Okay.

So what kind of new potential do you see here ?

Cuz if you think most of us here aren't already "allied" with christian groups (even if it's just our own family) out of some misguided sense of moral or intellectual superiority, then you don't really think very highly of us, I'm guessing.

quite frankly, i came to this site, and remain on this site, because it offers the best intellectual discussion i've been able to get since i graduated college, and that on a daily basis (well, almost).  this is especially important to me since i live in a country whose language i have not mastered to the point of being able to have abstract discussions (and probably never will), and my english-speaking friends don't share this particular interest of mine.  i did not come here to find any "safe haven" or out of any sense of "atheist solidarity" (i'm not knocking those who did); i have always been my own safe haven.

i say that to emphasize that there is nothing i hate more than the "us" and "them" mentality, as i have stressed time and again, because "us" and "them" are mere abstractions.  i take individuals one at a time, and i have found that an individual's personality tends to affect the practise or nonpractise of his or her religion (or lack thereof), not the other way round.

i have nothing against any person who shows a predisposition toward critical thinking, moderation, courage, and gentleness.  a person's behavior from moment to moment is of far more interest to me than his or her principles or presuppositions (and, rest assured, we all carry presuppositions in life).

if i am hesitant to endorse pope francis wholeheartedly, it's because i have a natural distrust of public figures, and that counts as much for someone like richard dawkins as it does for any pope.  however, as i said shortly after francis's election, i will not malign this pope until he has clearly demonstrated to me that he deserves to be maligned.  based on some of the posts that were made on this site right around that time, i think many in the "atheist community" were looking desperately for some reason to discredit him, just because he happened to be pope.  i am not terribly impressed by his frugality, however, since some people are just naturally more comfortable living frugally.  for such people it is not a sacrifice--quite the opposite.  i happen to be such a person, and i suspect francis is too.  nonetheless, i do respect the fact that he also wishes to make his lifestyle public for exemplary purposes.  if he is anything like me, that truly is a sacrifice.

in my opinion, one of the most admirable personalities of the 20th century was pope john xxiii.  i have nothing against the papacy in theory.  in praxis, a great deal.

You wouldn't know that from some of my critics. Apparently there is an atheist manifesto somewhere.

But the same can be said for theism, there is no "right way" to be a Catholic or Muslim or Jew or Hindu.

And that is what kills me about humanity in general, we get so focused on labels that we cant see that we are NOT different.

The only thing humans have in common is that we have everything in common, but we are too stupid to see it.

Evolution doesn't care who wins and if it is done through compassion or cruelty, Compassion is local and our superstitions and myths and religions and political labels we use to justify our superiority. We as a species don't want to face that it is simply about survival and resources. The more we face that common ground, the more peace we can have.

Ok so I am wrong in stating the fact that evolution doesn't give a fuck what works? That both compassion and cruelty can lead to reproduction?

If labels mattered then why can a Jew fuck a Muslim and make a baby? If labels mattered than why can an atheist fuck a Christian and make a baby? If labels mattered then why can a Buddhist fuck a Christian and make a baby? Are you going to claim that labels biologically and magically prevent intermixing?

Evolution allowed for slavery too and unfortunately for those who were slaves it DID work. Evolution also produced Hitler and Stalin and Kim Jung Un still has a nation he controls.

Yes I will keep repeating that we ARE the same species.

I think our disposition towards the faithful community (NOT the institutions, but the actual people) can be drastically improved. Very often we agree on 80% of the policies and disagree on details. The 20% difference is important to discuss vigorously, but we have to keep in mind that on almost everything else we can stand shoulder to shoulder against the institutions that seek to divide and conquer us.

First, we must reconsider the idea that believing in God is irrational. Why? Martin Luther King got things done, not least because of his deep connection to the faithful community. MLK was a strongly rational actor, not despite, but because of his upbringing. If this isn't enough, consider that atheists believe crazy shit at every turn - free market & trickle down economics being the prime example. The question becomes whether a nutty belief that puts you on the right side of socio-economic issues can be called irrational at all - I don't think so. It is a case of aiming-for-the-moon-and-hitting-the-stars. We should look at the process and where it leads, NOT the naive accuracy of every technical detail in the manual.

Second, we should stop wearing our atheism as a chip on our shoulder, because it prevents us from acting on the 80% of issues we agree on. I am not saying that we should not bitch-slap people who think that it is more important to stop same-sex marriage from happening than stopping the corporate stranglehold on our political system. What I am saying is that these people belong together on the side with the atheists who think Ayn Rand is a role model. Just because our enemy happens to anchor his fascist personality in a different ideology, it doesn't change what he is. By the same token, the followers of MLK are our best allies against assholes of this type.

What does this mean in practice? If you join an Occupy group that is doing something somewhere, don't mind that the local priest is in the group with you. Judge him on his own merits, not the ancient manual. Speak out in favor of the Nuns on the Bus and recognize their work and value for the poor, or at least don't trash them for getting there by following the "wrong" manual.

you cannot categorically say god is false.  at best, you can say god is unlikely, but only from the discursive point of view.

and don't start prating about "virgin births" and "people surviving rigor mortis," because belief in god per se is the only principle the OP is talking about, not any religious dogma or religious narrative.

As one of those evil atheists who believes in "nutty" things like freedom, I have found myself frequently allied with theists who oppose statist tyrants. A person's religious beliefs are not important to me until they want laws that impose them on me.

Yeah, didn't you mention once you helped out Bachmann with her campaign or something ?

You grew up with the wall-to-wall pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps bullshit propaganda, so it's not surprising you would be succeptible to that. People that tell you that you should go at it by yourself really just don't want to face us as a united front. The guys we're facing are sticking together in fucking us over, because sticking together works. We should do more of that.

All of us are educated against our own interest; that's how they structured our educational system. Just have to watch out for each our own weakness a little extra. And yea, there definitely is "us" and "them" here. If you aren't a billionaire who owns his own senators, you're us.

triple post

Funny how the person that wants to bitch and whine about lumping people into general categories is doing the same exact thing to someone they do not even know. As well as making bold assertions about Beyond.

If you really are deluded enough to believe that there will be a united "us" against a goddamn thing, then this discussion is pointless. Even if you could do away with religion all together or take it out of the equation, people are never going to unite.

Which guys exactly are so united? The Koch bros hanging with Soros now?

Good thing I wasn't educated by the system then.

No, I am not "us". I don't trust you with political power any more than I trust anyone else- perhaps less because you seem to be motivated by anger and hatred which is far more dangerous than greed. I will oppose your brand of tyranny as much as I oppose those in power now. The problem isn't who controls the power of government, it is that the power exists to be controlled. To the extent you try to eliminate or limit that power you have an ally in me, but when you try to seize it and use it to control others I am opposed.

It is rather amazing that someone can roll in here with an authoritarian tone of dictatorship, operating from a vehemently angry and hostile position DEMANDING that everyone else follow their orders to the T has the nerve to lecture about people wearing chips on their shoulders and uniting "us" Totally fucked up and delusional in the head from my standpoint. Not to mention hypocrisy.

if we're really serious about getting "out of the woods" with our "delusions," we're gonna have to deal with a much more basic level than the standard marxist critique can take us to.

says the marxist.

And a bunch of dumb fucks calling themselves "us" is not going to do a goddamn thing but bitch and complain and put up Facebook quotes and pride themselves on their Guy Fawkes masks thinking that they really are making some sort of major difference in the world.

What a load of bullshit.

a catholic fanatic, ironically. had he been alive during the second world war, he'd have been right there with the fascists, like most of the rest of them.

i haven't watched it or read it, but if wearers of guy masks are anything like wearers of che shirts, you're absolutely right.

btw, i actually have owned a few che shirts over the years, but i started wearing them precisely because of jon lee anderson's enormous biography.

"many cooperating independent actors" is the definition of people forming a corporation. All a corporation consists of is a group of people "independent actors" forming a legal agreement to pursue some cooperative goal- often profit but often not.

There is nothing secretive about it. Laws are published every step of the process. You can see who wrote it, who amended it, who voted for it and which lobbyists donated how much money to those politicians. All that info is easily available. When fundraising, political campaigns maintain lists of PACS, politicians and major donors and which issues they donate money for. Everyone knows the bailouts were passed and apparently support them as the politicians involved have been mostly reelected (many of whom were supported by the OWS crowd).

And yes, you do have a right to look through the books of any publicly traded corporation and there are many criminal laws against fudging the books, ask Enron. Again, looking through the books is as easy as visiting the corporate website and clicking "investor information". You don't even need to get dressed. None of this is secret. You will probably be bored since political spending is a raindrop in the ocean as corporations tend to have the single minded goal of profit, not world domination.

Corporations are just groups of people. Eliminating them is as rational as eliminating all humans. And no, I am not you. I am part of several corporations and generally consider the private corporation the greatest concept mankind has come up with since the wheel. I consider people like you to be naive idealogues who I wouldn't invest in to run a lemonade stand, let alone a government.

Quite frankly, I am not even sure what you hope to achieve. You say we should work together, but to what end? From what I remember from previous threads you are not an anarchist, you oppose liberty, and have sympathies with OWS which supports a strong state. So what will there be and who is going to run it?

Excuse me for butting in here, but while it is true that we cannot validly assert that God does not exist in an absolute sense, that is not a useful assertion in investigating reality, since that would apply to a virtually infinite number of assertions about entities that are not defined within the bounds of what we understand to be the natural universe. Or even objects that could be perfectly 'normal', non-supernatural, such as the Russell's proverbial teapot orbiting Mars. So in the absence of any unambiguous evidence of its existence, it is quite rational to treat it as very unlikely.

We have no absolute proof of the truth of any proposition that is not strictly logically deduced from the foundations of Logic. So we are ok with Mathematics, but nothing in the domain of  Science, which can only be assigned a likelihood based on assessment of empirical research and evidence.

We have nowhere near sufficiently complete understanding of the ultimate laws and nature of the Universe to establish a firm figure for the probability of 'Life, the Universe, and Everything' arising without Supernatural intervention, but a broad Bayesian figure may be possible in the not too distant future, if not now. That would still say nothing about the kind of 'God' or 'Gods' or their intentions.

We can state that current Science suggests that the natural emergence of Life is not impossible, altho maybe extremely unlikely on any one planet, but given the probable total number of planets in our Universe, maybe almost inevitable at least once. It is becoming increasingly irrational to deny even the possibility, so the 'need' for a sentient creator continues to fade. 

So until God steps in to present undeniable evidence of his existence, it is quite rational to not take his existence seriously, although arguably also rational to act as though he does, but that position seems to require far more naked assumptions than the atheist position, so can be seriously questioned via Occam's Razor.

I would thus assert that questions involving God or Gods and such-like things can only be discussed 'from a discursive  point of view', with the actual existence of a god or gods considered a remote possibility, at least until they deign to present us with incontrovertible proof of their existence.

In fact, if an all-powerful being did exist, we would have no case for certain knowledge of the Universe, since such a being could change everything at any point.

i would like to emphasize that the non-abrahamic conception of god i outlined above never says that life "arose" with supernatural intervention. in fact, the indian traditions are emphatic in stating that life and the universe do not "arise" at all. one of the most basic presuppositions of indian thought is that "something cannot come from nothing." this, of course, is in direct contradiction to the abrahamic notion of creatio ex nihilo.

we don't need an "all-powerful being" to accept the premise that everything could change at any point.

well, i've always contended, along with philosophers of religion like agehananda bharati, that religion at base is a form of therapy, a method, a means to a metaphysical end, and that is what separates it from other disciplines or forms of thought like political science, philosophy, and science. the indian religions are the ones in which this is most evident. they are centered on moksha (liberation, to use the common but woefully insufficient english translation), not on "god." they are practitioner-centric religions. if they argue for the existence of any type of god, it's because he (or she or it) forms, in their view, either the end result of moksha, an aid on the path to moksha, or both. if a particular tradition feels this type of "god" is not necessary for moksha, it does away with it.

i'll give sankhya, particularly as it is set forth by kapila, as an example yet again. sankhya, in case you don't know, is one of the six traditional vedic darshanas or systems of thought: they are sankhya, yoga, vaisheshika, nyaya, mimamsa, and vedanta. many writers refer to these as branches of indian (or hindu--in the end both words are synonyms) "philosophy," but i take issue with this, as the goal of all six systems is moksha, and philosophy has no concrete goal.

sankhya perceives the universe as dualistic, an amalgam of purushas (individual souls) and prakriti (matter). please realize these translations are extremely rough; in reality there are no sufficient english equivalents of "purusha" or "prakriti." moksha is attained when a person's purusha ceases to identify itself with the prakriti and thus is released from the prison of prakriti. you can see from this extremely rough summary that sankhya has no need either of a personal or impersonal god, nor does it teach the existence of an eternal monad that forms the ground of everything (like the vedantic concept of brahman).

the similarity in mindset between taoism and zen is due to the fact that zen originate in china. when buddhism was first exported to china, taoism was in its ascendency as the imperial religion, and thus the two competed considerably. as often happens with competition, however, considerable synthesis was the result. this synthesis went two ways: according to taoism scholar livia kohn, and probably others (my interest in taoism is superficial), both meditation and monasticism were unknown in taoism until its contact with buddhism. zen's laconic nature and scorn of systemization and discursive thought definitely bear the stamp of taoism, and, ironically, after its contact with buddhism, considerable systemization of taoism started to occur.

compare this with the other main country to which mahayana buddhism was exported, tibet, and you'll see the difference. prior to buddhism, tibet had no "high religion" like taoism or confucianism. therefore, tibetans took the scholastic tradition of buddhism that had already been flourishing in india and augmented it. tibetan buddhism is a labyrinth of highly sophisticated logic and complex, organized systems of practice. tibetan buddhism is centered not on the sutras but on their voluminous commentaries, whereas chinese and japanese buddhism have always been sutra-centric.

add to all this the fact that chinese thought, and the thought of cultures on which it's had a direct influence, is overall terribly pragmatic. no chinese religion (at least before the advent of buddhism) has ever been given to flights of metaphysical fancy or complex systemization or scholastic exercise. you will find no tedious lists of types of meditation, ignorance, enlightenment, etc., in the classic texts of the chinese religions, nor exhaustively detailed descriptions of heavens, hells, buddha fields, etc., that stretch on for scores of pages. this is an indian phenomenon, pure and simple. what this results in is the frustrating impossibility to say anything definite about chinese religions or their relation to other religions. they are a mish-mash, because the operative principle was always "whatever works."

precisely.

exactly. religion is purely axiomatic. either you accept it or you don't. religion is essentially therapeutic: it solves or treats some fundamental metaphysical and/or existential problem. one axiom we see right away is that there is such a problem. i am not religious precisely because i don't accept this primary axiom; for me it has nothing to do with the likelihood or unlikelihood of the existence of god.

i'm not defending or condemning religion, i'm merely stating what it is. furthermore, i think most of the condemnatory and laudatory statements about religion have been based on a faulty understanding of what it is, or taking its secondary elements to be its primary elements, etc.

certainly, but my point was, in science (at least as it should be), one cannot verify a hypothesis about the natural world based on deductive logic alone, though it can be used as a tool in the process (as math is). there has to be some sort of verifiable, perceivable data or observation.

the only thing that can perhaps be falsified in religion is its practice, particularly in the mystical or sacrificial sphere, but that means falsified against the outcomes predicted in the religion's axiomatic principles, not against any sort of "natural" knowledge. in other words, does the method work as it's supposed to work? does one see god? does one find equilibrium? is one's compassion enhanced? has one obtained omniscience (the definition of enlightenment in jainism)? if not, the yoga or the ceremony or the mantra is "bad." this, for example, is the only reason why it is sometimes asserted of the vedas that they are "scientific" (and in fact the term "veda" comes from the same IE root that forms the word for "science" in many languages--in slovak, for example, science is "vedec" and knowledge is "veda").

now, if someone wants to argue that "god exists" is a scientific claim by definition, i.e. falsifiable, then they're just plain wrong. if someone wants to argue that the biblical flood is a scientific claim, then yes, if we take the story as claiming historical veracity, it is--it can be falsified and it pretty much has.

believe it or not, there are quite a few religions that say just that.

the religious reality is subjective reality. subjective is no less valid to the individual than objective, but it is different, and i "detest" when the religious refuse to recognize this. that is why i respect the mystic, though i do not necessarily accept his conclusions, but i abhor the prophet. a prophet is nothing more than someone who tries to give his subjective spiritual and/or mystical experiences objective status.

on the flipside, i also "detest" when the scientist says that mystical experiences are not valid or are somehow distorted because they are not to be pinpointed in his or her discipline. and i say this despite whatever neuroscience can teach us, because even if we are someday able to isolate precisely which neurons are firing or which biochemicals are at work during, say, a spiritual vision (and i firmly believe someday we will be able to do just that), that knowledge still does not negate the validity of that experience as being something spiritual or metaphysical. being able to explain, in however much detail, the objective phenomenon has no effect whatsoever on the subjective phenomenon. on the contrary, the application of that knowledge might lead to greater and greater depth in religious (particularly mystical) practice.

that is why, even though science will undoubtedly continue to explain away the crude cosmologies and cosmographies of our ancestors (and rightly so), as well as the unfounded historical claims made by religious texts, it will never be able to explain away religion in general, and its mystical dimension in particular. and that is why it is my firm belief that science per se and religion per se ultimately have nothing to say to each other, however much they might influence each other incidentally.

Supposedly the pope believes that God can take care of the poor through miracles. But then again, God's not doing a very good job of it, so we need men with guns(aka government) to step in and force the rich to take care of them.

A man that talks out of both sides of his mouth should be ignored, but instead he's a media darling. Why not listen to scientists that are atheist and apolitical in their approach to poverty?

I don't think he mentioned anything about miracles feeding the poor in his speech. Also, the rich are the ones being taken care of by the government, which forces the rest of us to turn our productivity over to them for the past 40+ years. It's like a nanny state for the top 0.1% and a boot on the throat of the rest of us.

Vatican is desperately trying to fix their rotten child-abusing image and they thought that this is the best way to go about it. The only lesson we should take from the Church is that the common person of faith is on our side when it comes to the most important socio-economic issues.

Also don't get me wrong; when I say "us", I certainly don't mean you. You're either in the 0.1% richest, or a troll. I mean, the most die hard neo-liberals in the working class have to admit that something is seriously wrong with the playing field and that too much governmental support for the poor simply isn't the issue here.

Ah, I think I found the aforementioned comments

We aren't experiencing a fall in bullshit followers; we're just witnessing a shift to other and likely much more dangerous bullshit ideologies. 'We' are the ones that buy into other-than-God bullshit - how's that?

Ya, ok. I don't think I wrote anything that opposes this view.

I don't think this is correct, at least not in cases that matter to me. I think that many people treat other people the way they want to and they find excuses in a holy book for it. Or in Greenspan's bullshit theory of free markets. Or in Ayn Rand's novels. They want to have their abusive cake and eat the glory of a stoic moral being too. I think that ideology is just a tool; the problem is in the opposing interests. What I'd like to see is bigger awareness of these interests and less bickering about the ideologies. We do have them, the common interests. We're not as diverse as the 0.1% richest would like us to think.

Assuming that the bullshit we buy into is less dangerous, better or even different in-kind to that of a given theist. I think that this is a huge mistake. Personally, I think the only real difference is temporal - today some of the "secular" ideologies are far more dangerous to the survival of the species than anything a theist cooked up, because we imagine our future in terms of crap like "necessary destruction", golden shower economics, pay-per-healthcare and drone skies.

What I am trying to do with this thread is draw new lines to define ourselves. I think we should try to be a-bullshit first, a-theist second.