The point of this thread was to use the FSM as a tool to show that just because something looks like a religious miracle, that doesn't mean it is. It was a response to the two threads started by Shadow1 about Islamic and Christian miracles. I apologize for using the FSM in an attempt to be light-hearted. :bugeye:
I mock people for having religious faith. I mock people for having faith in homeopathy, astrology, the free market, and for having faith in the good intentions of Republicans. I mock people for believing in alien abductions, crop circles, and ghosts. As George Carlin said (hey, now there's a guy who treated religious faith with kid gloves) "Scratch any cynic, you'll find a disappointed idealist." Russell said, “Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.” I'd love to believe that, but I have my doubts. Science has steadily rolled back the need for supernatural explanations for the last several centuries. But it seems to me that superstition has more lives than Jason in a Friday the Thirteenth film. I firmly believe that most people will continue to believe in fantastic amounts of rubbish for as long as I live, probably long after, and maybe right up until the species becomes extinct. When I saw a truck with a bumper sticker that said "Nothing fails like prayer", I laughed. It was good to know there are others out there willing to point out that the emperor has no clothes. It made me feel less alone. The FSM is pretty 2007 I suppose. But when you live in a world where a waterstain is treated with religious reverence, I cannot resist the impulse to mock. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Tiassa, saying that I don't know what I'm talking about, brilliant counter argument. Just genius, how long did it take you to come up with it? No, I think the fact that you haven't addressed my argument shows that you have no idea what I'm talking about, not that I have no idea what I'm talking about. There is a big difference. If you're going to be arrogant, at least know what you're talking about. Please feel free to prove what I'm saying wrong though. Please show your intellectual superiority concerning the psychology of superstition by countering my argument and the established research that it is based on. If you can't do that, then shut your pie hole.
Keep whining, if it suits you I think the fact you have to misrepresent me in order to say things like, "shut your pie hole" is significant, Answers. Thus, to reiterate: There is a tremendous body of literature and research that suggests you're talking out your ass. Sir James G. Frazier, Mircea Eliade, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung. More recently, Karen Armstrong, Jeffrey Russell Burton, Jean Markale. That doesn't even scratch the tip of the iceberg. As one who claims to have studied psychology, surely you are aware that expressions of superstition reflect the outlook of the beholder. So, to be more specific: • Sir James G. Frazier, The Golden Bough (1890) • Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (1913) and Moses and Monotheism (1939) • Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (1957), Images and Symbols (1961), Myth and Reality (1963), Rites and Symbols of Initiation (1965), Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions (1976), Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts (1986), &c. • C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious (1916) or its revision, Symbols of Transformation (1952); Modern Man in Search of the Soul (1933), The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1934-1954), Psychology and Religion (1938), Psychology and Alchemy (1944), Answer to Job (1958), Mysterium Coniunctionis (1956), &c. • Jeffrey Russel Burton, Witchraft in the Middle Ages (1984), Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (1986), Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (1987), The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (1987), Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (1990), The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (1992), &c. • Karen Armstrong, Tongues of Fire (1985), A History of God (1993), The Battle for God (2000), A Short History of Myth (2005), The Great Transformation (2006), &c. • Jean Markale, The Celts: Uncovering the Mythic and Historic Origins of Western Culture (1993) I would also add to that list: • Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979), The Origin of Satan (1995), &c. • Mark A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship and The Bible In America (1986), The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994), America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (2002), The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys (2004), &c. And I could go on. My point being that your argument completely ignores the vast body of literature that suggests you haven't a clue what you're talking about. All of that literature, and more, would disagree with you. I would recommend, for a short list, Armstrong's A History of God, any of Burton's volumes on the Devil, and the two titles I noted specifically from Pagels. Those are the most accessible to the novice. Markale is a bit obscure, but his considerations of myth and history are far more complex than your argument could possibly imagine; Noll is academic and arid, though rich in resource and perspective. Freud is, well, Freud. To that end, I would also suggest Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (1959). Why don't you go to your psych professors— "Religion is nothing more than a mechanism for fulfilling psychological needs that are present in all humans. It is created by the process of reinforcement and conditioning just like all other behaviors both logical and illogical. Superstitious behaviour in particular is conditioned through random reinforcement schedules making any possibility of conditioning extinction near impossible. Random reinforcement schedules are extremely long lasting. This is why we see animals displaying superstitious behaviour while randomly reinforced, and it is why we see the same in humans." —and run that thesis by them? And while you're at it, ask them about the implications of Piaget's work on psychological development in this context. And I'll also take a moment to point out the pathetic hypocrisy of your lament. If the heat is too much for you, perhaps you should be more cautious when you enter the proverbial kitchen. Because, indeed— "It's ridiculous that you are claiming that religion is some sort of higher order thinking ...." —is it futile to write an intelligent defense of an assertion I never made. Which, of course, brings us back round to the significance of misinterpretation.
I don't even know how to characterize such a logical fallacy, Tiassa. You seem to be trying to refute our arguments by using our own arguments. I don't care if religion is serving some deep seated psychological needs, or if it is a manifestation of superstition in the same manner as a baseball player's irrational rituals before a game. I don't care if religion evolved to fulfill some practical needs of a society like dietary rules or population control. We can achieve all those things without resorting to irrational and superstitious beliefs. We can acknowledge the positive aspects of religion in history- it's encouragement of reading, writing, and science, of in some cases, a higher morality than society in general practiced. But I think it is time, at this point in human history, to develop non-superstitious, rational, replacements for the role of religion. Because along with the good, it encourages belief in the absence of evidence, which is an insidious evil. We can have the good without the bad, the atheist message is ultimately a positive one.
(chortle!) Oh, this ought to be entertaining. Do elaborate. Please. Prove to me, objectively, that evil exists. Stop invoking superstition in order to criticize superstition. And, besides, you believe plenty of things in the absence of objective evidence. It's part of being human. Other than that, I would reiterate: If our creativity was unnecessary to our perpetuity as a species, it would not endure. The challenge, then, is to utilize this tool to the advantage of the species. But that would be an affirmative, complicated, difficult argument requiring genuine dedication, which seems to be the last thing Pastafarianism is interested in. Pay attention. Or else take your own advice.
Absolute belief is different from tentative assumptions that can be changed to accommodate new information. Of course, evil is not an objective description, but that doesn't matter, my use of the term is not as a religious concept. I could just as easily have said, "bad for society, bad for individual development, bad for all life on Earth". I'm paying attention, but you aren't saying a damn thing.
. why do ou take this matter so seriously,i mean, why would you even kare if someone have a faith or not, i hav a faith,liek you have a favorite football team, or soccer or whatever, also, if you say that islam is a relegion of murders, and cause alot of wars, hmm, try to compare it to christanity, and let's see the result...
If you look very closely at your own words then you will notice that you provided an answer to your question. It may not be Spidey's answer, but those of us with little faith wouldn't mind one less reason to kill each other.
Run, rabbit, run? Which has what to do with what? And you would still have a hell of a time supporting that argument. But that's okay. You're an atheist. No need to make a substantial, supported argument. You're objective, so whatever you say is automatically true, isn't it? Tell me, is cowardice an inherent trait of atheistic rhetoric, or just yours?
. ever heard of sicologic health? anyway, it's too hard now to explain, and proove things that you have a lot of wrong ideas, or shall i say, all your ideas are, i mean, about some relegions, that may need a hall debat, and who knows if you can discuss open-minded, anyway, i guess, about killing and stuff, are sicologic, more than relegion... why, so you say, there was no atheists assasins, or, there's no assasin that don't beleive in god, or have a relegion? that doesnt even because of relegion. anyway, if you think it is, it's your opinion, can't discuss, it will take a hall debatS...
Tiassa, you're a fool if you really think some psychodynamic freudian rubbish theories are going to stand up to empirical cognitive and behavioural research. It's like you're quoting from an age of psychological ignorance in order to support your views of an age of religious ignorance. You still have not addressed my argument. None of those books deal with Skinners superstition experiments. And you have still been unable to understand, that I am not arguing that there are complex artistic blah blah blah reasons for religion, but I am arguing that they are all based on a foundation of superstition which is in and of itself illogical and flawed. Hence it brings into question anything built upon that logic. Come on now, try again.
I just love that word, especially your version. I wonder if there's an acceptable variation that's spelled with a 'K'. Where should this debate take place? I think it best if in a neutral site. Is there such a place here on Earth for an atheist to debate theists?
With you wanting me to prove evil exists. It's axiomatic evil exists as a descriptor but not as a metaphysical reality. That's like asking me to prove happiness exists. There is a state that can be called happiness, but there is no such thing as happiness having an independent state of existing or not existing. How courageous are you, hiding behind ambiguity? I have read Pagels too, and her scholarly view of Christianity is quite different that the stories that Christians believe. Apparently, faith is an impediment to knowing the truth, even when it might bring people closer to the original experiences of their religion.
