is jesus a freemason?

And I would just like to make one more point, Atheism doesn't usually rear its head in an offensive, attacking stance, it's usually defending something from the spread of religion. The high school textbook thing in the US is a prime example of this. In order to defend science, you simply don't want lots of religious politicians trying to sneak religious teaching in to science classrooms.

The thought is a horrible one. But many Americans think it is disrespectful to their religion to not allow it in the classroom! Sometimes you shouldn't respect religion - because the moment Scientology/Christianity/Islam gets hold of the curriculum is the moment madness sweeps through a nation.

I would like to cite the images of generations of Pakistani children rocking and chanting their way to the religious dark ages because the Taliban have got their hands on the schools.

Something I'm pleased to note the Pakistani military are trying to reverse.

Not really. Science is only one of the methodologies I am ruling out, it seems the most relevant for this thread but there are others. The general thing I am ruling out is anything which concludes with "therefore there must be a god" or "therefore there must not be a god".

Before you start changing people's minds against their will, it is worth honestly evaluating the contents of your own.


Well you first have to decide whether you are so shallow that you have to crush all those who disagree with you. Somebody less megalomaniacal might conclude that we should rescue people from real peril, not from the dreadful state of not happening to agree with Leeds Manc. Once you have a sensible aim, you can adopt a sensible approach to it.

Perhaps you could go to the effort of considering why somebody would need to be rescued from a cult - perhaps it does them some harm? Maybe you will choose not to attack the very notion of a god (which is presumptuous and unjustifiable), and instead focus on the actual harm that the cult is doing to the member. Cults contain individuals at risk, they deserve to be considered each in their own right. It is absurd to hope that you can ride to the rescue of them all at once with a single grand argument that destroys religion for once and for all.

For the purposes of generally undermining other people's harmless religious belief (which is intellectual vandalism at best - ego masturbation at worst), you will just have to make do with subtler arguments. Or you will have to find an audience who are stupid enough to accept bad arguments that end with unsustainable conclusions.


None of this is my problem. It's up to you to use arguments appropriate to the conclusions they reach. If you can't be bothered, then stop, but don't make it my job to agree with you when you are wrong.


I am an atheist. I accept the conclusion that your arguments reach (there is not god), however I am not willing to accept the arguments you use to reach that conclusion because they are the product of faulty reason. The main fault is that you are overreaching, trying to travel beyond the distance that your arguments can carry you. I'm trying to explain this to you as reasonably as I can.

You on the other hand are emotionally attached to your faulty arguments and unwilling to address the problems they suffer. So you are in no position to make judgments about my reasoning.

I have neither respect nor interest in God. But I do have respect for the fact that other people can see the same world around them that I do, and access the same information about it that I do, and come to conclusions about this that differ from mine. These differences may be religious, political, or they may like different TV shows to me as well, and not share my love for the Pixies and Sonic Youth. This doesn't make them insane, or evil, or victims or abusers. All of those people deserve far more respect than you are showing them.

The first post in this thread includes a quote of you linking to the God Delusion in another thread that I never read. There are multiple positive references to atheism before my first post. So at best you are being disingenuous.
And I am not debating whether God exists, we agree on that subject. I am debating whether your arguments in favour of our shared position are adequate to the task.
They are failing.

You are referring to the theory which I myself described as: It's stupid, but you won't prove it wrong with science.
Nice try at the disproof by the way, but no cigar. You have no authority to describe a quantity of data that is too great for an omniscient being to compute.

Of course, I don't really need Omphalos for anything at all because I'm not actually deploying any arguments as such. All I have been doing here is analysing the scope of the arguments you present and then pointing out that the conclusion you persist in announcing is beyond that scope.

So far we have been engaged in extremely simple logic. If we take the conversation into philosophy of mind it is going to get much harder. But if you want to do so I will require two things:
1, a clear explanation of how memetics works - as you understand it.
2, relevance. how do you propose to prove that God exists only as a meme - which is what you have to do to make this line of attack stick.
After all, you wouldn't try one of those weak-ass arguments that relies simply on changing levels of description would you? I'd eat that for breakfast.

Just so we are clear, you cannot prove something is false simply by offering an alternative for it being true. Not true, and not necessarily true are very different things and you have been confusing them all through this thread.
I love analogies, especially if they involve hats and animals, both is obviously best. What I criticise is arguments from analogy.

An argument from analogy takes the form of X is like Y in a given respect. Z applies to to Y, therefore Z also applies to X. At issue is obviously the relevance of the link between to X and Y to that between Y and Z. As a rule, it is very hard to make a useful argument from analogy unless you could equally have done without it by directly linking X to Z anyway.

The problem with Dennet's argument is that it says religion (X) is a bit like this spore (or burrowing insect or whatever a fluke is) (Y) in some respect. The fluke does harm (Z) to its host. Therefore religion (X) is harmful (Z)to its host too. That's an incredibly weak argument. We can see how the fluke invades the ant's brain quite easily, but the similar ability of a meme to invade a human brain is something you can try and persuade me of if you like.

Some posts really are just too long to read.

My apologies

The short version is: Every type of argument has a scope, there are things which you can demonstrate with that form and things which you can't. If you want to present a good argument, know the scope of what it can do.

Talk about disingenuous. I am putting forward my opinions on a forum, in a thread about the subject. You could say that's what a forum is for, it would be pretty boring if we all agreed with each other. Whether you want to change your mind because of my reasoning is up to you - I might give Sonic Youth a listen because of your love for them. I would point out that I have deep respect for religious communities and wouldn't go spouting off in front of them that they shouldn't bother saying grace before their meals or the like. Everything in its right place. On an anonymous thread about religion I feel I'm safe from offending anyone.


I don't want to crush anyone.

Inaccurate, argumentum ad hominem.


Yes we should. We should also rescue people who want to be rescued - there are millions of teenagers and young people in the bible belt who want to be rescued from religion, who see books such as The God Delusion as being their saving grace! (religious term intended)


Yeah.


Yeah...


Bingo! There you go again, try to rescue someone from brainwashing while respecting the nonsense they're brainwashed with. THAT is what I'm getting at, that's the crux of it. Doesn't make sense, there's no need to give it respect just because it is not 100% disprovable in some intellectually abstract way.


Spreading the idea of atheism far and wide though increases the chance that people will be given an immunity to rogue ideas. Maybe I'm confusing my ideas of "viral ideas" too much with atheism, I'll grant you that. But I think it's perfectly relevant, and so does Dennett, and so does Dawkins, so I feel I'm in good company.



Why are my conclusions unsustainable again? For the record I have no interest in "undermining other people's harmless religious belief". My girlfriend is a missionary, I thought the community she lives in to be very welcoming and warm, and I found the local church service to be quite humorous (though woefully lacking in scientific insight and relevancy from my point of view) I didn't stand up and say the parishioners were fools.

That said, I find reading scientific books to be many times more inspirational and cathartic than hearing religious preaching, I think it's a shame people are denied this by their predilection to turn to religious teaching for the same results - if Jehova's Witnesses can knock on doors and say my atheism is misguided, I can shout from the rooftops why it isn't. Listen or don't, I don't care - but I'll still shout it, I think it would do others good to adopt some of my ideas, where's the harm in that?


"don't make it my job to agree with you". I'm trying to change your mind and point out the flaw in YOUR thinking. That's the whole flippin' point - you yourself say you like seeing how others see the world differently, I use different reasoning to you but come up with a conclusion you agree with - doesn't that pique your interest, isn't that what debate is all about? For the record, I'm as convinced you're wrong just as much as you're convinced I'm wrong. So I'll need a little more meat to your arguments of why my reasoning is flawed before you're going to shift my way of thinking. If my reasoning is flawed I assure you, I would be the first to back down - it wouldn't be the first time someone on these boards has fundamentally changed my mind - I think the last person to do it was The Professor (or maybe Marklar, long time ago) about Global Warming, I wrote him a humble post thanking him for arguing against me.



So the main fault with my reasoning is that it is faulty reasoning. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and conclude you just haven't fleshed out your argument enough. Where are the faults in my reasoning - all you have done is point out the flaws in my attitude to others as "not being very nice", your (inaccurate) perception of me as someone looking to crush others. I find no faults in my reasoning in regards to the analogy to memes and the spread of ideas, and the relevancy of this modern science to religion.

See this speech by Dawkins on tolerance and respect towards religion:
"Respect for Religion Enables Religious Extremism":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXHJ-hLjuxM



Once again, that's just an empty statement.


When I say you respect the idea of God too much, I'm not saying you have respect for the beardy Father Christmas God of Christianity, I'm saying you have respect for it in such a way that you don't see it as just any other irrational belief. You give it a separate, privileged quality. You say science can't disprove it so people have a right to believe in it. Well cool, and yes the right to free speech. The Human Rights Act and all that. People can believe in whatever they want -WONDERFUL!

But if I think it's nonsense, I shouldn't have people who don't believe in it defending IT. You can say I have no right crushing people's beliefs against their will, and I agree if I were doing that, that would be bad. But I'm not.

If I try and explain to someone that their teddy bear can't speak, isn't it a bit weird that someone who doesn't believe in talking teddy bears is jumping to the defence of the idea?

I'm not talking about a child here who I'm manipulating to think like LEEDS MANC, I'm talking about attacking the irrational beliefs of a grown human being and then allowing them to make their own mind up. You never know they might go through the rest of their lives thankful that they don't have to waste any more time talking to their teddy bear. or they may not and continue talking to him for the rest of their lives - either way, at least I tried!

See, I'm not doing such a weird thing at all am I? I'm not insulting anyone or crushing their hopes and dreams, I'm putting across a different point of view. On a forum. In a thread about the topic.


Indeed, and if you don't agree with someone's political beliefs you can draw cartoons about their leaders. You can write posters and banners about them, shout and scream why they are wrong. You can Occupy Wall Street. You can mock people's political beliefs. And far from being a cruel thing, it's looked upon not just as acceptable, but frequently an honourable thing to do! You're standing up for your political beliefs, good for you! People like that are described as having a "social conscience". We view political free speech as being good for society, a sign of its liberalness and its freedoms. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this!

The people deserve all the respect in the world, their ideas are fair game!

I also have no authority to describe an immovable object and an unstoppable force existing at the same time. Don't I have the authority to describe an infinite regress though? If an omnipotent being created everything, what created the omnipotent being? Surely having to fall back on such incredible paradoxical levels of reasoning in order for your idea to survive rational enquiry is enough to say things like "There's probably no God". You can't disprove God but you can come as close as humanly possible to doing so, that should set some alarm bells ringing for theists! Isn't it enough that there is no piece of physical evidence that a miracle has ever occurred?

you persist in saying that I'm trying to disprove the existence of God, I'm not, I'm trying to highlight the fact that organised religions haven't got much more going for them than your common-or-garden "we love E. Ron. Hubbard" cult. I just want to point out that the only thing you can do to rationally defend God is to say the you can't disprove his existence. I never refute that, but that's not a big deal, you don't have to disprove the existence of fairies either, so why is it you don't believe in them, and why is it that you can't apply the same reasoning when it comes to believing in God?

The only difference is that millions of people believe in a fairy, and that fairy happens to be omnipotent and wholly undetectable. So in other words the only difference is that there are subtle differences in the myth itself. However in dismissing the existence of fairies you shouldn't study lots of fairy stories and look at details of their wingspan and such to determine whether they exist or not! You should be able to rely on your common sense!

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Stripping away your arrogant, patronising attempts at belittling me I would answer thusly:
1. Do your own research, it really is beyond the scope of my ability to do justice to the work of an influential philosopher in the field of artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
2. I don't propose to prove God is a melon, or a Surfboard, or anything. I intend to put forward a more credible, more useful,more convincing theory of what God is. If you're interested in the subject, I've already suggested your first book. It all springs from Dawkins' Extended Phenotype Chapter in The Selfish Gene.


No if your previous input is anything to go by, you'd probably dismiss such arguments out of hand while missing their relevancy to the debate. After all to claim to be able to shoot arguments out of the water before they're even conceived is surely hubris and tantamount to saying you approach such debates with a closed, prejudiced mind.


Please don't patronise me like this, it does stretch my ability to remain civil in a topic that potentially holds a lot of interest for me. I've already said I'm not interested in disproving the existence of God. Perhaps you have misunderstood my playful quotation of Bad Boy Bubby "Strike me down you non-existant fraud". I love the sentiment, but please stop saying I'm trying to disprove the un-disprovable, it's giving me a headache. I AGREE!




Thank the Lord. You've finally got relevant to what I'm saying...



A fluke is a parasite.

The way I see if it is it's not actually an analogy!

Information is actually infecting the ant's brain, that information has been put there by the parasite. It is still information that infects a human's brain. So it isn't an argument by analogy going by your definition.

Dennett is saying the same thing is happening to humans, it is information but instead of being carried in the DNA of a parasite, the information is delivered via methods more relevant to the human world, ie words, images, music.

"What are bits made of mom?... "

When I realised that it really made me sit up, it is certainly much more than just a quirky analogy with biology. Dennett refers to applying evolutionary thinking to human ideas - and if there's ever a powerful tool for understanding why things "are" it's evolution.

Ok this seems to be our main point of departure, so I think I will concentrate me efforts upon it. I'll try and cover the main points of the rest afterwards.

My argument is about using tools for a given job, so I will try to construct my own argument from analogy that is not subject to my own criticism of Dennet (killing two birds with one stone because I am justly famed for my brevity)...............



Suppose I wished to prove that the world was flat, what would be the appropriate way to do that?
A sensible thing to do would be to get photos from a satellite, I could view entire panorama of the globe, and if the images showed it was flat, I could distribute them and others could look and see how flat it was and thus my method would allow me to prove my point - or else learn the error of my ways.

A less sensible approach would be to use on of those things that builders have to see if stuff is flat. It's got a glass tube and in that there is a bubble, and if the bubble is in the middle of the tube then it is laid on a flat surface. But I could use one of those (please put me out of my misery and remind me what the damn things are called).

Now if I laid one of these on the ground and the bubble rests in the centre, I would still be able to claim that I had measured the Earth and found it flat, but others would note that this is wrong?

Why? How do I get the result I want but fail to persuade? Because I have used an innapropriate method of inquiry. I have taken a thing that measures flatness in small objects, and used it to infer that a vast one also is flat. Tool, job, not a good fit.

now, what sort of arguments can be used to show that atheism is better than theism? Gentlemen, examine your tools.
Perhaps science? It sounds plausible because various religions make varying claims about stuff like why we exist and how the universe was created.So we can use science to examine these claims, and when we do so, we tend to find them wanting. We can look cosmology and there we see credible theory for how the universe came into existence, and this theory is non teleological (or in Dennet terminology - it uses cranes instead of skyhooks). So we see that the universe CAN come into existence without a design.

We look at biology and there we discover that humans are made of exactly the same meat as other animals. And we learn about genetics and evolution, and now we know that there need not be a designer even for us. Perhaps we can go deeper and look at brains, and then we find that memory and thought and the ability to name animals are all present and accounted for without any need to refer to a spark of life or spritual fluids, or anything that would presuppose a God almighty.

So that's a win right? We've shown with science that atheism is best because God is no longer needed to explain any of these things.

Except there's a few problems. For a start half the people doing the research believe in one religion or another. there are SOME religious types who dispute our results on thological grounds, but not that many. The pope has learned his lesson and seems to accept all but a tine proportion of this science. Other sects don't even share his reservations. Someone seems to have reconciled religion with all of this science, and many are willing to accept breakthroughs that aren't even made yet.

So why did science fail to make these people accept atheism?

Because science is not the tool for this job. It can only describe certain objects, they must have observable characteristics that science can in some way measure and model. Evolution is ok, that is science doing its proper job of investigating the observable universe. Likewise cosmology and biology and all that other good stuff. But God is not an object of scientific investigation, it is always a mistake to apply science to any discussion of such objects, because they are not and never could be contained within its ontology.

Now it is true that sometimes science and religion can come into conflict because believers challenge the right of science to describe objects that are within its domain. And this is an error on the part of the dogmatists, because just as science must never attempt to answer a question that is within the domain of faith, religion must never try to answer a scientific question. The bible is not an appropriate tool of inquiry into matters that can be answered by measurement or experiment.

I don't see much that's abstract about it. It is disprovable, or it is the sort of thing that cannot be disproved. 97% disproof would be a very abstract thing though. So let's drop the percentages which are just a distraction and admit candidly that we can't prove our case, and neither can those who disagree with us. So both sides of the debate owe each at least that much respect.

Now the brain washing thing is worrying to me. I think you have performed, if we are honest with ourselves, a sleight of hand maneuver here. I think you are classifying cults and churches as all one type of object (true), but going beyond that to imply that therefore what is true of one object in this category (cults = brainwashing) applies to all objects that it contains. And I don't think that's fair. Cults tend to remove themselves from society as part of the brainwashing process, but churches participate in it for instance.

We might argue that all religion is brainwashing to a certain extent. But there are various religious believers in this forum and I don't think either of us truly views them as the same as the poor beggars who live in grotty communes hoarding guns and awaiting judgment day. So we must be able to agree that much of the religious spectrum is not brain washing, it is persuasion of the normal variety.

So we can deal with the cults, even if we cannot prove 100% that there is no God - which seemed to be a complaint you had against my argument - because with engagement there is room for persuasion.

But using a bad methodology to promote atheism isn't in my view helpful. I find that many of us are lamentable unwilling to consider the fact that, being unprovable, it must necessarily be a belief. Given that even knowledge must be held to be potentially wrong, belief must be acknowledged all the more so. I believe there is no God, if I turn out to be wrong, I hope that he isn't one of those mean and vengeful gods.

I rather thought that you said that all faith is crap, there's nothing truthful about the bible, but mostly it was "WHAT IS WRONG WITH RATIONALITY?" I took that statement to suggest that you felt your argument had something of a stranglehold on that virtue, and I don't agree. There are many perfectly rational religious believers out there. You imply frequently that their faith is inherently irrational, but you are not able to sustain that argument. And now you seem to be half-heartedly abandoning that position, I'm not really sure.

This is a vague slippery slope argument. It claims that if you accept that faith is an ok reason to believe in something general, you are accidentally endorsing the misuse of said faith. Which is rot. There are other reasons to deplore evil fanaticism other than that it is based on faith instead of reason, so we have no imperative to deplore it for that particular reason. In fact to deplore it for that reason instead of the myriad others would be quite insane.


It's not their right to disagree that I am endorsing - that goes without saying. What I adding is that they might be right, they may have a point. Their understanding might be better than mine and yours.

It's not within the realm of any kind of possibility, no matter what you do to prove that god is not real. "As close as humanly possible" means nothing at all. Material evidence is irrelevant to miracles, looking for such requires a deliberate misunderstanding of the concept of the miraculous. And the infinite regress game is meaningless I'm afraid. All time and space is contained within the universe, all discussion of events "before" or "outside" of it are hopelessly doomed. No matter what theory you subscribe to for the beginning of time and space, you must at some point reject talk of "before" that event.



If an argument relies on changing levels of description, that is usually in itself sufficient reason to dismiss it. (did you stab your wife? no, I was only moving some metal around is an example of such an argument).


But you are blatantly doing this. This is what your meme argument is about. It's a counter explanation that does not actually disprove the other explanation, it just hopes to look more plausible.


Well it's either an analogy or a change of levels of description. I don't mind which , but I clearly signalled that I think I can cope either way.


Erm, the fluke is a physical object that burrows into an animals brain. In this argument, religion is either the same thing, or an analogy. This is why I suggested you explain your take on memetics, not to be lazy, but to be clear that we are talking about the same thing.


And here I'm afraid I am going to go back to tools and teleology. Is evolution a necessary tool for understanding how ideas develop?
It seems to me to be just a determined attempt to be non teleological in explaining everything, but I don't see an particular purpose to that.

Spirit Level

Thanks, I was a bit tired when I wandered into the thread and was looking for something more along the lines of a gossip mag rather than War & Peace.

Thanks

So who fancies entrusting some DIY tasks to me then?

I don't believe your shelving exists.

Ah, if some shelving falls down and nobody's there to see it, does it really exist?

Jon