Opinion of internet atheists

[ingemann]

BRTD, you treat religion worse than even the most annoying atheist of Christian fundie does. Because you treat religion as an accessory. To you it’s about what people wear, what people listen to and what they do with their hands a church and how hot the sermon leader is. That’s a twisted sense of religion buddy because you’re a vapid self absorbed sh-t. There’s nothing outside of you. Nothing outside of what you do, what you wear, what you smoke, what you listen to, where you shop or where you live. Everything can only be viewed through a Minneapolis based BRTD shaped prism. You can’t even understand why other Christians believe different things or worship different things or why people who aren’t Christian think your ‘Jesus is cool’ mantra is nothing more than t-shirt slogan psychology with no substance. You don’t care what people believe (or even what you believe) or ever take the time to think things through. If someone talks about a mass, or prayer or way of worship that means something to them because it’s not what you like you dismiss it; ‘Oh he’s wearing a suit, oh he’s playing an organ, I don’t have the attention span to deal with that because life for me is one big f-cking party.’

You’re the one who takes a two storey high dump on people’s beliefs BRTD and you have the cheek to call us boring? You’ve been posting the same topics, polling the same issues and generally shoehorning in things you like into conversations even if it has nothing to do with the subject on here for ten years. Grow up and move on. You think Opebo is cool, because you’re too unoriginal to come up with anything like his posting style and demeanour, or anything original at all. You know what? I’m pretty sure Opebo thinks you’re a dick.

You're right everytime BRTD write som,ething about religion I feel like someone takes a big dump on my belief. It's like he take a twisted mirror up and show religion as something ugly and distasteful, another consumer item for the masses.

But at the same time he also show the internet atheist's problems. No atheist have ever made me question my belief, their arguments are shallow and old, they bring nothing new to argument, it's just the same old argument we have all heard before or thought about ourselves. BRTD on the other hand in his incredible shallowness bring something new on the table in his inattentive mockery of religion. By transforming religion into a fashion item he make more people question their faith than the shallow smugness and tired arguments of internet atheists does.

[All Along The Watchtower]

No one here has claimed science is inherently bad, by the way. Those of us who are skeptical of science's own claims to absolute truth or "reality", are just stating our own views and concerns.

Science has made it possible to destroy the entire world many times over. Who needs God, when you have that kind of power in human hands?

[Sbane]

When science facts out a fact (which is then peer reviewed), it actually is the absolute truth. The earth is not 6,000 years old. That is the truth.

[DC Al Fine]

When science facts out a fact (which is then peer reviewed), it actually is the absolute truth. The earth is not 6,000 years old. That is the truth.

Yeah just like Newtonian mechanics... whoops quantum mechanics is truth now

[ingemann]

When science facts out a fact (which is then peer reviewed), it actually is the absolute truth. The earth is not 6,000 years old. That is the truth.

Of course it's not, that goes against the entire idea what science should be. A scientifitic fact are nothing more than a approximate theory of reality which hasn't been disproven yet. The point about science is not to find the truth, but to seek it.
What you do is setting up science as a atheist religion of progress rather than threat it as what it is; a philosophical tool.

[JQ]

The Internet was one of the first real forums for atheism to be expressed openly, so a lot of pent-up anger within the atheist community has been spat out from the bowels of the Internet over the past two decades. As an "Internet atheist", I voted neutral. Most atheist are not really militant in nature, although the Internet has made them seem that way.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

It often seems like the internet equivalent of X is X's more boring, shallower and shriller mirror image.

Not here though, self-proclaimed atheists are usually just awful (says an Atheist).

The Internet was one of the first real forums for atheism to be expressed openly, so a lot of pent-up anger within the atheist community has been spat out from the bowels of the Internet over the past two decades. As an "Internet atheist", I voted neutral. Most atheist are not really militant in nature, although the Internet has made them seem that way.

Hahahaha... what absolute bollocks.

[Sbane]

When science facts out a fact (which is then peer reviewed), it actually is the absolute truth. The earth is not 6,000 years old. That is the truth.

Yeah just like Newtonian mechanics... whoops quantum mechanics is truth now

Touche! The word "absolute" is a bit much, but if you want to disprove something you must do it through the scientific method, just like the discovery of quantum mechanics. Until then, it is the truth as we know it. I don't see why myths should take precedence over that.

[Sbane]

When science facts out a fact (which is then peer reviewed), it actually is the absolute truth. The earth is not 6,000 years old. That is the truth.

Of course it's not, that goes against the entire idea what science should be. A scientifitic fact are nothing more than a approximate theory of reality which hasn't been disproven yet. The point about science is not to find the truth, but to seek it.
What you do is setting up science as a atheist religion of progress rather than threat it as what it is; a philosophical tool.

I don't think it is an atheist religion of progress. That sort of thinking just strikes me as bizarre, paranoid and delusional.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, science can be disproven. The word "absolute" should not be used, no. The earth is not 6,000 years old. If you can disprove prove, then you must do it through the scientific method, not based on what some dude wrote 2,000 years ago.

[DemPGH]

Thank goodness Zyklon-B is the exception.

Is it? I'd like to agree with you, because I'd like to agree that Zyklon-B is the exception to anything, but how exactly is this to be determined? (I ask primarily in the interest of clarifying the terms of discussion, not because I don't understand what you're saying.)

Well, against the overall good that scientific progress has wrought, I think it's a little asinine to bring up Zyklon-B as a reason why scientific methodology and progress are not beneficial, but then again I am considering what is surely a lockstep, conformist humanities perspective in bringing up something like that, and in Mikado's jaw-dropping preference for lack of knowledge over knowledge. You know, there are people who like to know how things work, and how things are ordered, and it's not enough to just make up something out of the fantasy world to explain it.

Truthfully, to cite an example that affects us on a tangible, everyday level, I don't particularly find it very inviting to go back to a time when the life expectancy was 30, there were plagues, people lived amidst animal dung, and we used torches and fires in the middle of our dwellings to keep warm, and of course breathed in all that smoke all day and night. Science has benefitted humans from cooking to medicine to building tools to both explore and to make our lives easier. I don't see any further need for justification or rationale at this point in time. It's in Francis Bacon's The New Organon. And I see it as an extreme expression of ARROGANCE to demand any philosophic rationale beyond that.

Frankly, and I do not want to be overly presumptuous, but if Al and Mikado represent the humanities perspective, I am finished defending the humanities. That's it for that, and in that attitude I have been educated, but I surely don't think that kind of view is uniform. If it is, the folks in the humanities hide it reasonably well.

The point isn't "science can do bad things," it's that "scientific 'progress' is not inherently good, but its advocates take it to be as such and make little effort to philosophically justify that contention."  There's an arrogance involved in people attempting to bring order to chaos or whatnot and neglecting to realize that a substantial amount of humanity finds refuge, beauty, and grandeur in that chaos that they're beating back and don't want it to vanish.

Put simply, in the battle between trying to further understand the universe and accepting life, nature, and the universe itself as chaotic, beautiful, and terrible unknowable mysteries.  I side with the chaos over the order, with celebrating the unknown over the efforts to "know," and I resent the idea that "science" is ideologically championed as "a good thing" that should be blindly furthered without questioning.


EDIT: I should clarify.  I keep seeing goals like "furthering human knowledge" given without seeing even an attempt to justify why "furthering human knowledge" is in any way a desirable goal using any sort of moral philosophy.  Science's advocates have become arrogant enough that they neglect to use any sort of philosophic framework to justify the pursuit of more "truth," which, like all information, is quite possible of having drastic, lethal results.  Astronomy improved trajectories for rockets and ballistic missiles, aeronautics allowed for the deaths of millions in aerial bombing raids, chemistry allowed (and allows) for mass poisoning, biology for the intentional cultivation of illness, and physics tampers with the fundamental building blocks of the universe and unimaginable power.  Why is this allowed?  How can scientists justify their "right" to further research in these fields?  Where is the philosophic justification for why the furthering of knowledge in these fields is at all desirable?  Science used to be a subdiscipline of philosophy, which was as it should be.  Its divorcing from morality and its complementary status to metaphysics has produced a field allowed to tamper with the very foundational building blocks of life without any sort of extensive soul searching as to why this quest to further humanity's understanding of the universe is even a desirable goal to begin with.

Francis Bacon's Novum Organum - The New Organon. Read that. It's the ultimate expression of humility. It's overwhelmingly arrogant to simply make things up to explain the workings of the universe. I could turn your reasoning right around and say, what justification can you provide for wishing to do that in era of electron microscopes, atom smashers, and the Hubble telescope?

[Antonio the Sixth]

When science facts out a fact (which is then peer reviewed), it actually is the absolute truth. The earth is not 6,000 years old. That is the truth.

Of course it's not, that goes against the entire idea what science should be. A scientifitic fact are nothing more than a approximate theory of reality which hasn't been disproven yet. The point about science is not to find the truth, but to seek it.
What you do is setting up science as a atheist religion of progress rather than threat it as what it is; a philosophical tool.

Very true.

Reality does, and always will, surpass our understanding of it - and yet our understanding of it keeps improving.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

DemPGH, you are aware of Francis Bacon's attitude towards Imperialism, right? And no you can't properly separate that from his 'scientific' opinions as he didn't.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Also, thanks Afleitch for writing the elaborate response to Mikado which I wanted to write but lacked the time to - and putting it much better than I could.

I would just add this: Obviously the expansion of human knowledge does not entail a good for humanity, but it creates a potential, of which humanity can (and in many cases, does) make good use. Bad use is also bound to happen, of course, but overall it's hard to deny that scientific progress has brought more good than evil.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Also, thanks Afleitch for writing the elaborate response to Mikado which I wanted to write but lacked the time to - and putting it much better than I could.

I would just add this: Obviously the expansion of human knowledge does not entail a good for humanity, but it creates a potential, of which humanity can (and in many cases, does) make good use. Bad use is also bound to happen, of course, but overall it's hard to deny that scientific progress has brought more good than evil.

But was that due to scientific progress?

Or rather, I should say, was scientific progress (however we may define) a sufficient condition for the good that you speak?

[DemPGH]

DemPGH, you are aware of Francis Bacon's attitude towards Imperialism, right? And no you can't properly separate that from his 'scientific' opinions as he didn't.

Bacon's empire, as I always understood it, was one of knowledge. Otherwise, imperialism as we understand it was the order of the day at that time, and no one - no one practiced it with more vigor than the Holy Church.

But let's say Bacon doesn't do it for you still. There is Isaac Newton's "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy" from his Principia that lay out beautifully and succinctly the same thing. And I wouldn't call Newton a militant atheist or aggressive atheist or anything of that sort.

I find these sorts of things liberating, though, because they keep us from fooling ourselves with knowledge that's simply not real or will eventually be found to be erroneous.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Also, thanks Afleitch for writing the elaborate response to Mikado which I wanted to write but lacked the time to - and putting it much better than I could.

I would just add this: Obviously the expansion of human knowledge does not entail a good for humanity, but it creates a potential, of which humanity can (and in many cases, does) make good use. Bad use is also bound to happen, of course, but overall it's hard to deny that scientific progress has brought more good than evil.

But was that due to scientific progress?

Or rather, I should say, was scientific progress (however we may define) a sufficient condition for the good that you speak?

Obviously not. Scientific progress per se is not sufficient to bring good to humanity any more than it is sufficient to bring evil to it. Scientific progress simply provides humans with additional power, and then it is up to humans to use this power for good. This entails that scientific research and its applications should obviously be regulated and kept under check by society so as to ensure that the less evil possible results from it.

But I would maintain that the quest for knowledge, at the abstract level, is a noble goal, and, with regard to its potential consequences if well used, is worth pursuing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Know what? I think this bears repeating:

Though the nature of the missing of the point is quite instructive as to why this kind of discussion is so frequently lamentably unproductive in almost all possible respects.

Important bit highlighted.

[Sbane]

Also, thanks Afleitch for writing the elaborate response to Mikado which I wanted to write but lacked the time to - and putting it much better than I could.

I would just add this: Obviously the expansion of human knowledge does not entail a good for humanity, but it creates a potential, of which humanity can (and in many cases, does) make good use. Bad use is also bound to happen, of course, but overall it's hard to deny that scientific progress has brought more good than evil.

But was that due to scientific progress?

Or rather, I should say, was scientific progress (however we may define) a sufficient condition for the good that you speak?

It depends about what good we are speaking of, but most medicines were created using the scientific method (not counting the natural ones, but even there the products have been purified in many instances to lower allergic reactions). That body of knowledge that the scientific method has accumulated over the years was necessary for the good things to be created.

Why do you think science was not necessary for modern medicine and other good things about our modern world?

[King]

Atheists who write books are far more aggravating.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Atheists who write books are far more aggravating.

Richard Dawkins and Ayn Rand are two of the most aggravating, annoying, and awful humans ever to publish their works, so I have to agree here.

[DC Al Fine]

Atheists who write books are far more aggravating.

Richard Dawkins and Ayn Rand are two of the most aggravating, annoying, and awful humans ever to publish their works, so I have to agree here.

+1

[afleitch]

Down with the free expression of ideas!

And I think Ayn Rand is a c-nt

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Atheists who write books are far more aggravating.

Richard Dawkins and Ayn Rand are two of the most aggravating, annoying, and awful humans ever to publish their works, so I have to agree here.

Dawkins is a jackass, but he's nowhere near Rand.

[afleitch]

I find it quite ironic actually. I mean I personally find the Bible disgusting when it's being spat in my face on the street to undermine me, but beautiful when I browse though Psalms. I think the Koran is more beautiful than that.  I doubt BTRD has even read the Blind Watchmaker or the Selfish Gene which is also ironic given his love of memes...

[John Dibble]

I doubt BTRD has even read the Blind Watchmaker or the Selfish Gene which is also ironic given his love of memes...

BRTD probably still hasn't even finished reading the Bible (frankly I kind of doubt he ever will) and yet he's perfectly comfortable telling us about how great Jesus and God are. It comes at no surprise that he feels free to comment on other works he's never read.