Skeptic groups trying to marginalize atheists

[eighteen buddha strike]

Yeah, what LMNO said. Looked into Gnosticism out of historical curiosity. Basically, Old Testament God is still a god, and created the material universe, but is evil. Jesus is a manifestation of the "Good" god. Again oversimplification, but it gives you the gist.

I've already decided, though, that whatever ultimate reality/high god/whatever may or may not exist is just amoral, in that, it does not share the same values we do.

Why should it? By projecting morality onto it we're forcing our own anthropomorphism onto it. I always felt that if something akin to a deity exists, its essentially nothing more than the singularity that exists at the beginning of the universe, at the moment of big-bang, and at the end... the logical conclusion of entropic decay and expansion.

Assuming some kind of creation mythology, the very act of creating free will negates omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; introducing any kind of random element means sacrificing all of those things. Such a deity could only exist alone, otherwise any kind of free-will doesnt exist.

Perhaps there is some kind over-arching pattern which defines the universe, patterns within patterns, things that could be expressed mathematically that can help us understand the universe as we see it. Such a pattern could be deified, but its not an anthropomorphic being.

We're so hung up on the minutiae of our definitions here that we miss out on the big picture. Religious belief has been, in the past, a kind of bridge for us to be able to attempt to understand some of these things on an intuitive level. Religious dogmaticism and religious institution, has traditionally been a means of societal control, and usually not one that promotes understanding on any level.

In modern times, the entire atheistic movement has less to do with understanding, and more to do with backlash against the religious control of the past, kind of like black metal. Understanding of religious thought itself is something that might benefit us, and various thinkers have pursued this (I'm looking at you Jung), but just brushing religion completely to the side dismisses the fact that it has (at least in a few stages of human history) been a beneficial force to our development. Its hindered us too, and we're beginning to develop to the point where our religious beliefs can be bridged with science. The two dont have to be mutually exclusive.

As much as I dislike religious institutions, the extremist elements of the Atheist movement do more to fomenting dissent than they do to advance human intellect. You know, people like Dawkins and Sagan express a great deal of wonderment at the sheer majesty of the universe, and its great... I imagine they share the same kind of emotional impact when they look at a giraffe, that is expressed by ICP, but the difference is simply that they are willing to try and understand how that giraffe came about. It doesn't hurt their brain to ask questions. The people who carry the torch for these people, dont always have the same approach, they're just accepting a different flavor of dogmatic stigmas.

Anyway, I think others in this thread have put more succinctly why the label of Skeptic is more beneficial and appropriate to scientific thought than the label of Atheist. Why Agnosticism is less biased than Atheism, because both Atheists and Theists essentially are at odds over the definition of a word, which in and of itself, is vague and multifaceted.... not to mention completely irrelevant.

while you were typing 10 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Wait? What?
Aww, fuck it, lets just hit post.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yeah, what LMNO said. Looked into Gnosticism out of historical curiosity. Basically, Old Testament God is still a god, and created the material universe, but is evil. Jesus is a manifestation of the "Good" god. Again oversimplification, but it gives you the gist.

I've already decided, though, that whatever ultimate reality/high god/whatever may or may not exist is just amoral, in that, it does not share the same values we do.

Why should it? By projecting morality onto it we're forcing our own anthropomorphism onto it. I always felt that if something akin to a deity exists, its essentially nothing more than the singularity that exists at the beginning of the universe, at the moment of big-bang, and at the end... the logical conclusion of entropic decay and expansion.

Assuming some kind of creation mythology, the very act of creating free will negates omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; introducing any kind of random element means sacrificing all of those things. Such a deity could only exist alone, otherwise any kind of free-will doesnt exist.

Perhaps there is some kind over-arching pattern which defines the universe, patterns within patterns, things that could be expressed mathematically that can help us understand the universe as we see it. Such a pattern could be deified, but its not an anthropomorphic being.

We're so hung up on the minutiae of our definitions here that we miss out on the big picture. Religious belief has been, in the past, a kind of bridge for us to be able to attempt to understand some of these things on an intuitive level. Religious dogmaticism and religious institution, has traditionally been a means of societal control, and usually not one that promotes understanding on any level.

In modern times, the entire atheistic movement has less to do with understanding, and more to do with backlash against the religious control of the past, kind of like black metal. Understanding of religious thought itself is something that might benefit us, and various thinkers have pursued this (I'm looking at you Jung), but just brushing religion completely to the side dismisses the fact that it has (at least in a few stages of human history) been a beneficial force to our development. Its hindered us too, and we're beginning to develop to the point where our religious beliefs can be bridged with science. The two dont have to be mutually exclusive.

As much as I dislike religious institutions, the extremist elements of the Atheist movement do more to fomenting dissent than they do to advance human intellect. You know, people like Dawkins and Sagan express a great deal of wonderment at the sheer majesty of the universe, and its great... I imagine they share the same kind of emotional impact when they look at a giraffe, that is expressed by ICP, but the difference is simply that they are willing to try and understand how that giraffe came about. It doesn't hurt their brain to ask questions. The people who carry the torch for these people, dont always have the same approach, they're just accepting a different flavor of dogmatic stigmas.

Anyway, I think others in this thread have put more succinctly why the label of Skeptic is more beneficial and appropriate to scientific thought than the label of Atheist. Why Agnosticism is less biased than Atheism, because both Atheists and Theists essentially are at odds over the definition of a word, which in and of itself, is vague and multifaceted.... not to mention completely irrelevant.

while you were typing 10 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Wait? What?
Aww, fuck it, lets just hit post.

Hell... if our existence were created by some alien grad student who decided to build a complex Game of Life in the empty Universe next door... that alien would be 'God' in a very real sense. And I doubt it would tell us what to do.... most likely it would just be making notes on what we do for its thesis.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Yeah, what LMNO said. Looked into Gnosticism out of historical curiosity. Basically, Old Testament God is still a god, and created the material universe, but is evil. Jesus is a manifestation of the "Good" god. Again oversimplification, but it gives you the gist.

I've already decided, though, that whatever ultimate reality/high god/whatever may or may not exist is just amoral, in that, it does not share the same values we do.

Why should it? By projecting morality onto it we're forcing our own anthropomorphism onto it. I always felt that if something akin to a deity exists, its essentially nothing more than the singularity that exists at the beginning of the universe, at the moment of big-bang, and at the end... the logical conclusion of entropic decay and expansion.

Assuming some kind of creation mythology, the very act of creating free will negates omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; introducing any kind of random element means sacrificing all of those things. Such a deity could only exist alone, otherwise any kind of free-will doesnt exist.

Perhaps there is some kind over-arching pattern which defines the universe, patterns within patterns, things that could be expressed mathematically that can help us understand the universe as we see it. Such a pattern could be deified, but its not an anthropomorphic being.

We're so hung up on the minutiae of our definitions here that we miss out on the big picture. Religious belief has been, in the past, a kind of bridge for us to be able to attempt to understand some of these things on an intuitive level. Religious dogmaticism and religious institution, has traditionally been a means of societal control, and usually not one that promotes understanding on any level.

In modern times, the entire atheistic movement has less to do with understanding, and more to do with backlash against the religious control of the past, kind of like black metal. Understanding of religious thought itself is something that might benefit us, and various thinkers have pursued this (I'm looking at you Jung), but just brushing religion completely to the side dismisses the fact that it has (at least in a few stages of human history) been a beneficial force to our development. Its hindered us too, and we're beginning to develop to the point where our religious beliefs can be bridged with science. The two dont have to be mutually exclusive.

As much as I dislike religious institutions, the extremist elements of the Atheist movement do more to fomenting dissent than they do to advance human intellect. You know, people like Dawkins and Sagan express a great deal of wonderment at the sheer majesty of the universe, and its great... I imagine they share the same kind of emotional impact when they look at a giraffe, that is expressed by ICP, but the difference is simply that they are willing to try and understand how that giraffe came about. It doesn't hurt their brain to ask questions. The people who carry the torch for these people, dont always have the same approach, they're just accepting a different flavor of dogmatic stigmas.

Anyway, I think others in this thread have put more succinctly why the label of Skeptic is more beneficial and appropriate to scientific thought than the label of Atheist. Why Agnosticism is less biased than Atheism, because both Atheists and Theists essentially are at odds over the definition of a word, which in and of itself, is vague and multifaceted.... not to mention completely irrelevant.

while you were typing 10 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Wait? What?
Aww, fuck it, lets just hit post.

Response to the summary of your post:

Exactly. If there is some sort of deity that created the universe, it would by necessity not be like us. We're only special in that we have civilization. Why should a god of that stature have the same morals we do? We don't have the same values as an ant does. We're glorified monkeys.

Black metal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-89JLgrBSs
Lyrics fairly relevant if you can make them out

Sagan=cooler than Dawkins, and much friendlier as an atheist. Plus he came up with the original FSMism, and left it in a paragraph rather than dragging it out. Again, see old school atheists vs. "New Atheists"

Last note- Black metal should never be mentioned in the same post as ICP. God forbids it.  

[eighteen buddha strike]

Yeah, what LMNO said. Looked into Gnosticism out of historical curiosity. Basically, Old Testament God is still a god, and created the material universe, but is evil. Jesus is a manifestation of the "Good" god. Again oversimplification, but it gives you the gist.

I've already decided, though, that whatever ultimate reality/high god/whatever may or may not exist is just amoral, in that, it does not share the same values we do.

Why should it? By projecting morality onto it we're forcing our own anthropomorphism onto it. I always felt that if something akin to a deity exists, its essentially nothing more than the singularity that exists at the beginning of the universe, at the moment of big-bang, and at the end... the logical conclusion of entropic decay and expansion.

Assuming some kind of creation mythology, the very act of creating free will negates omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; introducing any kind of random element means sacrificing all of those things. Such a deity could only exist alone, otherwise any kind of free-will doesnt exist.

Perhaps there is some kind over-arching pattern which defines the universe, patterns within patterns, things that could be expressed mathematically that can help us understand the universe as we see it. Such a pattern could be deified, but its not an anthropomorphic being.

We're so hung up on the minutiae of our definitions here that we miss out on the big picture. Religious belief has been, in the past, a kind of bridge for us to be able to attempt to understand some of these things on an intuitive level. Religious dogmaticism and religious institution, has traditionally been a means of societal control, and usually not one that promotes understanding on any level.

In modern times, the entire atheistic movement has less to do with understanding, and more to do with backlash against the religious control of the past, kind of like black metal. Understanding of religious thought itself is something that might benefit us, and various thinkers have pursued this (I'm looking at you Jung), but just brushing religion completely to the side dismisses the fact that it has (at least in a few stages of human history) been a beneficial force to our development. Its hindered us too, and we're beginning to develop to the point where our religious beliefs can be bridged with science. The two dont have to be mutually exclusive.

As much as I dislike religious institutions, the extremist elements of the Atheist movement do more to fomenting dissent than they do to advance human intellect. You know, people like Dawkins and Sagan express a great deal of wonderment at the sheer majesty of the universe, and its great... I imagine they share the same kind of emotional impact when they look at a giraffe, that is expressed by ICP, but the difference is simply that they are willing to try and understand how that giraffe came about. It doesn't hurt their brain to ask questions. The people who carry the torch for these people, dont always have the same approach, they're just accepting a different flavor of dogmatic stigmas.

Anyway, I think others in this thread have put more succinctly why the label of Skeptic is more beneficial and appropriate to scientific thought than the label of Atheist. Why Agnosticism is less biased than Atheism, because both Atheists and Theists essentially are at odds over the definition of a word, which in and of itself, is vague and multifaceted.... not to mention completely irrelevant.

while you were typing 10 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Wait? What?
Aww, fuck it, lets just hit post.

Response to the summary of your post:

Exactly. If there is some sort of deity that created the universe, it would by necessity not be like us. We're only special in that we have civilization. Why should a god of that stature have the same morals we do? We don't have the same values as an ant does. We're glorified monkeys.

Black metal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-89JLgrBSs
Lyrics fairly relevant if you can make them out

Sagan=cooler than Dawkins, and much friendlier as an atheist. Plus he came up with the original FSMism, and left it in a paragraph rather than dragging it out. Again, see old school atheists vs. "New Atheists"

Last note- Black metal should never be mentioned in the same post as ICP. God forbids it.  

Ihsan is a Laveyan Satanist, which is a couple steps above labeling yourself as an Atheist, IMO. and IX Equilibrium is one of the best Emperor albums.

I really just wanted to compare ICP to Sagan. I think there is a common ground between Miracles and Cosmos, but it should be fairly obvious where the former falls short of the latter.

... and the black metal comparison is meant to illustrate atheism as a backlash against religious institutionalism, a better specific example might be Varg Vikernes with his church burnings. 

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I figured, but in his heyday Ihsahn was more of the anti-Christian type of Satanist, musical genius though he is (last part is why I'm more of an Emperor fan than a Burzum fan).

IX Equilibrium is an awesome album, minus Warriors of Modern Death (which strikes me as more of a hardcore song) and Source of Icon E (which I never was able to get into). It took me awhile to like Nonus Aequilibrium but dissecting it, it's a really awesome song once you get past the intro. That album was a great exclamation point to my senior year in high school, that and Maiden's Brave New World

[Nephew Twiddleton]

And naturally, I'm listening to IX Equilibrium due to this tangent, with a Brave New World follow up, maybe with some Downward Spiral thrown in

[President Television]

How exactly does that have anything to do with Gnosticism?

I haven't read much about it, but from what I understand, Gnosticism portrays the God of the Old Testament as a petty, childish, power mad dictator in our universe, while the other, more powerful gods laugh at him behind his back and sneak in sources of enlightenment for humans to escape by. That's the similarity that I saw.

But as everyone's been saying, all you can do when it comes to the issue of god is speculate. Sometimes, I think that if there is a god, it's likely some kind of Lovecraftian eldritch abomination, and it's likely not the only one of its kind. I doubt that I'm right, but it adds a little extra flavour to the universe, doesn't it?

[Triple Zero]

What is god?

Not sure, they seem to be talking about it as if they know roughly what it is, but nobody dares to be specific about it.

Except for one quality they all seem to agree upon: it is something about which you are (almost as if by definition) unable to tell whether it exists or not.

Apart from that, it seems to be a completely opaque concept.

The game seems to be to deny its existence in the absolutely most subtle sense possible, without accidentally tipping over to endorsing its existence. Others may then counter by arguing about how they formulated it the wrong way and that they indeed did cross the line one way or another.

If I were to hazard a guess, it seems that god is a kind of intellectual equivalent of one of those wooden block brainteaser puzzle games.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

What is god?

Not sure, they seem to be talking about it as if they know roughly what it is, but nobody dares to be specific about it.

Except for one quality they all seem to agree upon: it is something about which you are (almost as if by definition) unable to tell whether it exists or not.

Apart from that, it seems to be a completely opaque concept.

The game seems to be to deny its existence in the absolutely most subtle sense possible, without accidentally tipping over to endorsing its existence. Others may then counter by arguing about how they formulated it the wrong way and that they indeed did cross the line one way or another.

If I were to hazard a guess, it seems that god is a kind of intellectual equivalent of one of those wooden block brainteaser puzzle games.

  That's the best answer to that question I've ever read.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Well, as previously stated, no one knows what they mean when they say god. I certainly don't. That's pretty important. What makes a god universally acceptable as a god?

For example, I'm going to put it out there and call me a filthy Pagan if you want (it would be accurate anyway), but I believe in the Tuatha De Danann, and they are my gods, with a few notable Greco-Roman exceptions (obviously, Eris is included in this), and I actively worship them. My Irish gods can be killed, just like in Norse mythology. A few of them have been killed in established mythology. They are not all powerful, they are not all knowing, and they have a sense of honor (vs morality) that is frankly alien to me. And they are certainly not immortal, though they seem to have a spiritual existence beyond their deaths. But they are my gods.

Why do I define, say, Lugh Lamhfada, or Brid, An Dagda Mor or Nuadha Argetlamh as a god when the defintion of a god eludes us? I don't know, but I don't know what else to call them. I don't know what is definitely a god and what is definitely less than a god. At the end of the day it doesn't matter anyway because my ideas about the afterlife, if any exists, is independent of gods and the worship of said gods. And if I'm wrong, then one of three things will happen:

1. Real God doesn't care, and we all experience the same afterlife, if any
2. Real God does care, and we're all going to have the best endless party in Hell
3. There is no Real God and we're all dust, at which point I'm not bothered about it.

1 or 2 seems pretty good since I have an eternity to meet all you spags and enjoy your company, but if 3 is true I'm not going to care anyway. Therefore elaboration is irrelevant. And thus we get back to the defintion of skeptic when it does not involve gods.

Twid,
-Not skeptical on theism, but will gladly see you all in Hell.

[Doktor Howl]

4.  God is real, and he eats your soul when you die.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

4.  God is real, and he eats your soul when you die.

At which point, we can temporarily enjoy each others' company pre-digestion.

[Doktor Howl]

4.  God is real, and he eats your soul when you die.

At which point, we can temporarily enjoy each others' company pre-digestion.

Optimist.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

4.  God is real, and he eats your soul when you die.

At which point, we can temporarily enjoy each others' company pre-digestion.

Optimist.

Like you said months ago in reference to me being a nice guy, you can't make a cynic overnight.

[Kai]

"I don't anticipate any gods" is not the same as "I don't believe in gods".

The former is a valid believe, ie an anticipation of reality.

The latter is a belief in belief, ie an anticipation it is RIGHTEOUS to not anticipate gods.

The former is stated once and is over with.

The latter is a form of cheering and is therefore stated over and over, ad nauseum.

The latter will profess to be an atheist.

The former won't waste the time.

So if I say "I don't believe in one-winged purple monkeys", then by this logic I have a belief about one-winged purple monkeys.... ooooook.

Or you could just say "There are no one winged purple monkeys".

What I was saying was quite simply, when people actually believe something, meaning they anticipate it about reality, they don't talk about it as a belief, they speak it /as it is/. A sure sign of belief in belief as defined by Yudowsky is starting a statement with "I believe" or "I don't believe" and repeating it all the time. This is also known as cheering.

A person who just anticipated the absence of gods would say "there are no gods" or "i don't anticipate any gods" and be done with it. Most atheists don't do this.