Yes.

No. Being irrational and improving society do not contradict.

It's possible to do something good for bad reasons.

In addition, the subject upon which the person is irrational can be unrelated to the person's acts, i.e., Martin Luther King Jr. can have other reasons for doing the things he did. An action could easily be conducted neither because of Christianity nor contrary to Christianity, but simply separate from it. 

Careful with the "We" and "say that Christians are irrational" part of that.  I lost my Official Handbook of the Church of Atheism, so I can't look up the specific chapter and verse, but since then, I've come to the belief that theists, by virtue of believing in god(s) are necessarily irrational with regard to that particular belief, and probably will be irrational with regard to things directly influenced by their god-belief, but I would never say that theists are less rational people in areas of their life where their theism either wasn't a significant influence, or agreed with rationalism.  (For instance, even that asshole, Yahweh, said it's a good idea not to shit right outside of camp.)

In other words, whenever a person believes in a God who promotes betterment of society in a particular way, or when they believe in a God who doesn't have much to say on the subject at all, or when their personal beliefs override the irrational beliefs inspired by the loonier parts of their theism,  they can easily affect changes for the betterment of society without having to give up the irrational belief in a god.

 What the hell are you talking about?

No offense, but I have no clue.  What militant atheist movement?  When's the last time you saw an atheist with a gun in front of... well... anything?

What prominent secularists, and what obscure and obtuse ways do they want to change society?

How can these alleged militant atheists harm a nonexistant movement?

In other words... what the hell are you talking about?  Be specific.  Cite sources.  Try to use specific subjects for your sentences instead of vague terms.

"Faith" in gods is by definition irrational.

Moreover, as there is not a shread of evidence of gods, it's illogical, as well.

I'm not speaking for anyone else as these blog length threads bore the shit outta me, but I did notice that at the top of a response to Ham.

Ham can speak for himself...
I'm not defending what he or other recent sters said, as I didn't bother reading them.

Yes, because the idiot atheist creates his own version of what irrational means, so he can claim "faith" in god is irrational. Faith in god is no less rational than having faith in "love" or faith in a principle or an idea.

This is silly. If my mother were accused of murdering 100s of little children during the times that I was off at school, I wouldn't need evidence presentable in a court of law, to believe she didn't. Irrationality might set in, in a refusal to accept evidence that she just might have. A better measure of irrationality is not based on what one believes, but in an individuals capability to contemplate and reflect on questions and doubts concerning those beliefs. It's perfectly rational to accept things as true for purely subjective reasons. If we didn't know much about evolution it's perfectly rational to believe that our physical composition is a product of intelligent design, for the same reason we perceive complex structures such as computers as intelligently designed. It may be irrational today to hold that the world is flat, just not so a few hundred years ago.

What renders modern ID theorist as irrational, is their inability to contemplate questions otherwise, their inability to contemplate the arguments against such a position, and the evidence on which these arguments are made.

Our dimwitted atheist, has become accustom to using the term irrational, in such a memetic sort of way, they hear others applying it to God beliefs, so they just mimic the accusations, without ever reflecting on what exactly that means, or how exactly "irrationality" is to be defined, and even hold a naive notion of "evidence" as only that which can be used to make a case that others have to agree with.

I don't have evidence to convince you to believe in God, I do have "evidence" to convince me to believe in God, even it's of a subjective quality. You have a demand for a sort of evidence, that I have no such demand for, in fact I'm rather repulsed by. The god you seek to be convinced of, is to me one not even worthy to be "believed" in, in any meaningful sort of way.

Because I object to being semantically linked to people who would solve problems with violence, I will henceforth refer to myself and those with whom I consider myself a  compatriot (Harris, Dawkins, et al) as "atheist activists."  You'll forgive me if I do not give ground by accepting your innuendo laden moniker, I hope.

Please read the following essay for an example of how a theist based institutionalization of values actually caused poverty while giving every indication of trying to alleviate it.

Myth, Sexuality and Culture:  The Early Influence of the Church

Next, please read the following essay, detailing why anything theistically based which claims to have a solution other than the scientific one is necessarily adding nothing or affecting unnecessarily negative consequences:

Why Theism Cannot Add Good to Naturalism

Please read the following essay detailing why Rational Materialism is the only possible source of reliable knowledge, and why any religious claim to truth is necessarily unreliable at best:

Science:  The ONLY Possible Source of Knowledge

When you've finished reading that, you should be prepared to agree with or offer a reasoned, specific refutation to the following statement:

While religious institutions and theists do often perform acts which are beneficial to society, their theism and/or religion cannot be said to have contributed in any [i]good way to their efforts, which could have been accomplished with at least as much effectiveness without the addition of theist beliefs.

Huh?  Do you mean... atheists who contribute to the Salvation Army lose their Atheist Decoder Ring?  I don't get it.

Hell if I know.  I do know that if religious irrationality encourages people to behave in ways that increase poverty, then the religion is worse, since it is exacerbating a problem that is apparently ubiquitous, but not necessarily rampant.

I do not oppose the good actions of theists who do good.  I oppose their irrational and dangerous actions.  That's what I write about, and that's what I fight.  You're just sending people on a wild goose chase, as I have already happily conceded that religion doesn't make people completely irrational or evil.  As you've hopefully read in my essays, it unnecessarily exacerbates the bad tendencies in people.

You're setting up a strawman, implying that those who oppose religious irrationality are calling all theists evil, or saying that theists are incapable of good acts.  While it's sad that we are so often caricatured by theists and pacifist atheists, I don't see why the actual, legitimate beliefs which we espouse and hold should be altered to fit what we ought to do if we happened to be as foolish as the people we are portrayed to be.

Ahem... Please quote and cite Sam Harris justifying torture.  I haven't read it.  If you are correct, then I will certainly oppose that statement.  As for the Islamic peace movements, could you please tell me who they are and what influence they're having on the Islamic Fundamentalists?  If they're not making a significant dent in the overwhelmingly large Islamic Non-Peace movement, why should they be mentioned?  Does Sam Harris, or anyone else, owe you the favor of mentioning every single exception to the overwhelmingly consistent rule?

I have no qualms with this statement.  What's it got to do with me?  I am not fighting news networks.

I'm also not a fan of American Imperialism.  So what?

Again, please show me these groups, and give me some way to judge their effectiveness against the people, both in America and the Middle East, who are promoting violence, hatred, and religious divisions.  Even if most people are moderates, if they cannot or will not effectively control the zealots, then why should I praise them for not being violent?

I've read pretty much everything Dawkins has written.  Though I do not agree with everything he says about religion, I do know that he is not so naive as to suggest that any action as complicated as an international terror attack is completely caused by religion.  Again, you're setting up a strawman to knock down.  Dawkins, et al, are quoted every time they open their mouth in public.  If they have sometimes overstated or oversimplified the atheist position, and I'm sure they have, then should they not be given the same latitude you are demanding for the religious?  Do you propose that I should let Osama Bin Laden be the voice of all Islam?  Should his every utterance be taken as the gospel and incontrovertible reality of the situation?  If not, then why are you demanding that I take every quote-mined snippet uttered by an atheist activist as indicative of some wide-spread movement among atheists to create strawmen of theists?

An interesting opinion.  I do not feel the same way, and I daresay I know a lot more about this then you do.  Until I see something more than an unsubstantiated opinion, I hope you'll forgive me for not jumping on your bandwagon.

OK, I fail to understand why positive social change must be coupled with rationality. Example:

On December 16, 1773, three ships arrived in Boston harbor loaded with tea that the government hoped to sell at half the normal price. Mind you, the government bought it for much less than normal and were not passing the saving on to the colonists but even so, the good people of Boston had an opportunity to buy tea for half price.

That evening, the men of the city gathered at the local Masonic Lodge for a meeting and oh boy, were they pissed off over the matter! Lacking a time machine to go back and view the matter in person, one can only guess at what happened but I am sure that at some point, someone stood up and proposed that the tea be dumped in the harbor. On getting a rousing positive response, I would bet that that guy shouted “Who is with me?” The rest, as they say, is history (pun intended).

How that was rational, I have no idea but that is part of the reason why I live in the nation that basically invented the standard of modern government for the rest of the civilized world. So I may be a bit confused on this but I really don't see the connection between rational and positive social change.

Gee Hamby, you don't know me very well do you? One of the things that I simply must do before I die is go to a range where I can rent a Taurus Raging Bull 454. Most people around here will not know the details but that is a revolver that you can take down an elephant with. A variant of that is the big fucking gun that Mel Gibson used in the target range scene in the first Lethal Weapon movie. It costs USD $1 every time you pull the trigger (my normal routine being more like USD $0.05 per trigger pull).

 Sam Harris does spend about 7 pages in "End of Faith" discussing and comparing "judicial torture", such as explicitly supported by Alan Dershowitz,  which he feels deeply emotionally repelled by, and the somehow less intense feelings generally aroused by "collateral damage" by US forces, even though it seems logically the latter should be more repugnant because of the arguably more nasty injuries and deaths visited on many clearly innocent victims, compared to the more psychological and 'temporary' impact on specific people who have either been caught in the act of attacking 'our side' or strongly suspected of it.

He says

Do you or do you not think that the fact that Mandella/MLK tapped into the religious group mentality helped them?

It would have been much harder for them to accomplish their goals, had they not tapped into an already existing group structure.

You seem to have a selective understanding. Group mentalities work both ways. They don't magically change based on whether the deed is good or bad.

Here watch

R=Religious

N=Non religious

G=Good

B=Bad

[edit]

To make it clear, G and B denote good or bad with respect to natural morality. This is to prevent the "calling it good" semantics.

[/edit]

First column is the religious satus [N or R]

First row is morality derived [G or B]

Row matching status is action [G or B]

 {edit}

You seem to be putting the G/B for the religious, yet I bring up that theists get their morality from the same place as atheist, ergo the N row should be the same as R row]

{/edit}

I am quite confused that you say that if the good can can be overridden by religion, yet bad can't. Or better put, you mention what happens if the religious goes against the good, but not the bad.

Here's a table for religious

A 'C' prefix for good or bad denotes that it goes against the religion.

You seem to propose the following table:

Shouldn't the CB be filled with G?

No need to get your panties in a twist, I was pointing out a similar thing, but I don't think there's a need to go off the rocker, since I want Hamby to actually address the questions I asked and points I brought up rather than give him an excuse not to.

I'm saying that don't give Hamby a reason to dismiss your post.

He does it all the time with me. Apparently taking academic courses in mathematics [including stats] and thinking numbers and calculations have to be used to show a trend means that numbers aren't required to show a statistical trend.

I've gotten used to it and have come to expect it quite frankly.

The struggle for civil rights
in the 50's and 60's did have
many religious leaders. However, some leaders were not Ministers or known for their religious beliefs.

As to the followers of the civil rights movement. IT DID NOT SUCCEED BECAUSE IT APPEALED TO FOLLOWERS WHO WERE RELIGIOUS!

THE FOLLOWERS OF THE KKK WERE AND ARE RELIGIOUS!

No. These men were leaders, as they were ministers, BUT that had nothing to do with the REASONS PEOPLE FOLLOWED THEM.

Hey Cappy, I understand.

I'm always flipped out.

BTW. The caps were only to draw attention, not yelling.
I've been on the Net too long to get pissed off at my PC or PDA. lol

Yes, we love the divisions and delusions. There's a thin line between good and bad people, if the situations were the same the distinctions would be fairly null void. It's a delusions of one's morality, brought on by prospertity that makes the need for moral behavior fairly non-existent (there little reason to rob when everyone has a equal piece of available bread.), to see it as reigning supreme in a life of fortune, and assuming that carries over it situations of misforturne. It's all a delusion to characterize a morally good person, by his acts, and external conduct, for which the reasons for them may be far from moral. It would be a delusion to claim that rich kids are more moral than the poor kids, because they are less likely to act violently, and cruelly.

The line between good and bad people is a thin win, and easily crossed when need be. 

Really, religion muddys the water of moral behavior? The atheist is lest muddled in his moral behavior than the theist? And this is not you peddling a faith position? Do you have any scientific study or research to support this claim, and would you like to be honest and say you pulled it out your ass, because it gave you the warm and fuzzies?

For the most part, people tailor their religious beliefs to fit their naturally and culturally derived morality. Religious institutions, in general, conform to nature and social zeitgeist as well. 

I think, most of the time, it doesn't work at all.

The differences are much more striking in science than in morality.  

I'm not a huge fan of the term "natural morality", even things that we find to be instinctual immoral, can in fact by another standard be moral. Homosexuality is one such example, whose opposition arises from an instinctual repulsion, that some males perceives as a threat to the purity of male bonds. Individuals find homosexuality to be wrong from the same instinctual bases for which they determine other forms of immorality such as incest, wrong. 

The other erroneous thinking on your part assumes, that what we deem as instinctively evil, and act upon, we then perceive as "good".  I have difficult time staying faithful in relationship, though I find cheating on the women I'm with to be totally wrong, I act on my sexual desires regardless, but I don't engage it calling "bad" good. Immorality is in fact is often acting on our instincts, and often times acting moral can be acting in opposition to those instincts. 

Children who are taught Abstinence only education, and yet engage in sexual activity, are not necessarily acting in accordance to what they feel isn't wrong in the first place, they may just as well be acting on what they feel is wrong to begin with, like my friend who slept with her cousins fiancee. She acted on it, not because she felt there was nothing wrong with it, but the allures of doing what's wrong are often quite strong. This is the Pauline dilemma, of doing what we perceive as wrong, because we have a will present that makes it alluring.  

Captain, I really don't see where your problem is.  I've addressed the issue of "circular causality" between religion and "society."  Even if society "causes" religion, which "causes" bad things to happen, the problem of religion being bad still exists.  I'm happy to concede that anything which happens in society is a product of human nature and society.  My argument is simply that we are equally capable of controlling our religious instincts and our instincts for sexism, racism, and cruelty to "others" (those in the out group).

Sure, religion is a product of society, so ultimate "cause" for religious ills can be traced to human nature.  That's a banal point.  All human experience is our genetic programming reacting to the environment.  The effort to improve the human experience is really the effort to change the environment such that people react in better ways, forming a better society.  My little corner of this effort is getting people to stop believing things on faith.  Religion is the biggest offender in this category.

Hmmm, perhaps, in most cases, religion doesn't directly oppose natural morality, but manipulates it.

For example, 9/11. I'm certain, that even to the highjackers, part of their conscience shouted that something was wrong with flying planes into buildings and killing thousands of innocent people. So, Islam doesn't just slap terrorists on the forehead and tell that it's okay; it utilizes many opposing instincts to overcome the repulsion against killing innocent people.

- It turns Westerners into an out-group.

- Honor for their families. (in-groups)

- Virgins in paradise. That's self interest + sex.

- They're following the will of Allah, so they're actually doing the right thing and they're middlemen, following orders.  

On top of that, they believe America threatens their people and their way of life, which is not entirely inaccurate. Often, terrorists may feel that they are fighting in self-defense from America, and that's usually validated to a certain extent as well.

Additionally, as MOMN stated, not all natural morality is spiffy. Opposition to gay marriage is partly rooted in natural morality; men are disgusted by the thought of other men having sex, probably because they're not reproducing. Yet, gay marriage is also strongly supported on the left because we have the concepts of fairness, human rights, etc. So many of our instincts contradict.

Thus, what we really need to do is to combine natural morality with reason to determine what ought to be. I think this is where religion can do the most damage.

Well, you're quite "certain" is meaningless, and speaks more of the limited form of life you come from than anything else.

If i were to watch my mother killed, or members of my community dying everyday, if I was exposed to these sort of happening every 15 minutes. Or if I was like Nabeel Masood, a 16-year-old who exploded himself in the Israeli port of Ashdod the previous April. Who Scott Atran (a scientist who actually studies suicide terrorist) tells the story "shortly before the attack, Nabeel had received word that he had received a scholarship to study in England, but the two cousins he most loved were then killed in an Israeli raid, so he went to the Mosque and prepared himself to die.", I'd be far more than capable of committing a heinous sort of attack in retaliation. 

I have a deeply committed sense of love for my family and friends, and even for my close community, that if someone were to murder or rape my sister, I'd be more than capable and fairly driven to murder the perpetrator, and perhaps even his loved ones, to make him feel what my loss felt like.

I understand our typical atheist has such a cookie cutter notion of human nature, from where your "I'm certain" is derived from. Those conditions of suffering, and misery from which a sense of depravity manifests itself, are so removed from their own comfortable lives that they barely get it. Its why you hold that mythical belief that it's religion and not the capacity of human nature that motivated the terrorist. What they miss is that human history is drenched with the heinous stench of human cruelty, not to long ago we were a nation who found spectacle, a family event, to witness the lynching of men, and even children. So much for being so certain huh? DO you feel those white families, had a conscious that shouted that there was something wrong with what's being done here? or did they relish it with enjoyment, that even if there was a cry out of consciousness, it's was too muted to ever have any meaning. 

I've always been quite prone to facepalming when exposed to village atheist who attempt to expound on human nature, particulary in relation to morality, because it's so naive, and so detached from reality, and so candy coated that one has to gag. 

Well, religion was not an important factor, and this is the view of nearly every person and organizations that actually studies the matter. The 9/11 terrorist, were far from the most religious of Muslims, Muhammad Atta had a penchant for gambling, boos, and hookers, and surely not an example of a righteous Muslim. In fact mosque attendance is a negative indicator for potential suicide terrorist (check out Scott Atrans Beyond Belief videos). Individuals that attend a mosque regularly are less likely to become suicide terrorist than those that don't. 

The study by MI5, the arab terrorist, are typically religious novices: "Few were brought up in strongly religious households with many lacking religious knowledge and rarely practising their faith. Some were involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes."

The village atheist hypothesis that arab terrorist are motivated by their religion, has been shown to be false by nearly every scientific endevour that studies the matter; the actual evidence is actually contrary to that view. 

"The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions. . . . Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland”~ Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago's,  "Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism".

It's about time the atheist drops the blame 9/11 on religion line, since this is contrary to the actual facts. 

Links to said studies?

I've read Robert Pape, and am currently reading Mia Bloom.

But I haven't seen the studies by Atran.

Well, your "hopefully" amounts to being no more than a religious delusion. Look no further than children who enjoyed the torturing of animals, such as a girl friend of mine who enjoyed throwing cats into trash can, even when often they stopped moving all together. The instinct to inflict cruelty is no less "basic" than the instinct not to inflict it. Bears are capable of eating their own cubs, yet our atheist has such a candy coated view of human nature, as something pure and good, unlike the nature of other animals, but just corrupted by external forces such as religion. 

Really? The military training attempts de-sensitize people to their natural revulsion? This comes as news to me, and I've served several years in the marine corps, as an artillery man. Please, I would love to hear about the sort of training you're talking about?  

Secondly our revulsions are lessened by continual exposure to the things we found to be revolting. Roaches are more revolting the first time you find them in your home, but become less revolting the more time you spent around them. My parents who had to kill their own animals when they were growing up, are far less revolted, in fact not revolted at all, when witnessing the butchering of animals for meat, though I with the comfort of being able to buy my meal at a grocery store, totally blind to how it got there, could barely strum the courage to milk  a cow. 

A society in which starving children are a rarity are far more prone to be revolted at the notion of impoverished children, than a society for whom impoverished children are a facet of their every day lives. If you were to walk the streets of Bombay, you'd find the multitudes of privileged people as indifferent and almost oblivious to the suffering around them.

I've run into many Marines, particulary senior ones who are cold and so indifferent to the notion of death, who could kill and who have killed with out barely a wink of remorse or feeling at the taking of lives, it's wasn't training, or teachings that got them their, but rather their continual exposure to the dying, to the loss of friends they witnessed, to the countless lives they'd already taken. 

If there was ever a topic to NOT call Doomy out on...

It would be one where he doesnt have first hand experience >.>

You've jumped the gun here. I am an atheist, and the activism I speak of have little to do with dominant theistic institutions. I agree that the dominant theistic institutions have caused more harm than good.  However, there are churches and religious people who are part of a movement that challenge these dominant theistic institutions. MLK jr was condemned by his own church for speaking out against the vietnam war. Martin Luther, a christian himself,  challenged the catholic church.  Nelson Mandela challenged the white religious establishment, while remaining a christian himself. Black liberation theology challenged white supremacy while keeping christian beliefs. My point is that we must be careful when criticizing religion as a whole, because there are religious people who do good, and we alienate them only focus on the bad. 

Movements are not based on science, unless you want to include ethics and morality in science. Science is amoral. It is the tool for which the people in power use to justify their exploitation.  Every great empire has said, "We are more advanced, therefore we are more morally great." I would suggest studying  the history of class struggle, civil rights, peace movements, women's rights. None of them happened because they were more scientifically gifted.

Then what is the point in ridiculing these christians if some of them are doing good for society, as you admitted? Wouldn't be far more benefitial for atheists to ally themselves with these christians who want to change society for the better? Calling all christians irrational, and painting  them all as extremists or indirect supporters of extremism only hurts movements that improve societies.

No. Im not talking about that. Im talking about christians who are in Palestine defending the rights of palestinians against Israeli occupation. Im talking about christians who protested against the iraq war from the beginning, and risk their lives in Iraq to help bombing victims. Im talking about christians who fight racism in despotic countries and are staunch defenders of the constitution. You will say that they don't need their christian beliefs to do this. This is irrelevent. The fact is that they are christian, and they connect their irrational beliefs with good causes. Should we not support that, instead of alienating them?

These religious people who do good for society are not doing anything dangerous and their irrationality is trivial.  If theists do good  things regardless of their irrational beliefs,  then they can also do bad  things  regardless of their irrational beliefs. It seems to me you want to focus more on the bad than good, which i think is counter-intuitive. Im not talking in terms of absolute good and evil. The issue, to me, is that many atheists focus on the  bad  (irrational) parts of religion, which does little to improve society and ignores the religious people who help society.