Burgers?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

On the subject of personally imposing your view on someone else... I've had it explained to me thusly: imagine a train barreling down on someone sitting on the tracks with their back turned, and headphones on. Would you try to save them? Or, think to yourself "Well, that's their personal choice."  Because the thing is, to someone who truly believes, Hell IS that train. How can they not try to save you?

That outlook makes sense to me, and has given me a broader view of why religious types might try to sway me. And, to be honest, I now appreciate the gesture.

I don't do that.  Mostly because I don't KNOW that what I believe in is actually a god.  For all I know, it's some horrible trans-dimensional soul-sucker.

The rest of the reason is that there's some people that would sort of ruin heaven for me if they showed up.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://www.fredvanlente.com/cthulhutract/pages/index.html

[P3nT4gR4m]

How aware are you of the degree to which your traumatic experience prevents you from thinking or talking about religion and religious people rationally?

Very. Evidently a whole lot more than yourself.

It's not an uncommon response to trauma; for example, some women who have been abused distrust all men and consider them inherently rapists, or that some gays who have been abused distrust all straight people and feel that they are justified in hating them, as a whole. However, it's also not very productive or prosocial, and you might be served best by trying to dismantle that particular block.

Okay, I'll bite - which trauma are we talking about exactly? I was brought up on a diet of mental spaghetti. Fiction was presented as fact. Unravelling all the bullshit that had been pumped into my head took a lot of my time and effort. This was neither a unique or traumatic experience, beyond the metaphorical pain in my ass.

Evidently a significant percentage of my fellow man never went to the trouble of dealing with what (any way you paint it) is a long and protracted form of brainwashing. They express a desire for me to respect them for this and for the most part I do try my best - irrational belief does not necessarily make someone a bad person after all.

But it is irrational belief. It disturbs me that people believe it. It disturbs me how they are taught it as children. It's one thing for someone to think about the universe and come to the conclusion that there might be something out there, it's an entirely different scenario if they're fucking programmed from birth to believe a bunch of nonsense.

[East Coast Hustle]

Y'know, I catch hell every time I weigh in on this subject.

But fuck it.

I agree with Pent, and to a lesser extent Roger.

I'm willing to accept that there may be some intent behind the universe. I don't BELIEVE there is, but I recognize that as an unprovable belief. The possibility of outside agency and the open-mindedness required to accept that possibility don't bother me in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact.

But that, to me, is VASTLY different from people who believe in "God", which is what I understand Pent to be talking about. And regardless of his mangled understanding of history, the part where it's really fucking creepy (and seemingly really ignorant) for people in the 21st century to still be believing in religious dogma, I mean, that's spot-on to me. And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

[Junkenstein]

I'll move the book up the list.

As for the video, it was the one I thought. I'm pretty fucked so I'll try and think of something to say about that tomorrow.

Sapolsky's great, partly because while he's a total atheist, he also seeks the reasons and value in behavior he sees as irrational, rather than just dismissing it, and manages to be irreverent (about all things, not just things he doesn't believe) while rarely being offensive. I have seen him manage to be offensive, once.

One thing that struck me about that video was the various ties and similarites to some stuff Terrance Mckenna (?) came out with. I'd actually be quite interested in your thoughts in regards to how the historical religious leaders (for want of a better term, i hate to move this into shaman/magic man territory if for no other reason than the in built bias I've got against such terms and how inherently loaded they are)  were influenced by schizotypal/OCD issues. There's large parts of that that make a lot of sense to me and the presentation on the whole seems quite logical.

Given the level of crazy in the world, now and historically, religion and rituals derived as a coping/celbration mechanism makes a lot of sense. It's also a much more interesting context to consider how relevant religion is to the modern era from all angles. Particularly fundamentalism and terrorism.

It's also getting me thinking about the actual system again. Recall Stanford prison experiments findings and reactions like P3nt's, which I sympathise and agree with to a great deal in some regards also make a lot more sense. The other end of this relative spectrum would be say, Twid, who again, I can again largely agree with (and am interested in the various explorations of belief structures). There's probably more in common than not between P3nt and Twid but their experience of religious systems and the actors involved have clearly varied substantially.

Apologies for referring to you in the third person Gents, but you're probably the two best examples off-hand of this scale.

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I would be much more comfortable with people actually making their own damn minds up but we can't expect too much progress too quickly.

It's relatively reasonable to assume that with the rise of the internet and education of youth in general that unless some really miraculous shit happens the numbers of non-religious (I.e - don't give a shit either way) are probably going to rise and I'd expect to see societies subsequently become more secular. Consider the last 20-odd years in the UK. It used to be damn near impossible to buy anything on a Sunday, now I can purchase almost anything I choose.

[P3nT4gR4m]

There's probably more in common than not between P3nt and Twid but their experience of religious systems and the actors involved have clearly varied substantially.

I suspect Nigel's - slightly less than accurate - trauma diagnosis may be influencing your impression here. Allow me to clarify. I've encountered numerous aspects of numerous dogmatic belief systems and many of these encounters have been markedly positive. There are philosophical aspects of many which I totally agree with - "be excellent to each other" kinda sums up nice and succinctly, an aspect I actually admire.

It's not this that I take offence to, it's the supernatural, magical fairy story bullshit that many of these belief systems seem to somehow require that I find ridiculous and weird and somewhere between disturbing and disappointing. It's the idea that stories about witches and wizards and magical boats are informing actual real live decisions about humanity and it's future. It's the fact that, in order to justify the ethics of this scientific discovery or that, it must be found to be in accordance with gods will.

Basically what LMNO was talking about. Now I am very aware of the current overall trend toward secularity. I expect/hope things will continue on this trajectory but we aren't out of the woods yet. Something that happened in the bible will still be used as a reason for dumb laws. Any time you hear the words "playing god" in an argument against something, have a think about how much bullshit I'm talking here.

So here's the deal - that's the exact thing I want to end sooner rather than later. Not believing there might be something out there. Hell, I don't give a fuck if someone wants to believe Lord of the fucking Rings really happened. What I want to end is people teaching it to kids and presenting it as fact. Now here's the kicker - the reason it hasn't quite ended yet is because people still believe it. If those people stopped believing it? Problem solved. Despite this sounding absolutely wonderful, I'm of the firm opinion that it's not okay to do that.

So what am I left with? My own personal code of ethics tells me I can attack the belief but not the believer. So I attack the belief. I ridicule it anytime it's mentioned. I spent months of my life making the Baby Jesus Show. That's what that was all about. I'm left wondering if some of you guys either lied about liking it or got something completely different from it?

It's not a reaction to trauma, it's simply a pragmatic attempt to make the world a better place by helping in some small way to destroy a form of retardedness that people are still teaching children in school. I rant and I rave against it, not because christians breast fed me barbed wire as a child or whatever theory our resident "expert" is currently running with. I do it because that's my style. The voice of Baby Jesus - that was me remember?

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Nah, I still get a kick out the Baby Jesus Show. And I don't see anything wrong with confronting wildly absurd beliefs with ridicule, provided that it occurs in public or if it is in private, that all parties are there voluntarily.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not a diagnostician, I didn't "diagnose" shit. But your own descriptions were of traumatizing events, and if you are going to describe traumatizing events don't be surprised if people take you at your word. I do think that your defensiveness and your response speaks more volumes about the intensity of your emotional reaction than anything.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Defensiveness? I can get how I come across as emotional, it's kind of part and parcel of the comedic rant medium. Even the trauma thing, yeah I have a bona fide real world experience which I generally portray from the "abused child/bible camp survivor" perspective so one might logically assume I was traumatised by this experience. Trust me - it was not traumatic. A bunch of born again space cadets tried to brainwash me at summer camp. At 12 or 13 years old I was already way to smart for that shit. A bit shocked that brainwashing bible camps were actually a real thing but that was surprise and disgust, not trauma.

But defensive? Shot out of leftfield, I'm shooting for a mix of aggressive/passive aggressive how did I miss the target by such a wide margin?

[East Coast Hustle]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

Obviously.  School is for math and physics.  If people want to indoctrinate early, that's why they have churches.  Let the superior ideology win.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

Critical thinking skills and free, high-quality education should be part of any civilized society, absolutely. But you might be surprised to find that these don't act as a vaccine against religion. They do, however, tend to foster gentler, more open, less dogmatic forms of religion, though, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians.

[East Coast Hustle]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

Critical thinking skills and free, high-quality education should be part of any civilized society, absolutely. But you might be surprised to find that these don't act as a vaccine against religion. They do, however, tend to foster gentler, more open, less dogmatic forms of religion, though, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians.

I wouldn't be surprised at all, since I'm not a rabid dogmatic atheist. I would view trying to eradicate religion as a fool's errand, and probably a bit of a dick move.

However, I would be curious to see the effect on religion if science was stressed from an early age in a society's free high-quality education with an emphasis on critical thinking. I don't know enough about the educational systems of other countries to know if such a society exists currently.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

You and Twid have never tried to convince me.

That's because we're looking forward to puking cheap beer out of heaven, down on to your filthy sinner heathen head as you fry in hell.

We're kinda dicks, that way.

Damn it, I was hoping for good beer in heaven.


Also, damn the things I miss when I take the day off of posting. Trying to play catch up. I think this is the first time in a while that I've posted a thread and it has a few pages for me to catch up on.