ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

The US/UK divide is pretty weird. I've never met a "prickly atheist" in my entire life. It seems to me that the vast majority of atheists in the U.S. don't talk about it, or call themselves "agnostic" because they think that sounds better. Polling seems to support this. From wikipedia: "A 2008 Gallup poll showed that a smaller 6% of the US population believed that no god or universal spirit exists. The most recent ARIS report, released March 9, 2009,...1.6% explicitly describe themselves as atheist or agnostic, double the previous 2001 ARIS survey figure." So apparently less than a third of atheists in the U.S. even realize that they're atheists.

Sorry, I think I must have been expressing myself badly last night (which is highly likely, I was kind of drunk). My point about real world concerns was not that this was the domain of religion, but rather that the debate between theists and atheists is a distraction from real problems. And yes, religious groups are part of this problem, and have a lot to answer for in these areas, and should be held to account whenever possible.

I think I see the problem here. The "extreme, hardcore, obnoxious, whatever" atheists are not debating the existence of god. They're debating the value of religion. In my opinion, religion is the primary problem in the world, and dismissing that by simply saying "eh, I don't have time for that. I'm worried about real problems." is not a valid argument. And talking about the problems of religion is not an ad hominem argument against the existence of god because, again, we're not debating the existence of god.

The US is still very much a frontier country in spirit, even now, and frontiers tend to hold on to old habits longer. Also, we're an enormous country and new attitudes take a long time to filter out to the hinterlands (yes, even now).

The US doesn't have a monarchy or very good universal health care or other institutions that would support a secular society as well as other advanced countries, so I think we're stuck with religious institutions providing those things, and places with even less than that are stuck more, but I don't really see this as a problem provided they don't derive their authority and mandate from scripture.

I've never met a "prickly atheist" in my entire life.

In my opinion, religion is the primary problem in the world, and dismissing that by simply saying "eh, I don't have time for that. I'm worried about real problems." is not a valid argument.

yeah you're about as far up your own asshole as you can get

And you're not judgmental at ALL.

who said i wasn't?

saying "religion is the primary problem in the world" is just deluded lala-land bullshit, sorry.

The real problem of the world is... people.

I'll grant you it's a leap of faith to:
1) speculate that people would be less likely to be shitty to each other if they were not able to justify this shittiness as divinely inspired, and
2) that it's possible to remove this justification as a global behavior

but I think these are experiments worth trying.

http://oregonmag.com/Jihad_ElmoPuppet.jpg

Anyone who has dealt with children realizes that justifications can always be invented for any action, and the lack of "divine inspiration" as an invocation to fall back on would not be even a blip on the path to some other rationalization.

I dunno -- it seems like the parents who pull the "because I said so" and the kids who keep asking "why"

aimless, obviously there's a lot of truth to that, but i'm not sure what i'm supposed to do with it. when i see some of the disgusting acts that have been perpetrated in the name of religion i have a hard time sitting back and saying "oh well, would have happened anyway"

how would you guys characterize the jenny mcarthy vaccination thing? I'd characterize it as religious even though as far as I can tell there isn't any overt church doctrine involved.

it's religious in the same way pyramid schemes are

let's get rid of religion and start murdering each other for the sake of science instead. progress!

I'd characterize it as religious even though as far as I can tell there isn't any overt church doctrine involved.

That doesn't make a lick of sense. If you mean zealotry, say zealotry, but quit using words wrong.

ugh, I promised myself I wouldn't post on this thread other than my 12-word manifesto up top. Dang it!

would you accept superstitious? "jenny mcarthy hates vaccinations with a superstitious fervor" doesn't flow as well.

you can be a zealot about a logical cause, imo, but the anti-vaccination crowd jump through hoops to avoid logic

Accuracy is more important than flow imho.

I don't feel she's a zealot, though, cause it's really normal to be concerned about your kid.

hey no you know what's better? let's start killing people off in foreign lands for control of natural resources and financial self-interest! it sure beats that evil religion stuff!

'Religious fervour' isn't the same as 'religious'. The former is a clear metaphor ingrained in the English language. The latter, while its meaning can be debated, isn't a metaphor but rather an attribution of fact.

(Thus: words. You're using them wrong.)

what is McCarthy's religion, BTW?

scientologist right?

"being concerned about your kid" and "believing a non-scientific explanation to crazed extents to explain a condition your child has" are different things, imo

oh. um.. maybe I take it back that the church had nothing to do with the vaccination thing.

Is it ok to characterize it as religious now, now that scientology is involved in a murky way? I'm not sure what's different about it. Also complicating this is Scientology's quasi-status as religion.

How's Scientology involved? McCarthy isn't scientologist afaik. They have some weird stances on autism, but none on vaccination that I know of.

Zeal for a cause, blind adherence to something you hold as an article of faith, and the desire to eliminate all opponents who refuse to be converted to your way of thinking are, sadly, not confined to religious zeal, religious faith or religious conversion. They are universals in human nature.

mh i'm pretty sure she is or at least has "dabbled"

ok i guess actually the connection is that jim carrey is DEF into it

lol although he denies it

whatever, sorry, i don't think it's informing her vaccination thing in any case

hey no you know what's better? let's start killing people off in foreign lands for control of natural resources and financial self-interest!

Don't forget to send missionaries.

people would be less likely to be shitty to each other if they were not able to justify this shittiness as divinely inspired... experiments worth trying

I can't figure out how to phrase this without sounding like a crusading anti-communist cardinal or bishop, but this experiment was given a pretty good try out in a variety of communist countries in the period between 1920 and 1990. No noteworthy drop in interpersonal shittiness seems detectable in a result.

the result

Also, I haven't seen anyone on this thread actually argue that "people would be less likely to be shitty to each other if they were not able to justify this shittiness as divinely inspired" but go ahead and keep tilting at strawmen.

there's a natural mindset against introducing weird things (toxins) into your body. I feel like Scientology codifies and amplifies this mindset to an unhealthy degree, with the narrative of (and I'm not sure it's really spiritual or something they claim physically exists) struggle against these invasive presences.

re: "blind adherence to something you hold as an article of faith"
what constitutes religion if not this? I don't think it's just for added color that people say things like "football is a religion to me"
institutions with these properties are functionally religions. they have rituals, articles of faith, regular services, communion, opposing forces, sometimes wanton ecstatic experiences.

re: communism
which of those experiments were carried in good faith and not actually de facto theocracies?

BTW, I don't think such an experiment could or should be carried out without the presence of churches, particularly in the US.
Ideally you would have at least 4 distinct sects in close proximity. (There's some weird game theory/social dynamic thing where two or three groups are unstable and fall into in-fighting, but four groups are somehow the magic number for harmony)

I haven't seen anyone on this thread actually argue that "people would be less likely...

um, wk, I was quoting Phiip Nunez. From this thread.

Now, as for whether these experiments were carried out in "good faith", this seems to presuppose that the elimination of religious belief, whenever it is attempted, must be done in some kindly or humanitarian manner, or it is untrue to itself. I'm not certain that is inherent.

And for calling these brutal dictatorships "de facto theocracies", this seems to conflate all dictatorship with theocracy, and to give theocracy then definitional primacy, whether or not god, divinity or religion is incorporated in the "theocracy", which seems like an odd approach.

um, wk, I was quoting Phiip Nunez. From this thread.

Yes, I know. I was responding to him as well. He was saying "it takes a leap of faith to believe that..." and then proceeded to lay out an argument that nobody was making.

I realize now that it seems like I was responding to you, but actually I meant it as a continuation of your WTF to Philip.

well I would like to make that argument, then!

"this seems to conflate all dictatorship with theocracy"

true, I don't feel there's any functional difference between god-emperor and president-for-life.

In which case, I would suggest that the salient feature is the dictatorship, and not the theology, since the theology seems optional, while the dictatorial power is not.

well I would like to make that argument, then!

Oh I see. I was totally confused as to which side you were coming from after the "I don't think it is possible to be a literal "without god" atheist" stuff.

xp

...which would result in those governments being 'de facto dictatorships', which condemnation of them, while apt and truthful, is not exactly relevant to the point I was making, which had to do with the experiment of doing away with religion and its bearing on whether that made people less shitty to one another..