Atheists Should Oppose Technological Progress and Science

[Cainkane1]

Originally Posted by devnull

what?

I agree. This is nonsense. Atheists should embrace science and unembrace woo woo crap.

[Humes fork]

Originally Posted by Cainkane1

I agree. This is nonsense. Atheists should embrace science and unembrace woo woo crap.

Better yet, if all the others embrace science they are more likely to become atheists.

[cj.23]

They might become anti-science atheists though, like the groups in Eastern Europe in the late 19th/early 20th century of anarcho-atheists who decried science as "bourgeois religion." Their manifestos make great reading, not that I agree with them in any way!

cj x

[MRC_Hans]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Only if interested in critiques of Hume and the clash between British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism in the 18th century it seems. Kind of important in history of philosophy and science, and teh history of scepticism, but not useful.

Oh. So, no.

Quote:

It lacks a belief, but the lack of that specific belief is a principle, I think? But yes i take your point.

Why does "non-belief in deities" not count as a statement?

Only in the sense that any correct sentence is a statement.
Atheists (in general) do not disbelieve as a principle. They just fail to believe.

I generally find that it is surprisingly difficult for many believers to grasp this; they seem to tend to assume that one must believe in something dogmatically. The simple absense of belief is somehow difficult to understand.


Hans

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by devnull

If only there was a book that prescribed *exactly* what christians are meant to believe.

That is a common mistake. The bible is an intelligence test, you need to be smart enough to sort out the truth from the lies in it.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans

Oh. So, no.

I generally find that it is surprisingly difficult for many believers to grasp this; they seem to tend to assume that one must believe in something dogmatically. The simple absense of belief is somehow difficult to understand.


Hans

If I had an absence of belief in the Bermuda Triangle, that might imply two things

i) I had assessed the evidence and think the concept is meaningless, and better explained in other ways (which is the position I hold)
ii) I have never heard of the Bermuda Triangle.


we could postulate a third option

iii) I have heard of the Bermuda Triangle and know nothing about it yet disbelieve on a priori grounds.

All our positions of disbelief, but i) and iii) are passive disbelief, ii) active disbelief.

You see my point?

cj x

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by ponderingturtle

That is a common mistake. The bible is an intelligence test, you need to be smart enough to sort out the truth from the lies in it.

Yet as I keep pointing out, the Bible while important to Christianity has never been the centre of Christianity. If you were a Catholic for example you would not read the Bible without considering the magisterium?

cj x

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Yet as I keep pointing out, the Bible while important to Christianity has never been the centre of Christianity.

I've never come across a Christian who has read the entire bible. They have bits of it read out to them in church. I've read the bible twice, and some of it was very unpleasant.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by dafydd

I've never come across a Christian who has read the entire bible. They have bits of it read out to them in church. I've read the bible twice, and some of it was very unpleasant.

Yes. And hard going, I fall asleep when I try. I have read it all I think though at some point or another, but attempts to read through it consistently usually falter in Psalms.

cj x

[stilicho]

Originally Posted by Humes fork

Better yet, if all the others embrace science they are more likely to become atheists.

Are you sure of this? As science and technology are applied globally to more issues once should expect to see a burgeoning of atheism. This isn't happening. Why isn't it?

I think part of it is that atheists cannot agree on what atheism really is. We all know the dictionary definition but that's not necessarily the one that all atheists profess.

I think instead that you might want to change the word "atheist" to "secularist". That way you will also include those not primarily focused on religion as a solution or an applied philosophy.

[MRC_Hans]

Originally Posted by cj.23

If I had an absence of belief in the Bermuda Triangle, that might imply two things

i) I had assessed the evidence and think the concept is meaningless, and better explained in other ways (which is the position I hold)
ii) I have never heard of the Bermuda Triangle.


we could postulate a third option

iii) I have heard of the Bermuda Triangle and know nothing about it yet disbelieve on a priori grounds.

All our positions of disbelief, but i) and iii) are passive disbelief, ii) active disbelief.

You see my point?

cj x

I see it, but it is irrelevant to what I said. The Bermuda Triangle is a falsifiable claim. Religion is not.

Hans

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans

I see it, but it is irrelevant to what I said. The Bermuda Triangle is a falsifiable claim. Religion is not.

Hans

Relligion exists and is falsifiable. Do you mean God?

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans

I see it, but it is irrelevant to what I said. The Bermuda Triangle is a falsifiable claim. Religion is not.

Hans

Only recently and many religions like catholics make falsifiable claims. Look at their miracle commission for example and all the pressure they are under to find more miracles to create more saints.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Relligion exists and is falsifiable. Do you mean God?

God is falsifiable in many of the claims made about him too. It is just that many people backed away from a falsifiable god into a more deist position. He'll I have seen a catholic monsignor define god as the mystery in the universe, but he apparently went unpunished for this heresy.

[LarianLeQuella]

Originally Posted by Elypsis44

I think Christians should oppose technology and science. I wish young earth Christians would stop buying gasoline (or any other fossil fuel for that matter).

And I'd like to see the anti-evolution Christians stop getting flu shots every year.

And I'd love it if the anti-science and anti-technology fundies would stop using computers, cancer treatments, cars, cell phones, etc.

I personally agree, but they have this wonderful al a carte process that they seem to live their entire life by, so I don't think they would even understand why you and I feel this way...

Originally Posted by ponderingturtle

God is falsifiable in many of the claims made about him too. It is just that many people backed away from a falsifiable god into a more deist position. He'll I have seen a catholic monsignor define god as the mystery in the universe, but he apparently went unpunished for this heresy.

Exactly.

[MRC_Hans]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Relligion exists and is falsifiable. Do you mean God?

Obviously religion exists, but I can't see it as falsifiable, except for some of the more silly claims. God is a part of religion, and again unfalsifiable.

In general, some claims made by religions and about god are falsifiable, but the concepts as such are not. Even the Great Pumkin is not falsifiable. After all, one Halloween he may descend to your pumkin path.

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Originally Posted by ponderingturtle

God is falsifiable in many of the claims made about him too. It is just that many people backed away from a falsifiable god into a more deist position. He'll I have seen a catholic monsignor define god as the mystery in the universe, but he apparently went unpunished for this heresy.

Claims about god may be falsifiable, but the basic claim about god's existence is not.

Hans

[MaxMurx]

Religion and Science started from the same point. Scientists however must not create dogma and must not believe in own infallibility. That makes science a dynamic process which is constantly revised and overhauled.
Everybody knows that people even one hundred years ago had some strange explanations for natutal occurences. That was worse 200 years ago and 300 years before our time it was not better at least.
Religion however wants us to believe in explanations of the world and its phenomena which human beings had 2000 years and more ago. That is a true absurdiity, not more. People commit errors, have hallucinations or wrong explanations for natural laws. That its absolutely no shame and as soon as an error is recognized as such it can be corrected. Whoever against better knowledge however tries to contain people in a dogma doers not commit that excusable error but commits fraud which is non excusable and a crime. The chief culprit here is religion.
The basic and non resolvable flaw of religions is their stubborn belief in self created dogma and the infallibility of the religious theories, their teachers or their leaders or all of those.
That makes all religion not only a pool of flaws and mistakes of the human mind during its history but it makes religion also dangerous. The belief in infallibility and being owner of the one and only truth is a version of the master race concept, defined in this case by being member of a group sharing a common theory. That however is shared with all other racist theories being without exception developed before the mechanisms of heredity and genetics were known. All racists ever shared nothing but a common theory of superiority. And true racists also never revise their theory. That is also found in the Holocaust theory which therefore is regarded to be a new religion.

[Humes fork]

Originally Posted by stilicho

Are you sure of this? As science and technology are applied globally to more issues once should expect to see a burgeoning of atheism. This isn't happening. Why isn't it?

Are you sure about this? I recall watching a lecture about globalization, and there is a significant correlation between globalization and secularization (which I know is not necessarily atheistic). And the scientific community is mostly atheistic.

Originally Posted by stilicho

I think part of it is that atheists cannot agree on what atheism really is. We all know the dictionary definition but that's not necessarily the one that all atheists profess.

I disagree, as I think the definition of atheism is very clear, with little disagreement. This is in contrast to terms like "skepticism" and "critical thinking", which are kinda vague.

Originally Posted by stilicho

I think instead that you might want to change the word "atheist" to "secularist". That way you will also include those not primarily focused on religion as a solution or an applied philosophy.

My original claim was that scientific knowledge makes you more likely to be an atheist, which I stand by.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans

Claims about god may be falsifiable, but the basic claim about god's existence is not.

Hans

All depends on what god you are talking about. It is not a precise term.

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Yes. And hard going, I fall asleep when I try. I have read it all I think though at some point or another, but attempts to read through it consistently usually falter in Psalms.

cj x

But you're still a Christian. I have no idea why.

[MattusMaximus]

Originally Posted by Dave Rogers

I think the joke is that, given that atheism is a religion the same as any other religion, then atheists should follow the religious texts of atheism as dogmatically or as flexibly as the members of any other religion should follow their own religious texts, and that therefore any argument against members of any other religion on the basis that they do not follow their own religious texts is no more valid than this argument against atheists. As a piece of reasoning, it doesn't quite make it as far as demonstrating the validity of its major premise, but at least it's amusing. In what way it's amusing, of course, depends very much on your viewpoint.

Dave

Yeah... what's the saying?

Calling atheism a religion is like saying that not collecting stamps is a hobby

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by MattusMaximus

Yeah... what's the saying?

Calling atheism a religion is like saying that not collecting stamps is a hobby

I don't think anyone is. And if you are at a Philatelist Convention it may not be a hobby but it might be notable

cj x

[MsFortune]

Why did I read this thread all the way to the end when it was pretty obviously a waste of time from the get go?

Other than showing off that cj.23 knows some historical names, what was this thread about?

[cj.23]

The tendency for people to apply statements to groups of the "all X are Y" type. I think it made 3 main points

i) All X are not Y. Atheist can be spiritualists, materialists, pro-science or anti-science. Christians likewise comprise a huge spectrum of belief.

ii) As all X are not Y you should always address the individual idea, or person advocating it. "Richard Dawkins is wrong on elevator etiquette in my opinion" NOT "atheists are all sexist pigs"; "Young Earth Creationists hold ideas that are retarding American Science Education" not "Christians are all anti-Science" and so forth.

iii) That some people think there is a link between Science Education and Atheism. Writing as I am from Cheltenham Science Festival, I fail to believe it, but it could be true. Correlation is not causality anyway. YCMV (Your Culture May Vary)

There is a lot more in there, and some good bits from people arguing with me, but yeah my parody was never very funny.

cj x

[Humes fork]

Originally Posted by cj.23

i) All X are not Y. Atheist can be spiritualists, materialists, pro-science or anti-science. Christians likewise comprise a huge spectrum of belief.

ii) As all X are not Y you should always address the individual idea, or person advocating it. "Richard Dawkins is wrong on elevator etiquette in my opinion" NOT "atheists are all sexist pigs"; "Young Earth Creationists hold ideas that are retarding American Science Education" not "Christians are all anti-Science" and so forth.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by cj.23

iii) That some people think there is a link between Science Education and Atheism. Writing as I am from Cheltenham Science Festival, I fail to believe it, but it could be true. Correlation is not causality anyway. YCMV (Your Culture May Vary)

I think a lot of people feels than science education leads to atheism.