god is a genesis of stupidity

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I like the idea that if corporations like being people so much,
then they should pay the personal rate on income taxes
rather than the lower corporate rate, which should go extinct.

Are you sort of doing a 'best of'/favorites post?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Throw enough against the wall, something will stick.

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

This is a great collection of stuff. As usual, I pretty much agree with everything you're sharing here. My only gripe is that atheism is in no way a religion (#9 is implying otherwise).

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I would agree that atheism is not a religion, but
would you disagree that it is a faith?,
since it assumes more knowledge than we can have.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

A faith in the absence of something? It's like saying that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

But we're talking about beliefs/philosophies, so that I don't think the hobby example stands. If one believes that the basic fundamental nature of the universe is godless without any evidence for it, a sectarian would seem to have some grounds for holding up a mirror to you.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

If one believes that the basic fundamental nature
of the universe is godless without any evidence for it

Full stop. Preposterous things don't need to be actively disproven but instead, evidence-free claims need to be substantiated.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

But who gets to decide what is 'preposterous'?

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

You're presuming there's a hole somewhere in our brains that needs to be filled with religion. I don't have that hole.

If we changed the context to a choice of belief in faeries or sasquatch or dragons or none of the above, is 'none of the above' a belief system?

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

You're presuming there's a hole somewhere in our brains that needs to be filled with religion.

I'm assuming that the origin of the universe is still a mystery. To speak of quantum fluctuations, for instance, is little more than handwaving - it's a good hypothesis, but we don't truly know. That mystery, I think, opens the door to the God question, which may be resolved for you, but it is not officially closed by our top thinkers/philosophers (though the bearded guy thing is probably done).

Why doesn't sasquatch enjoy the same status, that of an open question? I don't really know. Maybe he does. I doubt it, but I cannot think of the answer, except to say that sasquatch and dragons would, in principle, be easier to find, since we would posit their existence to be on this planet, whereas we have the whole universe (and maybe beyond) to search for God.

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for beating me to this. Exactly what I was going to say. It requires no faith to acknowledge that there is absolutely no proof of the existence of a higher being.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Ah, but there is a difference between saying 'there is absolutely no proof of the existence of a higher being' and saying 'there is no higher being'.

[joshthevegan.livejournal.com]

There is no higher being until it is proven there is one. One cannot prove the unknown, nor is it on those of us that disbelieve. The burden of proof is on those that claim that Magic Man Of My Particular Choosing exists.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

No it's not a faith and it does not assume more knowledge than we can have.

Atheism is basically a hard sort of agnosticism. Most atheists break under the "are you SURE?" and admit they could be wrong. It's not a faith--it's a weighted bet. I'd wager there isn't a God, I could be wrong and have lost wagers I've made, but it's not a faith. It's a *lack* of faith--in theism.

If all the arguments for the claim: "I went to the beach last week" fail to meet a basic standard of believability, then it's not a faith based belief to *not* believe I went to the beach last week. I'm not believing you did not Go, I'm not believing you did.

How could the default for belief in anything not be "no"? Even yourself? The thing about yourself is, you've got the best evidence to back it up--first hand experience. But the further you get from yourself, the harder it is to prove any other thing exists. Descartes demon and all. /coffee cup finished.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

But we are arguing with the definition that atheism means you believe there is no God. That's the way the others have been arguing as well, looking at their terms.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I think the superfamous atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens et. al.) have claimed the term to mean "knowing there is no god". If people want to think something else they need to search for better terms that explain how they feel.

Like I've mentioned, I'm ignostic, I don't think the question is valid. This avoids all the epistemological problems of Dawkins' Atheism, as well as takes all religious arguments off the table. If you want your god to be part of the discussion then you need to provide me with a falsifiable experiment regarding god's existence. In short, I've moved the argument from an ontological to an epistemological one. I don't think the former can be won (by either side) and the latter makes the whole discussion irrelevant.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

A weighted bet is still a leap of faith. You're an agnostic, you just don't want to be lumped in with the questioning christians.

I can create an experiment to test the statement "I went to the beach last week", therefore, I can have knowledge of that. I can't do so for "there is no god", therefore I can't have knowledge of that, so to state that as a position is a belief.

You're using the cogito argument to prove the existence of your self, but that works for religious revelation. Plenty of people have spoken directly to god; I'm comfortable to call them deluded, but if you're using cogito to prove your self then you have to face up to the fact that you might be experiencing a delusion (brain in a vat and all that).

Personally, I'll take a social constructivist proof of my own existence (other people believe I exist, therefore I exist), but that's fraught with problems as well, but at least I can take a photo of me and have people agree that it's me, I can't do that with my consciousness.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Is Richard Dawkins an agnostic? (he admits he could be wrong--I don't see how acknowledging human fallibility prevents one from being an atheist)

I am rather unhappy with this nonsense idea that atheists have to claim something virtually nobody ever claims: "I cannot be wrong about this"

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Quite correct.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

It requires a belief in the existence (or not) of a supernatural being, that makes it a religion.

Better would be to deny the validity of the question, then you don't have to state a belief either way. Ignosticism FTW!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Better would be to deny the validity of the question

This seems like hair splitting to me.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

It's really not. If we start saying that "there's no good evidence otherwise" is enough to claim knowledge of a fact then we get further from the truth, not closer.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

If Ross Douthat can be trusted, Hobby Lobby apparently walks some of the walk at least.

~ ~ ~

“for thumbing its nose at the conventional wisdom that success in the retail industry” requires paying “bargain-basement wages.” A retail chain with nearly 600 stores and 13,000 workers, this business sets its lowest full-time wage at $15 an hour, and raised wages steadily through the stagnant postrecession years. (Its do-gooder policies also include donating 10 percent of its profits to charity and giving all employees Sunday off.) And the chain is thriving commercially — offering, as Demos put it, a clear example of how “doing good for workers can also mean doing good for business.”

Of course I’m talking about Hobby Lobby, the Christian-owned craft store that’s currently playing the role of liberalism’s public enemy No. 1, for its successful suit against the Obama administration’s mandate requiring coverage for contraceptives, sterilization and potential abortifacients.

-- Ross Douthat at NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-a-company-liberals-could-love-.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0)

[spamwarrior.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to see the percentage of their hourly staff that are considered "full time", though. It they've only got two per store they can sit and spin on that claim.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Their 401K invests in all the so called "abortifacients" companies, lol. Their god must be mammon. Also, they covered the same stuff and only got all moral after ACA mandated coverage (NOBAMA NOBAMA!). Also to call plan b or IUD "abortifacients" is ignorant and inflammatory, especially when Ted Cruz does it.

And doing nice things to people doesn't make up for using their holy book to cockblock their employees healthcare.