On Being Atheist...

[Stella_Omega]

I'm not concerned with GB-- only with AH.

The folks who troll AH do so because they can be so out-trolled on GB or else ignored, and their threads sink so fast. AH is a relatively small pond and they look like bigger frogs here.

Some discussion sites-- craigslist.org, for instance-- have a 'community standards' algorithm, and a dungeon forum where the stuff that offends enough of the community can be sent to-- still available for those who need their quota of malice, but out of the way of the more productive discussions.

This allows for a shit ton of rancor and heat if the forum regs like it that way-- a more sedate standard of civility for other forums. Each one develops its own mode. it's the most effective working anarchy I've ever seen, and the mods are truly servants without so much authority.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm not concerned with GB-- only with AH.

The folks who troll AH do so because they can be so out-trolled on GB or else ignored, and their threads sink so fast. AH is a relatively small pond and they look like bigger frogs here.

Some discussion sites-- craigslist.org, for instance-- have a 'community standards' algorithm, and a dungeon forum where the stuff that offends enough of the community can be sent to-- still available for those who need their quota of malice, but out of the way of the more productive discussions.

This allows for a shit ton of rancor and heat if the forum regs like it that way-- a more sedate standard of civility for other forums. Each one develops its own mode. it's the most effective working anarchy I've ever seen, and the mods are truly servants without so much authority.

As I read your last post I realize that we are doing what we are talking against. Talking about politics (albeit LIt politics) and getting off the subject of what the AH should be about; writing.
Never fear however! As the very confused and desperate Lovecraft will soon be posting a writing related question and I fully expect you to weigh in on it and help my sorry ass! Stay tuned for something AH relevant!

 

[sr71plt]

You know I was going to add that none of those guys write but wasn't a hundred percent sure and did not want to look more ignorant than usual. You know maybe, of course this is more work for the owners, they could figure out a special log in for the AH your handle has to be one that has stories published under it.

The nub is that the owners don't want to have to babysit the forum in any way (and to a great extent, they don't). The forum isn't the center of what they do with the Web site, while being their biggest headache, and they are few in number and very busy doing the main work of the Web site (posting stories to the story file).

As I've noted before, I think the simplist solution for them with the AH is to make it a sign-in forum, with the list of those having access only including those who have a story posted to Lit. every two or three months or so. If they go nonactive as a Lit. author, they go off the access list for AH.

(Stella isn't any more a Literotica author than JBJ is, incidentally.)

The readers could comment on the stories on the Story Feedback forum and the General Board could carry more of the load of what its title indicates.

The bottom line, though, is that nothing really will change unless the owners (which isn't likely to happen) or someone they designate takes on an active moderator role. This week the site owners indicated their preferences by moving some of JBJ's political irritant threads to the GB. The only real solution here is for someone to continue doing that until the Rush Limbaughs/Keith Obermans get the message and see the hopelessness of their efforts to irritate. It doesn't require any new forum.

 

[Stella_Omega]

As I've noted before, I think the simplist solution for them with the AH is to make it a sign-in forum, with the list of those having access only including those who have a story posted to Lit. every two or three months or so. If they go nonactive as a Lit. author, they go off the access list for AH.

You are diabolical.

I have to say that would probably be incitement for me to write for the site again, too. I would support this plan.

 

[oggbashan]

Wouldn't a real atheist not use the "probably"?

They debated the exact wording for some time before including the "probably" in:

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"

I think it made their slogan more memorable and made more people think. It is also a play on the then-current TV adverts for Heineken Lager which ended "probably the best lager in the World".

Og

 

[Pure]

back to the thread topic

(all topics are allowed in AH)

The arguments against theism have generally been flimsy.

First, there has been appeal to motives, e.g. humans are afraid. Such an appeal is fallacious, as one learns in first year logic.

Second the arguments are addressing ridiculous constructions, e.g. a Santa in the Sky. That limits God to something ridiculous, then carries out the trivial task of refuting it. The notion that God might be in part or wholly beyond human measure, does not seem to have been talked about. See, e.g. the Book of Job.

 

[Stella_Omega]

(all topics are allowed in AH).


The arguments against theism have generally been flimsy.

First, there has been appeal to motives, e.g. humans are afraid. Such an appeal is fallacious, as one learns in first year logic.

Second the arguments are addressing ridiculous constructions, e.g. a Santa in the Sky. That limits God to something ridiculous, then carries out the trivial task of refuting it. The concept that God might be in part or wholly beyond human measure, does not seem to have been talked about. See, e.g. the Book of Job.

Sure it has. Every believer talks about the ineffability of God, and as an atheist I still mock that notion.

the discussion of fear is part of the discussion about why people insist on belief-- a linked topic.
Why should I see the Book of Job? The bible, by definition, is no authority on the nature of no gods existing.

 

[sr71plt]

They debated the exact wording for some time before including the "probably" in:

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"

I think it made their slogan more memorable and made more people think. It is also a play on the then-current TV adverts for Heineken Lager which ended "probably the best lager in the World".

Og

Fine, but I think it makes them "not atheists."

 

[Stella_Omega]

Fine, but I think it makes them "not atheists."

Or possible; "Diplomatic when talking to the believers."

 

[1sickbastard]

That satisfies my curiosity as to why, in this day and age, so many cling to faith when it is so evidently a false faith.
Amicus

Faith is a curious thing. The US monetary system runs on faith, certainly the dollar isn't backed by anything of 'real' value like gold, oil, land, etc.
For that matter, democracy runs on faith-a blind and provably untrue assumption that our fellow citizens are smart, capable, well informed, and never would maliciously cause harm to another human, nor infringe upon their liberties.
Then there's the everyday faith that we all take for granted, such as the sun will rise, or that we will won't die today (someday, yes, but it is rare that anyone wakes up knowing this day will be their last day).
Faith is a counter against fear, mostly fear of the unknown. The unknown is dangerous and often fatal. Death is the untimate unknown, the ultimate fear. Faith in a supreme being or in an afterlife is a tool against that fear.

Don't confuse faith in God with the tyranny of religious dogma.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Any time someone else's faith interferes with my life-- it's because of religious dogma.

If it weren't for the bloody-mindedness of evangelists, I wouldn't think about religion or faith in Gods much at all.

 

[sr71plt]

Or possible; "Diplomatic when talking to the believers."

or sneaky.

Not that he really was an athiest (although often claimed by others to have been), but I got smacked in the face last night in reading Twilight at Monticello to find a letter from Thomas Jefferson on his private response to the death of his sister, Maria Jefferson Eppes (in public he showed no reaction and got vilified for it). Every "step shortens the distance we have to go; the end of the journey is in sight--the bed wherein are to rest, and to arise in the midst of friends we have lost!" But "whatever is to be our destiny, wisdom, as well as duty, dictates that we should acquiesce in the will of Him whose it is to give and take away, and be contented in the enjoyment of those who are still permitted to be with us."

Don't know how/if that fits in with this thread, but when I read it last night, it brought this thread to mind.

The actual religion of Jefferson is a hard one to latch on to (as is that of Washington--and I've edited a couple of academic books on Washington's relgion, one of which I thought grossly overdid the effort to make him a good Anglican), but it seems Jefferson came closer to Christian religion (Episcopalian) the older he got--and he even sponsored the building of two Episcopalian churches late in his life.

Seems a lot of folks come closer to a religious belief in a god as they get older, for obvious reasons. I feel myself moving in the other direction, though.

 

[1sickbastard]

But it doesn't mean that.rational thinking, empirical research, and the scientific process (which is not at all the same as "logic," which is a process for argument and discussion) are indeed tremendously powerful tools for understanding reality. belief and imagination are not. You don't throw away the best tools for the job in favor of make-do, make-shift tools.

If imagination isn't a powerful tool, why did A Einstien say "Imagination is everything"?
Imagination is stock and trade for any author. The imaginings of J Verne-Traveling to the moon or ships that could travel huge distances under the sea powered by an unimaginable source of energy were mere fantasies a century before the fact.
I cut my teeth, as a reader on Sci-Fi, nowdays called extrapolitive fiction. The best authors were and are trained scientists or hold any number of degrees in science or techincal fields. What they produce as writers may only be grounded in theory but the story is a vision of how some technology impacts the human condition, and it's all imagination, not fact.

No, I cannot agree that belief and imagination are make-shift tools. They are primary tools allowing humanity to see that there is more to existance. No explorer of any kind proceeds without imagining there is something worthwhile to be gained by stepping into the unknown, nor without the belief that the experience is survivalbe. Logic, reason and rational thinking are secondary tools, allowing the realization those with imagination, with the befief that those visions are attainable.

 

[polynices]

I've been an agnostic since I was in my teens. It seems the only logical position to me. It seems as illogical to assert that there is no God, without evidence, as to assert that there is one.

I heard Dawkins talking in a BBC interview a few years ago. He was describing his atheism but he seemed to be describing my own agnosticism too. In fact, I think he's admitted that taking the final step to calling oneself an atheist is simply to assert what one sees as the balance of probability: i.e. 'I think there's probably no God,' rather than 'I know God doesn't exist.'

Some people have applied a nuanced approach to the question: they describe themselves as ninety percent atheists, or seventy percent atheists, or whatever. That is, they recognise that there can never be a clear-cut answer. It's simply a matter of one's degree of belief or unbelief.

I'd call myself a fifty-fifty agnostic - that is, I'd allow even odds on the existence of a deity or not. That reflects my belief that, God or no God, we inhabit an enormous mystery. There really is evidence for the mystery - just take a cursory look at quantum mechanics, for example, which seems to contradict most of our basic empirical assumptions about the universe, including the biggies, like causality and the nature of space and time. Kant cast some serious aspersions on the legitimacy of those concepts too. For him, the noumenon was, by definition, unknowable, and might not exist in any meaningful sense at all.

As I said, we inhabit a mystery. I think the best lesson we can draw from the recognition of that fact is the value of intellectual humility. We know that scientific paradigms can change radically in a very short space of time, and often do. I think we should recognise the lack of solid foundation for religious theories as well. However, we might also recognise that our own opinions, attitudes and needs change all the time. It's a commonplace that atheists resort to prayer in times of extreme crisis. Why not? When you have nothing else to turn to, why not try an appeal to a big friend in the sky? But it isn't an intellectual decision, anyway. It's a response to circumstance. It may well be hard-wired in us, in fact.

So, I'm an agnostic. I inhabit a universe I don't understand. Sometimes I think there's no God and that when I die there'll be nothing, not even emptiness - just like the state of things, for me, before I was born. But at other times I do operate as if some sort of deity - or some sort of overseeing intelligence, anyway - existed. That isn't a choice; it's just a response to events. I can't help it; I just do it.

I'm very suspicous of people who tell me 'God wants you to do such-and-such.' How do they know what God wants - or even what God is, if a deity of any kind should happen to exist at all? As I suggested earlier, humility in the face of the universal mystery would be our best recourse.

(Incidentally, I apologise if I've gone over old ground dealt with earlier in this discussion. It's a long thread now, and I admit I haven't read all of it.)

- polynices

 

[Pure]

stell:rational thinking, empirical research, and the scientific process (which is not at all the same as "logic," which is a process for argument and discussion) are indeed tremendously powerful tools for understanding reality. belief and imagination are not. You don't throw away the best tools for the job in favor of make-do, make-shift tools.

sounds pretty dogmatic, stella. you say 'the best tools', but it *sounds like youre saying that empirical research and scientific-type investigations are the ONLY tools for understanding the real world.

if you're NOT saying that, what other tools do you recognize besides what you call the 'best' ones?

and what is your empirical basis for your choice of 'best' tools and/or second best ones?

 

[Stella_Omega]

stell:rational thinking, empirical research, and the scientific process (which is not at all the same as "logic," which is a process for argument and discussion) are indeed tremendously powerful tools for understanding reality. belief and imagination are not. You don't throw away the best tools for the job in favor of make-do, make-shift tools.

sounds pretty dogmatic, stella. you say 'the best tools', but it *sounds like youre saying that empirical research and scientific-type investigations are the ONLY tools for understanding the real world.

if you're NOT saying that, what other tools do you recognize besides what you call the 'best' ones?

and what is your empirical basis for your choice of 'best' tools and/or second best ones?

well, duh. Why try to a board in half with a nail file if you have a saw.

What tools do you use to understand the real world-- and, by the way, how are you defining "the real world" because it occurs to me, "the real world" that I live in IS empirical by definition, and open to investigation (not always successful investigation on the first, second, hundreth attempt, but science is a process.)

You can, if you want, develop an entire life philosophy based on belief in the non-existent. that would definitely be a second-best tool-- and I say it as should know, in certain areas of my life.

 

[1sickbastard]

(all topics are allowed in AH)
See, e.g. the Book of Job.

I love the Book of Job!
The notion that God and Satan where hangin out with each other, then decide to fuck with this poor shmuck to settle a bet is freakin' Hi-larious! Many take the moral form the story to be 'Faith will overcome'. I take the moral to be 'Life is sometimes just gonna fuck with you, so deal with it'.

 

[sr71plt]

I love the Book of Job!
The notion that God and Satan where hangin out with each other, then decide to fuck with this poor shmuck to settle a bet is freakin' Hi-larious! Many take the moral form the story to be 'Faith will overcome'. I take the moral to be 'Life is sometimes just gonna fuck with you, so deal with it'.

I hate the book, and it has helped me turn from Christianity (down deep where I don't have to listen to my Methodist minister sister). I can't accept a God that plays with his/her/its creations like that. But then I remember that the Bible was just written by a bunch of old men wanting to maintain control over the concept of a god and of other people, and I think, as was noted up the line, what do they know about what God does or likes/wants?

Song of Solomon is a happier read.

 

[Pure]

reply to 1sick and sr71

Originally Posted by 1sickbastard
I love the Book of Job!
The notion that God and Satan where hangin out with each other, then decide to fuck with this poor shmuck to settle a bet is freakin' Hi-larious! Many take the moral form the story to be 'Faith will overcome'. I take the moral to be 'Life is sometimes just gonna fuck with you, so deal with it'.

sr71: I hate the book, and it has helped me turn from Christianity (down deep where I don't have to listen to my Methodist minister sister). I can't accept a God that plays with his/her/its creations like that. But then I remember that the Bible was just written by a bunch of old men wanting to maintain control over the concept of a god and of other people, and I think, as was noted up the line, what do they know about what God does or likes/wants?

it seems both of you are focussed on the IN essentials, the first page of a not-so-short story.

the God/Satan conversation and the latter's getting the go ahead is what you might call a dramatic premise or artifice. the point is that there's evil in the world. the assumption is that God does not directly just send pure evil.

the conclusion is that in some sense God allows it, and this is embodied in the artifice employed. there are two standard alternatives here, and the premise goes along with 1).


1) it's from Satan, or some evil force, or 2) it's from the inherent defects/limitations of the material world. but that's another discussion.

the point is, "shit happens" and if God is anything like the Jewish/Christian notions, then he must allow it, so to say. so the task, as 1sick says is 'deal with it' [without getting angry the universe or blaming God for directy bringing the evil about.]

it's also relevant to say that besides 'shit happens,' the 'book' shows that a person devotedly and steadfastly following God, is NOT going to have his truth or loyalty weakened. a vague analogy: you are 18 and shoplift. you're prosecuted and sent to jail for a month (part of a 'get tough policy' at the local mall). while all this is happening, you appeal to your parents for rescue or at least aid, and get neither. *nonetheless* you can readily say, "my trust and devotion to my parents is unshaken" as well as "i have no reason believe they don't love me."

 

[Pure]

note to stella

pure, previouslystella. you say 'the best tools', but it *sounds like youre saying that empirical research and scientific-type investigations are the ONLY tools for understanding the real world.

if you're NOT saying that, what other tools do you recognize besides what you call the 'best' ones?

and what is your empirical basis for your choice of 'best' tools and/or second best ones?


well, duh. Why try to a board in half with a nail file if you have a saw.

What tools do you use to understand the real world-- and, by the way, how are you defining "the real world" because it occurs to me, "the real world" that I live in IS empirical by definition, and open to investigation (not always successful investigation on the first, second, hundreth attempt, but science is a process.)

You can, if you want, develop an entire life philosophy based on belief in the non-existent. that would definitely be a second-best tool-- and I say it as should know, in certain areas of my life.
====
pure's current reply:

you don't answer either question, so i presume you have no good reasons or arguments for your claims about "best" (or maybe only?) tools. your position is of simple dogmatism, against which i won't argue.

 

[Stella_Omega]

====
pure's current reply:

you don't answer either question, so i presume you have no good reasons or arguments for your claims about "best" (or maybe only?) tools. your position is of simple dogmatism, against which i won't argue.

You mean you expect me to explain how I've made unbelievably stupid decisions based on faith?

You go first.



ETA: Why do Xtians expect that non believers will read the Bible? It's meaningless to me, I don't believe in God. It reminds me of those old chain letters that list dooms and rewards if you send the thing on or not-- and say; "This is true whether you believe or not."

 

[PoppingTom]

the point is that there's evil in the world. the assumption is that God does not directly just send pure evil.

What if the evil in the world is all about misunderstandings ?

What if the good/evil thing only works if you believe in something or somebody at last ?

Whta if I'm Jesus and forgive you for not understanding me ?

 

[sr71plt]

it seems both of you are focussed on the IN essentials, the first page of a not-so-short story.

It seems YOU'VE left the human element out. I'm not surprised; it sort of goes with your regurgitation in forum discussions here of Internet postings you find as if if it appears on the Internet it must be some sort of law that everyone must follow. You often are so taken with pie-in-the-sky theory that you leave the reality of humanity out of your discussions.

In Job, I find the use of a human being to toss around in a game of theory as something I don't want any god of mine being a part of. So sue me.

 

[Stella_Omega]

It seems YOU'VE left the human element out. I'm not surprised; it sort of goes with your regurgitation in forum discussions here of Internet postings you find as if if it appears on the Internet it must be some sort of law that everyone must follow. You often are so taken with pie-in-the-sky theory that you leave the reality of humanity out of your discussions.

In Job, I find the use of a human being to toss around in a game of theory as something I don't want any god of mine being a part of. So sue me.

Well see, if you believe in God, there is no human element. But that's not dogma. It's just the way things are. Right?

 

[sr71plt]

Well see, if you believe in God, there is no human element. But that's not dogma. It's just the way things are. Right?

No, not really. The New Testament is a humanization of the Christian religions. Christianity explicitly was born in the humanization of God ("God came down.") And the Protestant Reformation is rooted in "God came down further and is directly approachable" over the Catholic and Greek Orthodox beliefs.

Most of the contradictions (of which there is a huge pile of them) in Christianity are rooted in not sloughing off the Old Testament when, in the terms of the newer religion, God came down to also become human.

This is meant to be an explanation (you asked), not proseltyzing.