…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
I never thought of you as conforming to anything. You’re sui generis. But I also didn’t make any claims about you. Unlike some people here, I actually draw a distinction between the argument that someone is making and claims about the person making it.
In this case, your “argument” against Alan above was that his atheism was pathological because the majority of people aren’t atheists. (In philosophy, we call this an illicit derivation of an “ought” from an “is”, but I guess they don’t teach that in sociology.) And my point, in response, was that by parity of reasoning, you are effectively saying that conformity to the majority is more important than inquiring into what is true — not for you, of course, but for the rest of us.
If I read Gregory correctly, it is more important to know where a bus has been than where it’s going.
As for the sociology and utility of religion, I suspect religion will be around for the foreseeable future. After all, nearly half of all people are below average in intelligence.
And a substantial number of people like leading others around and telling them what to do.
No, it simply *can’t* be pathological by category because you, KN (and your real birth name behind it) won’t accept that. 😉
You’ve made too many unfounded and ignorant claims about me here.
Please stop being a secular Jewish philosophist, KN. You are fooling no one.
Your “rest of us” is an appeal to secular Jewish unenlightened disenchanted and in many cases cynical ‘skeptics.’ These people that you appeal to are ugly communicators, un-insightful, uninspiring, reductionistics pieces of sod.
Inquiring into what is true? Blossoms all around vs. the silly KNist ‘intellectualist’ atheist human dud.
Tsk tsk. Poor Gregory. Somebody told him his teddy bear isn’t really alive, and now he’s acting out. Well, here are two rhymes that (maybe) will be instructive for him.
(While it’s true that he hasn’t shown that he’s quite ready for these yet, we must do SOMETHING about his bullying, nasty behavior! So, even if he can’tt fully understand these yet, maybe he’ll be able to grasp a little smidge from them.)
I quite disagree with that characterization. There’s no correlation that I’m aware of between intelligence and religiosity, and I personally know many intelligent people of faith (and a few who are smarter than I am), and quite a few stupid atheists.
The difference between those who are spiritual and those who are not is not a difference in intellect but, for lack of a better word, one of temperament. Some people do not “get” religion, in roughly the same way that some people don’t “get” certain kinds of music.
(By “temperament” I do not mean a difference in emotion per se but rather something like “lived existential orientation” or “feeling for the whole of reality as experienced and lived through”.)
I think that both theists and atheists tend to dress up this difference in temperament in intellectual drag. I think that’s a mistake, as I attempted to show by using Charles Taylor’s distinction between assertoric and disclosive language.
Gregory,
That’s the kind of thing that is said about actually accomplished people, not what those people say about themselves.
Kantian Naturalist,
I remembered reading this on that very topic.
As do I. However, if there is a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity, petrushka’s pessimism about religion being around for the foreseeable future may be justified.
KN. I agree about IQ. I was being snarky.
But Gregory is pushing religion, not spirituality. Non-believers can be spiritual. Dawkins is spiritual. Inability to see the difference between spirituality and belief in revealed dogma is a failure of intellect and of character.
I say this because theists tend to accuse nonbelievers of all kinds of failings — moral, temperament, humorosity.
Brief anecdote: While in Vietnam I was approached by a pair of Mormon missionaries. They pretended to befriend me for several weeks. Finally they got up enough nerve to discuss religion, (prior to that I didn’t know they were Mormons.)
One day at lunch they asked if I ever wondered how life began. I suddenly realized what they were doing, and was a bit annoyed that their friendship was a recruiting pitch.
I replied that I saw as much mystery in the existence of a drop of water as in the beginning of life.
I thought was a rather harmless and inoffensive reply, but they recoiled as if I had turned red and sprouted horns and a tail. They left the table and never spoke to me again.
Gregory is not interested in any ideology but his own. He cannot carry on a civil conversation with anyone who disagrees with him. He has his own version of backing away in horror. But unlike Mormons, he is not polite about it.
Most of all, he cannot separate theism from the sense of wonder and mystery. He seems to require labels and answers. I prefer mysteries.
More precisely, he seems to think that if one does not use his preferred label for the mystery, then one lacks all awareness of it.
Interesting study.
I would argue that religiosity is inversely correlated with access to information. As books, magazines and internet become available, populations decline in participation in religion. Whether they decline in spirituality, or merely in adherence to dogma, I do not know.
But I do not see a lot of defense of spirituality among the denizens of UD or among the critics of this site. What I see is defense of traditional Christian dogma. Not necessarily a defense of young earth creationism, but a defense of traditional interpretations of New Testament miracles and such.
I and others have asked for an explanation of where and how one draws a dividing line between fundamentalism and modernistic readings of the Bible, but haven’t see any answers. Ditto for an explanation of how one distinguishes the testimony of the Gospels from the testimony of other scriptures.
petrushka,
That access probably correlates with performance on IQ tests as well. Your view makes intuitive sense.
Patrick,
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/16/religion_may_not_survive_the_internet/
I lived on a boat for years and got paid for it! They kept insisting it was a “ship,” but what did they know.
Jesus still loves you Gregory. 😉
Up(!) to 3% of the Dover interest level:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22intelligent%20design%22&cmpt=q
Another suck-up post from the champ. Hey! maybe Erik could settle you comfortably on his lap someday and tell you a bedtime story! I bet he’s got any number of other original, knee-slappers like that one that’ll just crack you up right until you fall asleep.
We’ve seen insults and ass-kissing from you Gregory–also self-congratulatory stuff and a bit of lame pigeon-holing, but that seems to be the sum and substance of every post of yours. Got anything else–or is that kind of substanceless crap really all there is to you?
Let me ask you this about your new idol here, Gregory. KN says Erik’s a neo-Platonist and Erik hasn’t corrected him. As you must know, probably the most famous follower of Plotinus was Porphyry. Do you agree with your champion’s champion’s view that Christians are “a confused and vicious sect”?
Bizarro. Mung chides for not going against the local ‘atheist’ flow. Gregory chides for going against the global ‘theist’ flow.
Shrug. Either way, I have a teensy issue: that which I actually believe.
As long as you don’t believe Hebrews were fresh off the boat.
Mung,
Yeah, ‘cos the correct naming of the survivors’ race is absolutely vital to any consideration of whether it actually happened ot not.
eta – ‘Species’ are essentialist constucts, but ‘tribes’ arent? There were both Common and Spotted Sandpipers on the boat, and 300,000 species of beetle, but no Hebrews – they came later! LMFAO.
Does anyone else think this site has taken a turn toward the weird?
We have been getting an overdose of Chritian Apologetics. But there is still interesting discussion.
The appeal to “revelation” is unusual. I’m inclined to think that “revelation” is just an alternative name for “making up stuff as you go along.”
Making stuff up would be dishonest, and we can’t have that. I interpret as voices in one’s head. Perhaps not audible (although I know people who do hear the voice of god).
petrushka,
Did a god reveal that to you or are you just seeing the Platonic ideal of weirdness here?
No. It’s been weird since it’s inception. The recent addition of ‘Frankie” hasn’t changed things much.
We could discuss things other than Christian apologetics if you only had the guts to defend your claims. So my position is that you get what you deserve.
That’s hardly fair to Neil. He’s been quite deftly and consistently defending his claims, for example in the “Realism and reality” thread. It’s temporarily moribund, but I hope to revive it in a few days when I’ve finished reading Clark’s Surfing Uncertainty. Right now I’m half-way through but I won’t be able to continue until I’ve completed this weekend’s grading. Margolis’ Pragmatism’s Advantage and Pragmatism Ascendant have also had a significant impact on me; I’ll return to that in the “Reality and realisms” thread as well.
KN, for what it’s worth, you really ought to get over your fear of starting an OP just because Gregory might pop in and insult you.
Might be nice, for example, if you followed up on your reading of Retrieving Realism.
…. and …
What is it with people lately behaving as if it’s appropriate to tell others they’re afraid [get over your fear, no guts], based on no evidence, and with no useful results? Mung isn’t the only one (or the most egregious) but those two back-to-back insults caught my eye.
I’d be ashamed of myself if I realized I had just called someone a coward simply because they didn’t comment the way I wanted them to.
Provide evidence that courage has anything to do with people commenting, and maybe you can excuse yourself for what looks like pointlessly bad manners.
I’ve noticed and commented on the inability of some people to experience embarrassment.
I admit I have a problem with hypocrisy.
But that’s a moral judgment, isn’t it?
Now if someone else thinks I am being a hypocrite, that would be of interest to me.
But that’s a moral judgment, isn’t it?
Is there anything worse than someone who denies objective morality but then acts as if all the rest of us ought to submit to their own subjective morality?
Yes, there is anything worse. Lots worse.
If the worse you’ve ever seen is me using (or abusing) my moral judgement, then boyo boyo you’ve led a charmed life. I want to be you, it that’s genuinely the worse you’ve been confronted with.
On second thought, maybe not. I’d rather remain myself and remain your worst example. And I’ll retain my excellent manners, thank you very much!
Don’t go all judgmental on us now.
Or is hypocrisy a necessary attribute of being a “skeptic” here at TSZ?
My decision to not start an OP has nothing to do with fear. It is simply a promise that I made.
Last year, following some frankly embarrassing and childish behavior on my part, the participants at TSZ requested that I be removed of my ability to create original posts. I agreed that this request was appropriate as due punishment for my outburst.
Although I do technically have the ability to make new posts, I have decided that I shall honor the request by abstaining from making any new posts. It has nothing at all with fear, nor with any of my feelings towards Gregory in particular. It has everything to do with a promise I have made to a community that I enjoy being a part of.
Neil Rickert,
Also something of an unarguable get-out-of-jail-free card, like WJM’s “I choose my beliefs” or Frankie/Joe’s repeated burden shift (“all you have to do to defeat ID is …”).
Post, post, type, type, refute refute using conventional argumentation, then … “This Is Revealed Knowledge”. FFS! I would be embarrassed to use such dodges personally.
(eta – rereading, I can hear Mung loud and clear: “which dodges do you prefer to use then, Allan?)
Mung,
Yep – someone who believes in objective morality and thinks that gives them the right to moralise. ‘Tis one thing to think there is a ‘real’ answer, quite another to think that your position on X is it.
But probably not as much as you’d be embarrassed trying to defend some junk somebody made up.
One can avoid both, of course. Otherwise, better to dodge than be gored by reality. Or so the thinking goes…
Glen Davidson
Yes, there is worse. For example, some who pretends that they have access to some kind of objective morality when they of course actually don’t.
Those people, sheesh. Lowest of the low. You’d think that the fact that none of them can agree what exactly their “objective” morality actually is might clue them in, but no, apparently that level of thought is beyond them.
So yeah, there are worse people. Mung.
When morality is subjective you form govervments and make laws. Sometimes people disagree on laws, and you get politics. Terrible, isn’t it?
The management here don’t believe in eternal damnation and do allow for rehabilitation. Don’t inhibit yourself from the possibility of contributing an OP on our account. 🙂
Fair enough. I know that keiths was the most adamant that my posting privileges be taken away, and to be honest I’d rather not start up a new post without checking with him about it — though he hasn’t been around in about a month or so.
Kantian Naturalist,
It’s Lizzie’s blog, KN – a benign dictatorship!
I’ll second that.
petrushka,
Certainly a bad enough side effect to be worth looking for another solution.
Alan Fox and Kantian Naturalist,
SecondedThirded. As long as you don’t edit or remove the comments made in the thread, I too encourage you to feel free to create original posts.ETA: Neil got in ahead of me.
Patrick, I’m sorry if my connecting you to Rand was a mistake; I’ve seen only concurrences, though. What do you disagree with her about?
walto,
No worries.
Rand really disliked libertarians, so I disagree with her there. I also tend more to the anarchist side of the spectrum than she did. Interestingly, my oldest recently asked me for some details of my politics. It’ll take me a while to pull something together, but I’ll be happy to share it when I’m done. Gotta tone down the “red in tooth and claw” perspective on government so as not to frighten the children too much.
Are you suggesting that it is possible to go below zero?
We have a category of “New author” that is available to any member who’d like to publish an OP. No post-editing (or comment deleting in the subsequent thread) after publication is possible.