism teaches us that competition is "natural". That was folded into Darwinsim to create the "scientific" basis for capitalism: We are the result of generations of fierce, relentless intraspecies competition and are fundamentally greedy, selfish, predatory individualists.... Except that I can show you globally, biologically, and evolutionarily that this isn't true. We are, in fact, a social species. With the usual caveat for those three standard deviations away from the norm (I'll call them "deviants" for short) people have always occurred in groups. Biologically, fMRI and other brain studies and psychological studies have shown that there IS a biological basis for cooperation, trust, love, and altruism. This makes sense because, evolutionarily, our young are so helpless for so long it takes the cooperative efforts of many adults to bring the young to reproductive age.
How exactly does capitalism train us not to be pitted against each other.
Quote:The last thing that Walmart and Microsoft want is a free market. They behave in anticompetitive behavior, not by outperforming the competition but by getting rid of it.
Free Market. The whole point is to undersell and do better than the next guy. Have you looked at Microsoft or WalMart recently? Why do you think they are doing so well?
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Free as in freedom, not beer.
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