Noah creation part / Civ IV VIP intro

Religion is only dangerous when used as a "political tool" World has seen many such uses of the religion I think. Actually this intro movie is not religious in my opinion and it's not meant to be used as a tool, only for enjoyment of watching

Funky said:

Do you really think that too much critical reflection of the existence of gods can act as any kind of a motivator for a war?

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Yes, because it already happened in Revolutionary France.

HeliosDisciple said:

Yes, because it already happened in Revolutionary France.

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Erm, no...

The Jacobin Club, after it had gained power during the French Revolution, tried to establish a kind of radical republicanism. In the process, it fought against its political counterparts and counter-revolutionary forces, which culminated in a reign of terror and the execution of thousands of people. While the republican ideology was driven by the ideas of the enlightenment, which proposed that the power should lie among the people instead of in the hands of worldly or religious authorities, the actual terror that followed was a clear detachment from the enlightenmental ideal. While many of the revolutionists believed in the power of reason and rationality, any non-belief in gods, which some of the members may or may not have held, had nothing to do with the political occurences at all.

There simply is no logical pathway from atheism, or, for that matter, non-belief of any sort, to violence. There is, however, a clear pathway from many religions to violence, in particular in the monotheistic religions. This is the problem we face, and denial will not help solve it.

Funky said:

While many of the revolutionists believed in the power of reason and rationality, any non-belief in gods, which some of the members may or may not have held, had nothing to do with the political occurences at all.

There simply is no logical pathway from atheism, or, for that matter, non-belief of any sort, to violence.

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Except for all those places of worship ransacked and priests\nuns murdered.

I mean, if you ransack a church, destroy all the Christian artifacts, kill the priest, and then dedicate the structure as a Temple of Reason, that certainly sounds like violence done in the name of atheism to me.

And we haven't even gotten to the Russian Revolution.

Except for all those places of worship ransacked and priests\nuns murdered.

I mean, if you ransack a church, destroy all the Christian artifacts, kill the priest, and then dedicate the structure as a Temple of Reason, that certainly sounds like violence done in the name of atheism to me.

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And we haven't even gotten to the Russian Revolution.

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The larger problem we are talking about is dogma. Atheism by definition has no dogma, there are no tenets of atheism. The examples you give are not instances of reason run amok. What was in place were other dogmas. I'm not implying that religion caused all the world's problems, I don't even know if most are caused by it. Political dogmas and ideologies can be and have been just as, if not more, dangerous.
But it should not be overlooked that most religions too, at their core, promote ultimately devise dogmas. The difference is that only in religion have we rendered them immune to criticism, by sanctifying them and regarding them as necessary for our species.

Funky said:

The larger problem we are talking about is dogma. Atheism by definition has no dogma, there are no tenets of atheism.

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"There is no god"?

HeliosDisciple said:

"There is no god"?

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Atheism is not the claim that there is no god. "A-theism" merely means lack of theism. An atheist does not believe that a god exists, because the arguments and evidence for its existence have not convinced him. He is not making the assertion that a god does not exist.

Funky said:

Atheism is not the claim that there is no god. "A-theism" merely means lack of theism. An atheist does not believe that a god exists, because the arguments and evidence for its existence have not convinced him. He is not making the assertion that a god does not exist.

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Hello, Funky.

I have always found these definitions a bit tricky to wrap my head around. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to why you define atheism as you do here...

Let's take the two sentences:

A I do not believe that a god exists.
B I do believe that no god(s) exist(s).

In my interpretation, the former is the agnostic while the latter is the atheist. Would you say that sentence B is wrong in describing an atheist?

I ask this first and foremost to understand why you say what you do. Most atheists I have had the opportunity to discuss with has been of the opinion that B is the correct way to describe them. They most certainly claim that there is no god. And they are very much convinced they are correct in saying so... You seem to think differently here, from what I can understand.

Do you not draw the line between agnosticism and atheism between A and B above?


Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway

Hi Kjotleik,

atheism and agnosticism address different claims. Atheism addresses belief, agnosticism addresses knowledge. They are not mutually exclusive, one could for instance be an agnostic atheist, which, in my experience, most atheists are, meaning that one doesn't believe a god exists, but cannot know that as certain knowledge.

Imagine for a moment we are talking about unicorns. If I tell you that unicorns exist, and you don't believe my claim, you are an "a-unicornist". You have not implied that you are sure that unicorns don't exist and remain open to whatever evidence may one day be put on the table, but for the time being, you remain without belief in unicorns.
Likewise, the person who makes the claim that a god exists, has the burden of proof to present evidence to support his claim. People who are not convinced by his claim don't adhere to its theistic framework and are therefore a-theistic, without theism.

Funky said:

The larger problem we are talking about is dogma. Atheism by definition has no dogma, there are no tenets of atheism. The examples you give are not instances of reason run amok. What was in place were other dogmas.

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Ahh, I see. People who go about persecuting and killing people who follow a religion because their dogma states that such beliefs are unproductive superstitions aren't "real" atheists, because "real" atheists would never do such a thing.

I'm sure you can find people who would say that those who persecuted and killed others in the name of Christianity (or Hinduism, etc.) really weren't following the teachings of "true" Christianity (or Hinduism, etc.)

Lennier said:

Ahh, I see. People who go about persecuting and killing people who follow a religion because their dogma states that such beliefs are unproductive superstitions aren't "real" atheists, because "real" atheists would never do such a thing.

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People who persecute and kill other people do that based on certain beliefs about the world. Often such beliefs are results of dogmatic thinking. Not believing in something does not constitute a dogma or a foundation to behave in a certain way.

Funky said:

People who persecute and kill other people do that based on certain beliefs about the world. Often such beliefs are results of dogmatic thinking. Not believing in something does not constitute a dogma or a foundation to behave in a certain way.

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Except for all the times it has.

HeliosDisciple said:

Except for all the times it has.

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Give me a single example. But do me a favour please and research first before posting this time. If you find an instance of someone doing something horrible which can be sufficiently explained by him not believing in a certain proposition, whether it's the existence of gods or anything else, I'll be impressed.

Funky said:

Give me a single example. But do me a favour please and research first before posting this time. If you find an instance of someone doing something horrible which can be sufficiently explained by him not believing in a certain proposition, whether it's the existence of gods or anything else, I'll be impressed.

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Wouldnt that technically be nihilism?


Link to video.

vincentz said:

Wouldnt that technically be nihilism?

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Yep.

Believing in nothing is not the same as not believing in something.

Copernicus did an absolutely horrible thing ! He "stopped the sun and moved the earth" ! xD Because he didn't believed in the well established fact that earth is a flat disc floating in space on the back of four elephants and the sun is circling around it ! Apart from this joke it's not the fault of a religion that people do horrible stuff. People do horrible stuff and use the religion as an excuse - it's not because they believe or not believe - it's because they are evil people. Also thinking that "all religion is bad and evil" is generalization and You cannot persecute all the religious people just because a portion of that people are evil. There are also a lot of religious people that are helping others, doing humanitarian works, helping the poor etc. People that don't follow any religion can be evil too so in my eyes saying that someone is evil just because he follows some religion is just ignorance.

AdamCrock said:

it's not the fault of a religion that people do horrible stuff. People do horrible stuff and use the religion as an excuse - it's not because they believe or not believe - it's because they are evil people. Also thinking that "all religion is bad and evil" is generalization and You cannot persecute all the religious people just because a portion of that people are evil. There are also a lot of religious people that are helping others, doing humanitarian works, helping the poor etc. People that don't follow any religion can be evil too so in my eyes saying that someone is evil just because he follows some religion is just ignorance.

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To quote the famous physicist Steven Weinberg, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion."

Just to make it clear, noone is saying that all religion is evil or that it neccessarily leads to bad things. And noone is suggesting we persecute religious people.
What I am arguing for however, is that beliefs do matter. What we believe to be true about reality will in some way influence the actions we take in our lives. If I really do think that martyrdom is the best thing that can possibly happen to me, it is rationally justified for me to blow myself up in a crowd of infidels. If I think gay marriage is an abomination because it says so in Leviticus 18:22, I will be opposed to it. If I believe that the soul enters the zygot at the moment of conception, I will not support stem cell research, and help foreclose progress in one of the most promising fields in modern medicine.

Beliefs have consequences. Hence I argue it is increasingly important that we try to get our beliefs to conform with reality to the highest extent as we possibly can. The best reliable tool to do so has proven to be scientific methodology and discourse. Only in science do we relentlessly question our intuitions and wait for evidence before making claims about the world. Faith, on the other hand, is the excuse people give each other to believe things when they don't have sufficient evidence to back up their claims.

If you think religious people are deluded idiots dragging all of society down, it is rationally justified for you to suppress and slaughter them to destroy their influence

HeliosDisciple said:

If you think religious people are deluded idiots dragging all of society down, it is rationally justified for you to suppress and slaughter them to destroy their influence

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1. I don't believe religious people are idiots. Deluded yes, idiots no.

2. It is never justified to suppress and slaughter a group of people, even if the old testament endorses it.