andrel wrote:
> On 25-10-2009 6:47, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> An interesting aside to this discussion:
>>
>>
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2009/10/when-anyone-is-watching.html

>>
>>
>> Premise - Believers that argue for the value of the story, but not the 
>> literal truth of it, yet get terribly offended by anyone saying, "its 
>> made up", basically actually think like this: "We don't really believe 
>> anything that you have demonstrated to be absurd...while anyone is 
>> watching." Greta herself admits this is how she thought about some 
>> things, like Tarot, depending on if she was talking to other 
>> believers, or someone that didn't, before she finally gave up any 
>> belief in it at all.
> 
> You should also consider the reverse: why do atheists get upset if 
> someone comes up to them and bluntly states that God does exist?
> 
Annoyed maybe, but for the same reason that you would get annoyed at an 
adult coming up to you and saying, "I believe in the tooth fairy, its 
just too bad my teeth don't fall out anymore, I need the money." We 
don't get all that upset about people believing it BS. If that was all 
they did, there are thousands of stupid things people believe that would 
upset us. What upsets us is that those people immediately think that 
declaring belief in it means that they can, in the next sentence, start 
talking bullshit about others, condemning things they don't understand, 
undermining science, undermining freedom of expression, undermining 
cultures they don't like, etc. They don't stop with just "believing", 
most of them, on some level, think that the next logical step is to 
start pissing people around them off by telling everyone how evil those 
people are for not attending the same church, or how evil someone else 
they never met is, because they don't abide by X random rule, which may 
not even exists, as stated, in their silly book.

> I think an important factor is that believing in God is not an 
> independent factor. It is connected to every other believe and 
> conviction one may have. I couldn't care less if the president of the US 
> did believe in a god or not if it weren't for the fact that it 
> influences his decisions. When I know that he doesn't care for nature, 
> because his religion teaches that man was independently created to rule 
> the world. Or that he was taught that those in power are there because 
> God wants them there and that they are therefore justified in getting 
> even more rich at the expense of others. Then it becomes very relevant 
> indeed. (I know that strangely at precisely these points there are other 
> Christian churches that preach precisely the opposite)
> 
Meaningless. Its enough that far too many of them will turn right around 
and insist that every damn thing they **did** use to make their decision 
was meaningless, unimportant, and unnecessary, because "god" led them to 
the choice. This is the thing that pisses **everyone** that is an 
intellectual, from Christians who manage to mostly compartmentalize 
things enough to still think about it, to humanists, to atheists, the 
outright refusal, and apparent inability, of too many "believers" to 
believe in, respect, or recognize, their own thinking and how they 
reached a conclusion, and all too often, actually not just claim they 
reached the result "without" something, but the turn right around and 
declare, "And since I never need, or use X, no one should need X", right 
after frakking using X to reach their original conclusions. You honestly 
think that what we get annoyed at is mere "statement" that they believe 
in something? Man do you have a distorted view of the issue...

> What is often included in any religious or atheist packet is that 
> believers are one group. In essence, if an atheist goes to a believer 
> and say that he/she got the facts wrong, the atheist is at the same time 
> implying that he/she is not really a true human.
WTF? Project much? I have never heard on single person on my side of 
this matter ***ever*** make such a statement. Oddly enough, we do get 
accused of a shit load of things that we never actually do, while the 
other side has been caught actually saying them on national TV. Oh, no.. 
Believers are all too human, which is why rejection of any process or 
means to assess their own belief system is so frustrating to some 
people. If you can't verify your own conclusions, you can and will fall 
for any stupid idiocy that comes along, which seems to confirm what you 
refused to examine. And sometimes, as I stated above, this can lead to 
some truly insane cases where someone, for example, gets a degree in 
some science, has a mediocre and nearly 100% unproductive carrier, only 
to turn around and blame it, not one their own failure to examine their 
own premises, but a refusal of all the other people in the field to 
accept them. After all, their unexamined ideas where right, while the 
rest of the entire field where being "dogmatic".

One of the absolute key things that some of us find corrosive and 
dangerous about religions is that, with the exception of some modern 
believers, who have also given up *most* of the ritual and silly BS, is 
the idea, pervasive in 99% of all of them, with few exceptions, that: 
"If the world contradicts religion, you are not understanding the world 
properly, therefor the fault lies in your understanding of the world, 
and scripture, not in a failure of the scripture to describe it." The 
same principle can be, as I said, found in nearly ***all*** religions. 
Its pure idiocy. Even some of the Christian thinkers, like Aquinas 
almost managed to get this, and recognize that something was horribly 
wrong about the view. Yet, they failed to realize how wrong, and 
persisted in rejecting things that, even in their own time, where 
obvious bloody fact, because.. it didn't reflect their belief, and they 
where willing to examine anything, and everything, in the world 
***except*** those beliefs. It has nothing at all to do with how human 
someone is.

We recognize that we cannot, on our own, reach a sane conclusion about 
the world, because ***humans*** are seriously flawed, and that, more to 
the point, a group is often "worse", because groups, generally, have 
rules that say, "don't upset the group". Actually questioning the 
central premise of "anything" they believe is a near certain way to a) 
not be in the group any more, b) lose a lot of friends, and c) become 
hated and despised. When it happens, most people find it easier to 
fracture the church, which is why you have 10,000+ versions, rather than 
examine "all" of it, and conclude that none of it is worth it. That is 
why you will find tens of thousands of people in the US calling 
themselves "agnostic", or "no religion", or admitting, "I am not sure I 
believe in god", and yet, ***they all still attend churches***.

But, heh.. Keep insulting people with accusations of accusations they 
never would make themselves. We are frakking used to it at this point.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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