On 14-6-2009 0:54, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> On 13-6-2009 19:57, Darren New wrote:
>>> andrel wrote:
>>>>  but it gives you no useful information.
>>>
>>> It's really a test of "are you a fanatic" or not, atheist style. :-)
>>>
>> well, am I?
> 
> Not to my mind, no. :-)
> 
See, your test failed. ;)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
>> No, its true from the evidence. Viewpoints are **opinion** not fact.
>> Facts rise or fall based on what works, and is feasible. Opinions rise
>> and fall based **solely** one how many people hold them.
> 
> But how people view and experience the world is the thing that matters to 
> a lot of people.  I don't dispute that facts are important, but opinions 
> are important as well, because the way one sees the world shapes how one 
> interacts with it.  Even someone with your point of view interacts with 
> the world based on the opinions you have formed from the facts you've 
> determined are true.  Arguably, someone who holds your particular set of 
> beliefs (for lack of a better word) is more likely to adjust based on new 
> evidence than someone who has a very strong faith-based view of the 
> world.  But who's to say that that faith-based view of the world is 
> invalid for someone for whom it works for?
> 
True enough. But one can conclude, for example, based on facts, that the 
risks of allowing slavery are too high, and the benefits insufficient, 
to hold that its a valid behavior. This concept, when based on 
"opinions", was both defended at part of the natural order of the 
universe and gods plan, and as something that god wouldn't accept, due 
to the other sides opinions of equality of justice and unreasonable 
cruelty (none of which was, at that time, equality of ability, 
intelligence, or race), by those who "had no" fact based position to 
derive their views from.

The problem I have with opinion is not that it isn't an important part 
of how societies work, its that it ***is*** an important part of how 
societies work, and, unfortunately it doesn't take much to derail 
opinion into complete idiocy using emotional appeals, and a lot of wild 
spinning. Its rather more difficult to do that when you have "empirical" 
grounds for forming such opinions. I.e., not all opinions are equal. 
Unfortunately, one of the consequences of the dogmatic view of 
"equality", "fairness", and, "respect" in the US goes like this: "All 
ideas are equal, to be fair we have to listen to all of them and judge 
them in their own context, and we need to respect when people's ideas 
differ." Often, this is now seen as, but "is" as bad as giving equal 
credence to the theory that the sky if really blue coolaid, vs. the 
traditional, but now hotly challenged, idea that it is made up of "air". 
What matters isn't who is right, its whose opinion "wins". Think about 
much of the early history of this country, ranging from just 
"traditional" concepts of proper 'plural' and 'arranged' marriages, 
which where the most common in the early colonies, to many basic 
concepts of justice, to slavery, women's rights, etc. What if, in all 
those cases, the most popular "opinion" won, instead of people fighting 
for the less popular ones, and **showing**, until people's minds 
changed, that they worked better..

>>>> True, but again, they are almost totally pointless interpretations,
>>> See my above comment about stepping out of your own frame of reference.
>>>
>> No, I can see how they come to those conclusions, I just can't agree
>> with them. 
> 
> Agreement isn't required.  Understanding isn't either, for that matter, 
> but I have found that understanding how someone with an alternative 
> viewpoint arrived at that conclusion leads to an understanding of how to 
> interact with that person in a constructive way.  I've found this to be 
> an incredibly valuable skill to use given that many of the people I work 
> with professionally have strong personal religious faith.  Even for those 
> whom I don't discuss religion with (which is most of them), knowing the 
> common set of experiences that they go through every week when they go to 
> church (for example) helps me understand how to motivate them and get 
> what I need from them.
> 
Ok, to an extent, you are correct. But, there are obvious limits to such 
"understanding". Most of the things the hardline atheists go on about 
are cases where they fully understand, often due to once "sharing" those 
views, how someone reached a conclusion, and they see both how its 
"incorrect", but how much effort is put into not seeing, intentionally 
ignoring, excusing, or finding "good things" in the very negative 
consequences of "reaching" those conclusions in the first place, or, 
sometimes, due to even how they reach them.

I mean, do you honestly think there is no consequence to, to use slavery 
as an example again, concluding that someone should be treated nearly 
equal, like a really smart animal, but still not accepted as equal in 
all ways, vs seeing them **as** "equal" in all ways to you? Of course 
not. The end result, in the short term, may be the same, when an 
injustice exists. In a more contemporary example, gay "separate but not 
quite equal secular rules", vs. "defending marriage". The later isn't 
even under any real threat, and the former is pure bullshit. You can't 
have separate but equal. The result is "never" equal, pretty much by 
definition. The moment you say "separate", you start already applying a 
"special rule", that says one gets to be seen, treated, or acted on, 
differently than the other. Its pretty much down hill from that point.

So, sure.. Understanding how to motivate someone is one thing. But.. 
Some things either work or don't, and if you can motivate someone out of 
doing them right, there are 50 other people, far better equipped, to 
motivate them to do it wrong, or not at all.

>>>> And, such people, when they find their ideas being sidelined, get
>>>> really pissy about it,
>>> That happens even with rationalists, too.  The "punishment" tends to be
>>> ridicule rather than more the extreme punishments you outline for the
>>> "modern fundies", but the reaction is quite similar.
>>>
>> That is because, quite frankly, discussion has been *tried*, and its
>> either been undermined, often with the complicity of the people
>> supposedly providing the forum of discussion, usually against hard
>> liners from the other side, who are "impervious" to factual information,
>> and moderates, of the sort that "might" be swayed either a) refuse to
>> see how ridiculous the people they defend make **them** look, or b)
>> don't think the issues matter enough to do anything about them.
> 
> Sometimes yes, people who have strong religious faith react badly when 
> they're told that they're not being rational.  How do you react when 
> someone tells you you're talking nonsense when you're talking about 
> something that you have a strong personal investment in it?  What I find 
> is that the presentation coming from someone with a point of view often 
> is not handled very tactfully.  Understand that for people of strong 
> religious faith, when you start trying to prove that their view is wrong, 
> that is often perceived as an attack on the foundations of everything 
> they have built their life upon.
> 
Well, I admit, I don't react "that" well. But I react worse when their 
reason for making the claim has no basis at all. There is a saying, 
something to the effect, "If you react badly to someone's comment about 
you, its because you recognize something of truth in it.", or something 
like that. Someone says I am not being rational about something, then 
either I admit it, I accept that I may be, after its explained, or I 
reject it, because their own "evidence" amount to not sharing my view, 
and therefor concluding that they are being rational, but I am not, for 
failing to agree with them. The later I have no sympathy or patience 
with. I would never tell someone they where being irrational without 
"attempting" to explain why. Neither would the vast majority of other 
atheists I know (well, except when the person is being persistent, or 
keeps showing up, and does nothing but tell "us" we are wrong, without 
any other argument, then people get.. snippy.) But... Well, lets just 
say that for people who have been told all their lives that X view is 
right, and believing it makes them right, and you shouldn't really 
question these things, its real hard to get them to reflect at all on 
whether or not they are being rational, never mind actually get them to 
admit they are not.

Watched some clips today of various comics, and the strongly religious 
one was precisely like that. His absolute 100% position was, "I believe, 
I know I am right, so therefor 'everything' I say about non-believers or 
sinner **has to be funny**. You get the definite sense that the guy 
hadn't have a single moment of internal reflection in his life. And, 
more to the point, his "jokes" showed precisely the sort of "humor" I 
see from such people. Which is to say, sarcasm would be lost on the guy, 
he wouldn't "understand" jokes at his beliefs expense as anything but 
attacks, and his idea of a 'good joke' consisted of locking his 
fictitious atheist in his house and... basically doing the same stupid 
BS they always imagine doing - spend hours babbling about god and the 
truth of their religion, while the atheist is too stupid, stumped, or, I 
don't know.. brain dead? to reply to any of it.

It wasn't so much a joke as mental masturbation. "Here is what I 
'imagine' would happen, if I taped the guys mouth shut, locked them in a 
room, and read the Bible for hours at them." My only reaction to this 
was, "You don't have a clue how wrong you are, since you never talked to 
one.", or, alternatively, "Then again, after 5 minutes of what I imagine 
is even 'worse' BS than your comedy routine, I would jump out a window, 
preferably a from the 20th floor." lol

> But I'd also point out that "discussion has been tried" doesn't equate to 
> "discussion has been tried with all of them" - some people it's futile to 
> discuss with, others are more receptive.  Each situation is unique.
> 
True enough. But... its a bit like carpet bombing. There isn't much 
point going after them one at a time, when a) you can't get most of them 
alone to start with, b) they have people nearby to "reinterpret" it all 
so you where wrong, and/or c) they outnumber you 50:1. You need both 
people willing to use ridicule to "prevent" then doing what they 
normally do, which is shout you down, refuse to give you time to rebut 
their endless list of fallacies, and misrepresent your position. You 
also need the "nice" members, who are willing to sit down and explain 
why the aggressive ones are being so obnoxious. Problem is.. Until 
fairly recently, all we really had was the later, and they have entire 
TV networks dedicated to shouting down, misrepresenting and burying our 
side under a deluge of fallacies.

Or, as someone put it. How do you "fairly" explain away the "problems" 
presented in 20 minutes by someone, with only 20 minutes to rebut them, 
when *each* so called problem is a 20 minute lecture, and they just gave 
you 500 things to "respond to". You can't. And, its how "they" stack the 
game.

>> http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif
> 
> I like the comic; it explains something I've been saying for a long time 
> for a very long time.  What's considered "reputable news sources" (ie, 
> broadcast news media, newspapers, etc) tend to try to do the thinking for 
> us.  I prefer my news unfiltered, because I'm an intelligent human being 
> capable of forming my own opinions based on the facts.
> 
> That said, I don't think the problem is not failing to trust the first 
> person in the cycle.  The problem is the mutations to what the first 
> person in the cycle discovers by all the intermediate steps.  It's like 
> the telephone game all over again.  Somehow in the US (and I might go so 
> far to say "in western society"), we've shifted to believing the loudest 
> voice, and the loudest voice tends to be the one with the most coverage 
> (based on distribution, Nielsen ratings, etc).
> 
Ah, but.. There is a rising tide of people in the US that not only fall 
for everything said, starting at the "blogged about it" stage, and 
presents "everyone" prior to that, including news agencies that don't 
present "both sides", or actively promote the "big 
science/pharma/government/whatever" side of things, as being "part of a 
vast conspiracy to hide the truth.

And, well.. If you believe in one conspiracy, like say, religion, then 
its easier to believe in the "war one Christmas", and once you get that, 
you find it that much easier to imagine the "war on religion", etc. The 
most "conspiracies" you willingly accept, the more you believe, since 
many of them are "underpinned" by the same assumptions, starting with 
the idea that you have found the one true path, and those that haven't 
are, to one degree or another, out to get you.

Again, to be fair, this is not "all" of them. But, the problem isn't 
that some believe differently, its that the ones that "do" believe this 
BS have 90% of the news coverage, 90% of the political power, 90% of the 
mega-church type support, 90% of the "faith based" funding illegally 
given to them by the government, etc. And, like some big corporations, 
they have no problem "attempting" to obfuscate what they intend via 
sub-groups, charity organizations, which funnel funds into the wacko 
stuff, etc. Its all masks, mirrors, and smoke screens, when it comes to 
the "money" end, and blind crazy on the political side.

Why is this a problem? Well, why is people funneling millions to PETA, 
so they can take live animals, drive them to another state, kill them, 
then bury them in a mass grave, instead of the ASPCA, and other "real" 
animal organizations, bad? Same issue. Its not what they "seem to be 
like" that is the issue, its what actually then gets "done" with the 
money and unearned support they get from those who go faith based 
organization = good thing = good works = something I should support, but 
**never** look below the surface. Or worse, deny it, like some of the 
PETA supporters I know, who refuse to even admit that the organization 
does, thinks, has said, or has tried to pass legislation to achieve. To 
them, PETA = animal rights = pet rights = good things = worthy of 
support. All evidence to the contrary is, well...

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/05/denialists_deck_of_cards_the_2_1.php

> But this is a bit of a shift in the discussion we're having as well, 
> because it doesn't really tie into religious faith - it's more closely 
> related to generic belief.  Not that the two are entirely dissimilar, 
> mind.
> 
Well. I don't exactly agree. How do you separate them, really? Because 
one sort of belief is old, and handed down, sort of, while others are 
not? You could call almost anything, by that standard, "religion", 
including patriotism. Then, what.. all ideas that you get yourself, 
instead of learning from parents, or organizations, are "not"? Where is 
the line drawn?

And, to be clear. Critical thinking causes people to think critically 
about more and more things, the more often they apply it. Faith based, 
conspiracy based, etc. types of thinking generate "more" of the same, 
the more "those" are applied. Since the later are both highly flawed, 
and generate responses that self confirm, instead of challenge, the more 
things you use them for, the more mistakes you make. For "most" people 
this isn't a big deal, simply because they may find 3-4 cases in "there 
entire lives" where making a choice matters that much, and, for most of 
them, picking the "wrong" solution doesn't have that "huge" a 
consequence. For those that it does... Well, one things religion does do 
is cover its own mistakes by helping people it fowled up to survive, 
even when *it* caused them to fail in the first place. Its not self 
correcting, just.. self medicating. And, the ones whose consequences 
where "even more serious", well.. They are not around to object at all 
when someone else interprets the mistake as "gods will", "part of gods 
plan", "a challenge for the survivors", or... usually just about 
anything other than, "Heh stupid. It doesn't work, so stop doing it!"

>> Well, if/when it happens, its probably someone fed up with the need to
>> point out all 50,000 things that fall into that category. At the least,
>> some places won't let you post more than one of them.
> 
> The counter to that "individual things" often ends up being "you have to 
> take the whole thing".  Part of the reason for that is that you're trying 
> to change the opinion of someone who doesn't want their opinion to be 
> changed.  They're just as frustrated as you - again, it comes back to 
> that point about "attacking" the foundation of the something they've 
> built their entire life around.  That's not something that should be seen 
> to be being treated lightly or with ridicule - you might as well be 
> calling them "stupid" or worse - and we all know where that leads.
> 
Irrational responses, or.. if you are lucky, someone wondering, "Could I 
be wrong." Another "trend" in recent years seems to be the insane, and 
often ***specifically worded*** this way, idea that, "One should have a 
right to not be offended." Bullshit! If anything, religion is so 
shielded from offense as it is that the courts can't even keep a church 
from robbing its parishioners blind, if it chooses to, as a matter of 
"internal church policy". Now, if they hire, make a contract with, or 
promise something to someone "outside" the church, they are SOL. But, 
they could tell you almost anything, promise nearly anything, make you 
do stuff that would be abuse/child abuse if someone did it in a secular 
setting, in some cases (like most really hard line Baptist baptisms), 
etc., and not only could they, in many such cases, argue that you 
breached trust by telling anyone about it, refuse to give you anything 
they promised (having "changed their mind") or.. well.. If its religion, 
everyone expects the right to "not be offended, challenged or ridiculed" 
for it. But, choose to join the wrong gym, cross dress, wear hats inside 
a building, or 100 billion other things, and, that is all fair game.

Sorry, but "religion" is just another object in the world to me, and its 
either mild, and therefor safe, but don't "dare" do something stupid, 
like supporting something that isn't, or its insane rubbish, and I 
**will** call them on it. To ask be to do otherwise is to disrespect 
others who fight against the excesses and willing/unwilling support of 
those excesses, and everyone that has ever been hurt by such. They 
deserve it more than than some believer's personal ego.

That said. Not stopping long enough to find out what I *am* arguing 
against, but just concluding that it is a personal attack, is, imho, at 
least as good a reason for calling someone an irrational fool as 
"actually" belonging to, or supporting, what ever it is I *am* arguing 
about.

>> Again, there is a reason for using ridicule. Its the last resort when
>> dealing with people you realize will **never** play fair, in the hopes
>> that embarrassing them enough will get them to rethink their position.
> 
> That never, in my experience works.  The last resort when dealing with 
> people who won't play fair is to walk away.  Logically, upon being 
> ridiculed, the vast majority of deeply religious people aren't going to 
> suddenly say "gee, you're right, I've been stupid".  They're going to dig 
> in their defenses.  At the point at which they become defensive, they 
> have stopped listening to what you're saying, and you're just wasting 
> your time trying to change their view.
> 
Hmm. Ok, then how is this, "Its not the one its directed at that is at 
issue, since they are unlikely to change, its those watching, who see 
that the only response they can give is incoherent, or non-existent." 
For the most part, such people are not listening to what you are saying 
to start with. Your only option is, "don't play the game at all", or, 
"make sure someone else sees how **they** wanted to play it, and why 
that is stupid."

>> Mind, this is hardly needed, since all you have to do is look at
>> interviews by people like Casey Luskin to realize that they embarrass
>> themselves more than we ever could. 
> 
> Sure.  Why do you think I walked away from two recent discussions here 
> after one response to the initiator of the thread? ;-)  It's the same 
> principle.  I'm not going to change that individuals mind, and ultimately 
> it's my opinion that that person does more damage to themselves than I 
> could ever do by continuing to respond in kind.  Add to that that I 
> honestly don't care if he makes a fool of himself or not, what exactly is 
> my motivation to *try* to make him look foolish again?  He's already 
> doing a far better job than I ever could do.
> 
Well. Here it is different. But, go to one of these radical sites some 
times and look at the content... Unchallenged, they can **claim** you 
are a) afraid to challenge them, b) don't have any answers to their 
imaginary issues, or c) you ran away, because you know you would lose. 
On their own sites they "bolster" this opinion, by deleting anything 
that "remotely" disagrees, or fails to praise them. Part of the point of 
making them look even more foolish is to show fence sitters that the 
issue isn't your "unwillingness" to face them, but that you can't stop 
laughing while doing so. ;)

>> How would you suggest dealing with the radicals who, over the last 50
>> years, have grown in size, influence and power, while the rationalists
>> opted to use discussion, science publishing, and catering to the
>> "moderate allies", to fight back? The old way lost us ground. 
> 
> That's a harder question to answer.  When it comes to religious beliefs 
> in politics, ultimately it comes down to money.  Religious organizations 
> have an immense power to pull in money.  The LDS Church more or less 
> demands a 10% tithe every year, or you fall out of the good graces of the 
> church.  TIME Magazine did an analysis a few years ago of the LDS 
> Church's holdings, and it was quite incredible.
> 
Some of them though.. Like the Catholic League, thankfully just "lie" 
about how many they have. Someone worked out that, based on their public 
records, and the dues needed to "be a member", either each one "claimed" 
only actually put in about 30 cents, or the numbers where "exaggerated", 
by like.. 10,000 times the actual number, and there where less than a 
few hundred "actual" people in the entire organization.

>> And the
>> key reason is that the middle grounders may, this week, insist that
>> there isn't anything wrong with evolution, but there **is** some huge
>> problem with cosmology. Next week, as soon as we imagine that is cleared
>> up, some other moderate we get as an ally turns out to be a firm
>> defender of astrophysics, but thinks Intelligent Design is a plausible
>> replacement for Evolution. Such "allies" have, in the past, done nothing
>> so much as stick a foot out to trip the scientific world, 
> 
> Logically, if the scientific principles are sound, then it shouldn't trip 
> the scientific world up too badly.  Either that or the premise has a flaw 
> in it, no?
> 
Right.. Because no one can come along and just declare, by fiat that 
Stem cells are useless, or, like in India, we should be using Vedic math 
and science, including alchemy, instead of "western" ideas...

This principle is only true if science is "allowed" to seek the correct 
answers. A lot of people would like it to "start" with what they think 
are the right answers, then throw out anything that doesn't fit. 
Strangely, when the Islamic world does this, its a sign of the 
corruption of Islam, while Christians doing the same thing are "trying 
to save the US from communist and atheistic views". o.O

>> So, if the guy in the clown suit screams, "Heh, stop taking about how
>> silly my shoes are!", every time you point out that squirt flowers don't
>> explain plate tectonics.. What is the point of not just saying, "OK,
>> have it your way. Not only are you wrong about your squirt flower
>> theory, but those shoes make you look like an idiot!"
> 
> More to the point, what is the point of saying it?  It accomplishes 
> nothing - those who think the clown looks ridiculous will still think the 
> clown looks ridiculous, those who think the clown is sane will continue 
> to think the clown looks sane, and both groups are likely to think that 
> you're a mean-spirited person who couldn't remain civil.  The clown wins 
> (by being able to count on sympathy), the believers win (because their 
> belief that the rest of the world is a messed up place is reinforced), 
> the non-believers win (arguably because you've pointed out the emperor 
> has no clothes, but to them that was bloody obvious already so you 
> haven't shown them anything new), and you've lost by tarnishing your own 
> reputation by behaving in an uncivilized manner.
> 
> That's why often walking away is the best option.  As someone wise once 
> said, "it's sometimes better to be silent and be thought a fool than to 
> open your mouth and remove all doubt."
> 
No it isn't. Walking away lets them *claim* that you refused to 
challenge their views, where afraid to, didn't have answers, or knew you 
where wrong. It doesn't matter if they "look" silly when prancing around 
with floppy shoes. If all anyone sees is, "Bozo the creationist has a 
presentation at so and so place.", they are not going to see the "Bozo", 
part, all they are going to see is the "sub-headline" which says, 
"circus claims scientists had to evidence against controversial theory." 
You "do" have to show people that they are silly. Because, well.. They 
gave up the nose and shoes two years ago, and while they still where the 
poka-dot underwear, they figured out that keeping it "under" a business 
suit gave them more "apparent" credibility. Your only option at that 
point is, sadly, to go there and pull their pants down, while hoping 
they didn't change tactics "yet again", in the mean time.

Thankfully, most such seem to lack imagination as much as humor. Comes 
from having a mind focused to much on "one view", that you can't "see" 
anything else. Thus, the idea that red noses are high comedy, while 
thinking George Carlin is a boring loud mouth. ;)

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> You might be surprised to know that most atheists I know are atheist 
>> to the "existing" definitions of gods, but fall all over the line with 
>> respect to how "likely" it is that there is more to the universe, and 
>> what that even "means".
> 
> Here's a thought. I wonder what atheists would say to the question:
> 
> "Do you believe that if there is life elsewhere in the universe, it 
> might have been designed by a higher intelligence?"
> 
> Given how many atheists say things like "I don't believe in God because 
> there's just no evidence in favor", I wonder how many people would 
> answer which way.
> 
Hmm. Depends, what is the "evidence" that it was designed? lol See, we 
know ours wasn't because, well.. Its a fracking mess that, often, works 
only as a result of massive redundancy, and a fair amount of luck, and 
which can be "so" badly messed up that "minor" things can wipe out whole 
species. Such a "designed" intelligence would almost certainly have 
several traits - a) fewer cludges, b) fewer serious problems in its 
function and construction, and c) obvious deviations from "other" known 
life from the same world, which couldn't have developed via "selection", 
at all. Not just, with a lot of tweaks, but.. like.. Its got wings an a 
propeller, so can't have been "derived from a house" kind of 
differences. Things we don't see in life here, where if houses and 
airplanes "evolved" both would have "genes" in them that could be 
switched to get something "close" to a house-plane, even if it was 
worthless as "either".

So, yeah. I don't see scientists having any problem, once they worked 
out the details, assuming its genetics where different enough to make 
hard to work out, or even from its "lack" of major structural flaws, 
like wrong facing knees, eyes that are wired backwards, throats designed 
so eating can stop you breathing, etc., they would have little problem 
recognizing the difference.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Sometimes it's not a question of supporting (directly or indirectly) the 
> bad part, but supporting the good part.

See, I don't think that is at all relevant. Even dictators, kings, 
communist countries, and numerous others had "good ideas", or did, "good 
works". On the sum of things, if the good works promote something that, 
on the whole, propagate, upholds, or defends, the bad ones.. well, the 
net result is **not** good, no matter how many people you "helped" in 
the short term. It just gets worse when people look only to their own 
children's future, which isn't going to be "much" worse than their own, 
even if they are supporting dark things indirectly, because a) they 
imagine people will fight it before it comes to that (only.. If they are 
not fighting, who do they imagine "is"?), or b) they don't think it will 
get that bad.

Heck, we had 8 years of a total fracking loon running things, and no one 
in Reagan's time would have imagined that electing one overly religious 
person "might" a few decades later lead to an even more religious one, 
who was a total fracking moron. People with "good works" in their mind 
often fail to see clearly what the worst case could be, for indirectly 
supporting the bad parts too.

And.. When you get those that "only" see as far as their own "personal" 
connection to god, afterlife, and salvation... What are those people 
looking at, making the world "really" better? Or, how many only do what 
they "think" is in their means, helping the few they can, and let 
everything else to run its course? Too many for my tastes. And, that 
isn't even when the belief in "religion's" influence on the world isn't 
so deeply buried in the culture, like it is in many black communities, 
that its virtually impossible to even "claim" that a church could be 
doing harm.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:55:24 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>> On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 10:57:34 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> 
>>> andrel wrote:
>>>>  but it gives you no useful information.
>>> It's really a test of "are you a fanatic" or not, atheist style. :-)
>> 
>> I don't think so. 
>> Maybe you have been influenced too much by the Evolution Vs Intelligent Design
>> debate. Who is saying that a higher intelligence is God, other than your wackos
>> who are trying to slip it in the back door? 
>
>Nobody. That's the point.
>

Is this a case of: Did. Didn't. Did. Didn't. Did. Didn't. Didn't. Did. Didn't.
Did. Didn't. ?

>If you're an atheist because you have no evidence for God, you're much more 
>likely to be open to the possibility of evidence elsewhere.

True IMO
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Hmm. Depends, what is the "evidence" that it was designed? 

Oh, and as an aside, if you want a fun fiction book involving the search for 
scientific proof of the existence of a Creator, the book "Calculating God" 
by Sawyer is a fun read.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:19:18 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> True enough. But one can conclude, for example, based on facts, that the
> risks of allowing slavery are too high, and the benefits insufficient,
> to hold that its a valid behavior. This concept, when based on
> "opinions", was both defended at part of the natural order of the
> universe and gods plan, and as something that god wouldn't accept, due
> to the other sides opinions of equality of justice and unreasonable
> cruelty (none of which was, at that time, equality of ability,
> intelligence, or race), by those who "had no" fact based position to
> derive their views from.

What constitutes justice or unreasonable cruelty, though?  That's a 
matter of opinion.  There is a common basis for that opinion now (through 
things such as the Geneva Conventions), but even within the bounds of 
something like the GC, there is still question, for example, about 
whether the use of a Taser constitutes unreasonable cruelty.

In and of iteself, perhaps it doesn't, but there can (and often is) a 
situational component.  It's like the training a police officer goes 
through as regards the use of deadly force.  Unprovoked is easy - there's 
no case for deadly force.  But you've got a criminal drawing down on you 
and you've got a split second to decide - shoot or be shot, kill or be 
killed - that's not something that's a fact-based decision, it's a split-
second opinion-based decision that potentially decides who walks away 
from the incident.

> The problem I have with opinion is not that it isn't an important part
> of how societies work, its that it ***is*** an important part of how
> societies work, and, unfortunately it doesn't take much to derail
> opinion into complete idiocy using emotional appeals, and a lot of wild
> spinning. 

That doesn't mean opinions are unimportant in society.  This is a bit of 
a straw-man argument, in fact - because it posits a situation where the 
use of opinions can lead to "complete idiocy" and then concludes that 
consequently, *all* opinion is bad.

> Its rather more difficult to do that when you have "empirical"
> grounds for forming such opinions. 

By your own argument, that's not an opinion, though.

> I.e., not all opinions are equal.
> Unfortunately, one of the consequences of the dogmatic view of
> "equality", "fairness", and, "respect" in the US goes like this: "All
> ideas are equal, to be fair we have to listen to all of them and judge
> them in their own context, and we need to respect when people's ideas
> differ." 

Now this I can agree with - we do tend to take this to an idiotic length 
at times.  But that's a matter of opinion - one that you and I share. ;-)

>> Agreement isn't required.  Understanding isn't either, for that matter,
>> but I have found that understanding how someone with an alternative
>> viewpoint arrived at that conclusion leads to an understanding of how
>> to interact with that person in a constructive way.  I've found this to
>> be an incredibly valuable skill to use given that many of the people I
>> work with professionally have strong personal religious faith.  Even
>> for those whom I don't discuss religion with (which is most of them),
>> knowing the common set of experiences that they go through every week
>> when they go to church (for example) helps me understand how to
>> motivate them and get what I need from them.
>> 
> Ok, to an extent, you are correct. But, there are obvious limits to such
> "understanding". 

Sure.  There are limits to everything.

> Most of the things the hardline atheists go on about
> are cases where they fully understand, often due to once "sharing" those
> views, how someone reached a conclusion, and they see both how its
> "incorrect", but how much effort is put into not seeing, intentionally
> ignoring, excusing, or finding "good things" in the very negative
> consequences of "reaching" those conclusions in the first place, or,
> sometimes, due to even how they reach them.

We all have our blind spots.  Some people embrace them, and some don't 
recognize they have them at all.  But we all do.

> I mean, do you honestly think there is no consequence to, to use slavery
> as an example again, concluding that someone should be treated nearly
> equal, like a really smart animal, but still not accepted as equal in
> all ways, vs seeing them **as** "equal" in all ways to you? Of course
> not. The end result, in the short term, may be the same, when an
> injustice exists. In a more contemporary example, gay "separate but not
> quite equal secular rules", vs. "defending marriage". The later isn't
> even under any real threat, and the former is pure bullshit. You can't
> have separate but equal. The result is "never" equal, pretty much by
> definition. The moment you say "separate", you start already applying a
> "special rule", that says one gets to be seen, treated, or acted on,
> differently than the other. Its pretty much down hill from that point.

Shifting my frame of reference to the time when slavery was a common 
thing in the US, I don't know that either of us *in that frame of 
reference* (ie, with the knowledge that existed then) would necessarily 
have been exposed to the idea that those minorities who were slaves 
weren't somehow inferior.  (Ugh, it's distasteful to even express that 
idea).  In a different time, who's to say how you or I would react?  It's 
easy to look back and say "that was wrong" because we have the benefit of 
our current knowledge and experience, but if we'd been alive at the time, 
our life experiences would've been very different, and that would've 
shaped our perceptions.  Remember that there *were* people who felt they 
could *prove* that slaves were inferior.  Even very intelligent people - 
like those who put together the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of 
Rights, etc.  "All men are created equal" didn't apply to "all men" (and 
certainly didn't apply to women).

> So, sure.. Understanding how to motivate someone is one thing. But..
> Some things either work or don't, and if you can motivate someone out of
> doing them right, there are 50 other people, far better equipped, to
> motivate them to do it wrong, or not at all.

Sometimes life ain't fair.  I don't like that, but that's a fact proven 
again and again.

>> Sometimes yes, people who have strong religious faith react badly when
>> they're told that they're not being rational.  How do you react when
>> someone tells you you're talking nonsense when you're talking about
>> something that you have a strong personal investment in it?  What I
>> find is that the presentation coming from someone with a point of view
>> often is not handled very tactfully.  Understand that for people of
>> strong religious faith, when you start trying to prove that their view
>> is wrong, that is often perceived as an attack on the foundations of
>> everything they have built their life upon.
>> 
> Well, I admit, I don't react "that" well. But I react worse when their
> reason for making the claim has no basis at all. There is a saying,
> something to the effect, "If you react badly to someone's comment about
> you, its because you recognize something of truth in it.", or something
> like that. Someone says I am not being rational about something, then
> either I admit it, I accept that I may be, after its explained, or I
> reject it, because their own "evidence" amount to not sharing my view,
> and therefor concluding that they are being rational, but I am not, for
> failing to agree with them. The later I have no sympathy or patience
> with. 

I could see that.  It's a very similar reaction that those who feel the 
foundation of their life is under attack from someone who doesn't 
understand it.  That's the sort of thing I mean when I say "put yourself 
in their shoes" - you've been there, done that, and reacted badly to it.  
It shouldn't be so difficult to understand why others react that way when 
they feel the basis of their life is under attack. :-)

> I would never tell someone they where being irrational without
> "attempting" to explain why. Neither would the vast majority of other
> atheists I know (well, except when the person is being persistent, or
> keeps showing up, and does nothing but tell "us" we are wrong, without
> any other argument, then people get.. snippy.) But... Well, lets just
> say that for people who have been told all their lives that X view is
> right, and believing it makes them right, and you shouldn't really
> question these things, its real hard to get them to reflect at all on
> whether or not they are being rational, never mind actually get them to
> admit they are not.

Well, there again, though, it comes back to being perceived as an attack 
on a foundational part of their life.  If they believe some things are 
not to be questioned and it works for them and doesn't cause harm (now 
there's a highly subjective idea, what constitutes harm?) to others, then 
it's not a problem.

> Watched some clips today of various comics, and the strongly religious
> one was precisely like that. His absolute 100% position was, "I believe,
> I know I am right, so therefor 'everything' I say about non-believers or
> sinner **has to be funny**. 

Consider:  Perhaps he was being satirical.  Comedy is his career, and 
some people do satire well enough that the humour is missed.  The first 
few episodes of The Colbert Report were like that; Stephen Colbert (the 
person, not the character he plays) gave an interview on NPR and 
explained what he was doing, and then it became clear what he was doing 
(at least for us).  He also fine-tuned his act so that it was more 
apparent what he was doing.

> It wasn't so much a joke as mental masturbation. "Here is what I
> 'imagine' would happen, if I taped the guys mouth shut, locked them in a
> room, and read the Bible for hours at them." My only reaction to this
> was, "You don't have a clue how wrong you are, since you never talked to
> one.", or, alternatively, "Then again, after 5 minutes of what I imagine
> is even 'worse' BS than your comedy routine, I would jump out a window,
> preferably a from the 20th floor." lol

It sounds to me more like he was providing a commentary on how ridiculous 
some bible-thumpers are, to take the situation to an absurd level to 
point out the absurdity of forcing a religious view on another person.

> Or, as someone put it. How do you "fairly" explain away the "problems"
> presented in 20 minutes by someone, with only 20 minutes to rebut them,
> when *each* so called problem is a 20 minute lecture, and they just gave
> you 500 things to "respond to". You can't. And, its how "they" stack the
> game.

People who don't want to be convinced they're wrong employ a wide variety 
of techniques to prevent being told they're wrong.  Ultimately, those who 
don't want to be convinced won't, no matter what you do.  The ability to 
act and think as an individual comes with that as baggage, but I think 
our ability to think independently has great benefits as well.  Life 
would be pretty boring if we all thought the same thing and believed the 
same thing.

One of the things that alternate ideas do is force us to reexamine what 
we believe in.  The debate about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, for 
example - what that has done is galvanized a large part of the scientific 
community that deals with evolutionary science, and it seems that we are 
discovering more things that demonstrate evolution in practical terms.  
If we didn't have Creationists challenging the very idea of Evolution, 
it's likely we wouldn't have had the advances.  The lack of a challenge 
often leads to complacency and lazy thinking.  But having to structure a 
debate, even against something that you and I think is patently 
ridiculous, helps science.

> Ah, but.. There is a rising tide of people in the US that not only fall
> for everything said, starting at the "blogged about it" stage, and
> presents "everyone" prior to that, including news agencies that don't
> present "both sides", or actively promote the "big
> science/pharma/government/whatever" side of things, as being "part of a
> vast conspiracy to hide the truth.

So what's the alternative?  And to add a constraint, an alternative that 
doesn't limit the rights of those who push a particular point of view?

> And, well.. If you believe in one conspiracy, like say, religion, then
> its easier to believe in the "war one Christmas", and once you get that,
> you find it that much easier to imagine the "war on religion", etc. The
> most "conspiracies" you willingly accept, the more you believe, since
> many of them are "underpinned" by the same assumptions, starting with
> the idea that you have found the one true path, and those that haven't
> are, to one degree or another, out to get you.

That's one of the risks you run with a free press and freedom of speech.  
What these people say may be total lunacy, but they have every right to 
say it (at least in the US under the protections of the first 
amendment).  The alternative there is to restrict free speech.  Do we 
really want to go down that road?

>> But this is a bit of a shift in the discussion we're having as well,
>> because it doesn't really tie into religious faith - it's more closely
>> related to generic belief.  Not that the two are entirely dissimilar,
>> mind.
>> 
> Well. I don't exactly agree. How do you separate them, really? Because
> one sort of belief is old, and handed down, sort of, while others are
> not? You could call almost anything, by that standard, "religion",
> including patriotism. Then, what.. all ideas that you get yourself,
> instead of learning from parents, or organizations, are "not"? Where is
> the line drawn?

Well, that's why I said "not that the two are entirely dissimilar". :-)

>> should be seen to be being treated lightly or with ridicule - you might
>> as well be calling them "stupid" or worse - and we all know where that
>> leads.
>> 
> Irrational responses, 

Emotional response, the result of feeling one is under attack.  That's 
actually a pretty rational response - to react emotionally when a core 
belief you hold is under attack.

> or.. if you are lucky, someone wondering, "Could I
> be wrong." Another "trend" in recent years seems to be the insane, and
> often ***specifically worded*** this way, idea that, "One should have a
> right to not be offended." Bullshit! 

I agree with this.  However that also means that you and I don't have a 
right to be offended by religion.  That's a two-way street.

> Sorry, but "religion" is just another object in the world to me, and its
> either mild, and therefor safe, but don't "dare" do something stupid,
> like supporting something that isn't, or its insane rubbish, and I
> **will** call them on it. To ask be to do otherwise is to disrespect
> others who fight against the excesses and willing/unwilling support of
> those excesses, and everyone that has ever been hurt by such. They
> deserve it more than than some believer's personal ego.

Just don't be surprised that when you do, you'll cause offense or you'll 
get an emotional response.

> That said. Not stopping long enough to find out what I *am* arguing
> against, but just concluding that it is a personal attack, is, imho, at
> least as good a reason for calling someone an irrational fool as
> "actually" belonging to, or supporting, what ever it is I *am* arguing
> about.

It's about presentation, Patrick.  If your goal is to persuade someone 
that they're being what you consider an "irrational fool", using 
inflammatory language to get the point across will cause them to raise 
their shields (that's human nature) and to fight back.  Using that kind 
of approach isn't going to change anyone's mind, and is likely going to 
be a frustrating exercise for you as well, assuming that your goal is to 
change people's minds about beliefs held for a lifetime.

> Hmm. Ok, then how is this, "Its not the one its directed at that is at
> issue, since they are unlikely to change, its those watching, who see
> that the only response they can give is incoherent, or non-existent."

Those watching are likely to see someone "on the attack", and that gives 
the "recipient" of the ridicule the ability to draw sympathy from those 
on the sidelines.  If you want to affect those watching from the 
sidelines, you have to not make the target of your discussion into a 
victim.  What's more, if the "attack" is seen to be unprovoked, you're 
more than likely going to drive those on the sidelines (and on the fence) 
to *help* the "victim".

> For the most part, such people are not listening to what you are saying
> to start with. Your only option is, "don't play the game at all", or,
> "make sure someone else sees how **they** wanted to play it, and why
> that is stupid."

Sometimes the best way to play is to not play.  An emotional response on 
your part (whether real or perceived) isn't going to convince people 
you're right.  Well, that's maybe not entirely true, you might convince 
those who have no capacity for an empathetic response, but there aren't 
really that many people who wouldn't have empathy for someone who they 
perceived as being attacked unjustly.

> Well. Here it is different. But, go to one of these radical sites some
> times and look at the content... Unchallenged, they can **claim** you
> are a) afraid to challenge them, b) don't have any answers to their
> imaginary issues, or c) you ran away, because you know you would lose.
> On their own sites they "bolster" this opinion, by deleting anything
> that "remotely" disagrees, or fails to praise them. 

Welcome to the idea of free speech. :-)  These "radical sites" are not 
public spaces, but are privately owned, and they have the right to 
enforce whatever they want and to say whatever they want as long as it 
doesn't break some other law (like incitement laws and the like).  If I 
want to create a website that's viewable by the public that "proves" that 
the sky is red and I only allow comments to be posted that support that 
notion, that's my right as the site operator.  It may be ridiculous, but 
ultimately I have that right and you can't stop me from doing it.

> Part of the point of
> making them look even more foolish is to show fence sitters that the
> issue isn't your "unwillingness" to face them, but that you can't stop
> laughing while doing so. ;)

At some point, it's not a question of "unwillingness", but a question of 
"is it even worth my time?".  If you or I spent all of our time trying to 
convince people all the things we think are ridiculous are ridiculous, 
we'd have scarce time to ourselves.

> Some of them though.. Like the Catholic League, thankfully just "lie"
> about how many they have. Someone worked out that, based on their public
> records, and the dues needed to "be a member", either each one "claimed"
> only actually put in about 30 cents, or the numbers where "exaggerated",
> by like.. 10,000 times the actual number, and there where less than a
> few hundred "actual" people in the entire organization.

I think part of the problem is that the tax law is too convoluted; it 
allows people to work around disclosing what their actual assets are.  
The LDS Church (again as a convenient example) is a huge business with 
large business holdings.  Beneficial Life, for example - a major 
insurance company in the US - is (or was, this could have changed, I 
suppose) owned by the church.  What do you suppose the tax advantages are 
for having an insurance company that's owned by a religious organization?

> 
>> Logically, if the scientific principles are sound, then it shouldn't
>> trip the scientific world up too badly.  Either that or the premise has
>> a flaw in it, no?
>> 
> Right.. Because no one can come along and just declare, by fiat that
> Stem cells are useless, or, like in India, we should be using Vedic math
> and science, including alchemy, instead of "western" ideas...

There are short periods of idiocy in policy, again, that's one of the 
things that happens in a free society.

> This principle is only true if science is "allowed" to seek the correct
> answers. 

Taking a "devil's advocate" position, at what cost do those answers 
come?  Do we decide a class of people we can reasonably agree on as 
people (ie, let's leave the debate about embryonic stem cells out here) 
need to die in order to continue the research?  Let's say all people with 
red hair are determined to have the right genetic makeup to advanced stem 
cell research, but the research can only be achieved by extracting 
something that they need in order to live, thus causing their death.

> A lot of people would like it to "start" with what they think
> are the right answers, then throw out anything that doesn't fit.
> Strangely, when the Islamic world does this, its a sign of the
> corruption of Islam, while Christians doing the same thing are "trying
> to save the US from communist and atheistic views". o.O

Well, that comes back to absolutist points of view, but we've been over 
that.  I also look at that and say it's ridiculous.

>> That's why often walking away is the best option.  As someone wise once
>> said, "it's sometimes better to be silent and be thought a fool than to
>> open your mouth and remove all doubt."
>> 
> No it isn't. Walking away lets them *claim* that you refused to
> challenge their views, where afraid to, didn't have answers, or knew you
> where wrong. 

So what?  Why is their opinion of such importance to you?

> It doesn't matter if they "look" silly when prancing around
> with floppy shoes. If all anyone sees is, "Bozo the creationist has a
> presentation at so and so place.", they are not going to see the "Bozo",
> part, all they are going to see is the "sub-headline" which says,
> "circus claims scientists had to evidence against controversial theory."
> You "do" have to show people that they are silly. Because, well.. They
> gave up the nose and shoes two years ago, and while they still where the
> poka-dot underwear, they figured out that keeping it "under" a business
> suit gave them more "apparent" credibility. Your only option at that
> point is, sadly, to go there and pull their pants down, while hoping
> they didn't change tactics "yet again", in the mean time.

Then you risk turning them into a victim, and that never turns out well 
for you, but it helps them.

> 
> Thankfully, most such seem to lack imagination as much as humor. Comes
> from having a mind focused to much on "one view", that you can't "see"
> anything else. Thus, the idea that red noses are high comedy, while
> thinking George Carlin is a boring loud mouth. ;)

Well, to some, Carlin was a boring loud mouth.  That's a matter of 
personal taste.

But now I need to go and listen to the 7 words routine again - I don't 
think he was a boring loud mouth, and I miss that he's not here any more.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:39:47 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Sometimes it's not a question of supporting (directly or indirectly)
>> the bad part, but supporting the good part.
> 
> See, I don't think that is at all relevant. 

I could see why you think that, but I disagree.  Even bad people can do 
good things, and given a choice between supporting a program that feeds 
starving people that is sponsored by someone who is bad and having those 
people starve to death, I'd rather they got fed.  But before supporting a 
program run by "the bad guys", I'd first look for alternatives that 
didn't have that baggage.

> Heck, we had 8 years of a total fracking loon running things, and no one
> in Reagan's time would have imagined that electing one overly religious
> person "might" a few decades later lead to an even more religious one,
> who was a total fracking moron. People with "good works" in their mind
> often fail to see clearly what the worst case could be, for indirectly
> supporting the bad parts too.

The alternative to having another GW Bush, though, is to not have free 
elections.  There's always a worst case, even when the guy you want gets 
into office.

> And.. When you get those that "only" see as far as their own "personal"
> connection to god, afterlife, and salvation... What are those people
> looking at, making the world "really" better? 

Depends on their interpretation of their beliefs.  I can see that some 
would make the world better, because they would approach it from the 
standpoint of "war and death is a last resort, first strike is not an 
option" and try to persuade people that ideas like freedom are a good 
thing.  There are those who believe in God, the afterlife, and salvation 
who also believe that in order to enter "the Kingdom of Heaven" that they 
have to do good works and try to make the world a better place for all.

What I find often times is that people who believe that tend to not be a 
member of an organized religion, but they are religious.  I've got 
friends in the Portland area who consider themselves to be deeply 
religious people and who consider themselves to be Christian.  They 
couldn't tell me the last time they went to church, but they could tell 
me about the people whom they helped teach farming skills to and helped 
to build homes for in El Salvador - something they do a few months out of 
every few years.

They're undecided about God creating the Earth - they don't see it as an 
important part of their faith.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn't - it's not 
the sort of thing they give a lot of thought to because their mission is 
to help people by going and doing.

> Or, how many only do what
> they "think" is in their means, helping the few they can, and let
> everything else to run its course? Too many for my tastes. And, that
> isn't even when the belief in "religion's" influence on the world isn't
> so deeply buried in the culture, like it is in many black communities,
> that its virtually impossible to even "claim" that a church could be
> doing harm.

See above.  I should mention that not only can they not remember the last 
time they went to church, but like me, they have a strong distrust of 
organized religion.  I think maybe we need to make a demarcation here 
between organized religion and personal religion, because the two are 
very different.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Shifting my frame of reference to the time when slavery was a common 
> thing in the US, I don't know that either of us *in that frame of 
> reference* (ie, with the knowledge that existed then) would necessarily 
> have been exposed to the idea that those minorities who were slaves 
> weren't somehow inferior.  (Ugh, it's distasteful to even express that 
> idea).  In a different time, who's to say how you or I would react?  It's 
> easy to look back and say "that was wrong" because we have the benefit of 
> our current knowledge and experience, but if we'd been alive at the time, 
> our life experiences would've been very different, and that would've 
> shaped our perceptions.  Remember that there *were* people who felt they 
> could *prove* that slaves were inferior.  Even very intelligent people - 
> like those who put together the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of 
> Rights, etc.  "All men are created equal" didn't apply to "all men" (and 
> certainly didn't apply to women).
> 
And.. A logical examination of the "evidence", even then, would have 
shown that the there wasn't any "factual" evidence to be had at all in 
the argument. Back then you could point out lack of education, lack of 
equal treatment, and a whole host of other things that made someone 
"appear" inferior, and show examples that derailed the argument. 
Today... Sigh.. Lets just say that you can't go around claiming that you 
are "equal" in all ways, then isolate yourself from the rest of the 
nation, hold onto ideas that undermine the assertion, deny your own 
mistakes, and blame them on others, then stare in blinkered amazement at 
all the people saying, "Grandpappy was right, them <insert minority> 
really are inferior!"

If you ignore the historical reason why some communities are they way 
they are.. there is more "evidence" today of the possible inequality of 
some people, than there ever was back when it was simply "assumed".

Feeling you can prove something is **not** the same as having solid fact 
to support it. I don't give a frack what someone "feels" they can prove. 
They invariably trot out a lot of things they "imagine" no one has 
responded to before, make a lot of assertions about evidence they can 
never actually provide, then eventually just admit, if honest, that they 
only "feel" that its right, and "imagine" that someone, someplace else, 
has better evidence of the view.

Its like the argument some theists make about how Dawkins et-al only 
attack simplistic versions of religion, but there is some "great" and 
"solid" one out there, which gets ignored all the time. Then you see an 
article interviewing the "greatest minds in theology", and... all the 
fracking "deep" arguments are the same ones that people get told they 
should be ignoring, in favor of the "deeper" arguments. The only thing 
"deep" in any of it is the depth of the hole they must be standing in, 
while imagining that the guy in the next hole has a "better" argument. 
Its.. positively absurd.

>> So, sure.. Understanding how to motivate someone is one thing. But..
>> Some things either work or don't, and if you can motivate someone out of
>> doing them right, there are 50 other people, far better equipped, to
>> motivate them to do it wrong, or not at all.
> 
> Sometimes life ain't fair.  I don't like that, but that's a fact proven 
> again and again.
> 
These are people that stuff 10 aces up their sleeve, then get cheered 
when they claim to win, while you are booed, for pointing out that *no* 
poker hand has 6 aces in it. Its not that life isn't fair, its that one 
side has no honor, morals, or compunction against cheating, but 
everyone, due to indoctrination from childhood, and being told that 
"some people" are above suspicion or skepticism, believed *them* when 
they say they are the ones with hight moral standards, and the guy 
calling them on it hasn't any. Fair and unfair imply "the possibility" 
of fairness. But, when you know you will lose in that circumstance, and 
you have no honor, you make sure that the dude you want to lose has no 
armor, a blunt stick, once hand tied behind their back, and that, when 
it comes time for the fight, its an 600 pound, hungry lion, not a 3 inch 
field mouse, they find themselves confronted by. Oh, and.. You glue 
mouse ears on, and shave, the lion, and take blurry photos, so you can 
still claim it was "seasoned warrior vs. field mouse" to the newspapers 
when the guy is bleeding on the ground at the end.

Fair? I would settle for just honestly "unfair".

> I could see that.  It's a very similar reaction that those who feel the 
> foundation of their life is under attack from someone who doesn't 
> understand it.  That's the sort of thing I mean when I say "put yourself 
> in their shoes" - you've been there, done that, and reacted badly to it.  
> It shouldn't be so difficult to understand why others react that way when 
> they feel the basis of their life is under attack. :-)
> 
But, that's just it. If someone is attacking the foundation of your 
life, ask why, don't just get pissed about it. At the very least, *you* 
may be seriously wrong about what the foundation is. And, frankly.. 
anyone that thinks their "faith" is the foundation, not their family, 
life experiences, loved ones, and friends, are doing "massive" 
disservice to everything that actually "means" anything. Anyone claiming 
that their faith means "more" than that.. well, I haven't seen too many 
who think that way, when being honest about it, and the few that do, 
have no friends, rejected their families, and are usually seriously 
unhinged, if not dangerous.

>> Watched some clips today of various comics, and the strongly religious
>> one was precisely like that. His absolute 100% position was, "I believe,
>> I know I am right, so therefor 'everything' I say about non-believers or
>> sinner **has to be funny**. 
> 
> Consider:  Perhaps he was being satirical.

Ok.. I rewatched it and.. He isn't as blindingly boring as Ben Stein, 
and he "is" trying to be, vaguely, satirical. Mostly.. He starts off 
with "atheists believe in nothing, and need a lot of faith for that", 
and then starts wandering every damn logical fallacy, blind assertion 
and over repeated bit if BS ever invented, *including* a variation of 
the "tornado in a junk yard" nonsense. I am surprised he didn't go, "And 
then there is god's perfect food, the banana."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmrevhzVcD8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.asylum.co.uk%2F2009%2F05%2F29%2Fatheists-or-believers-whos-funnier&feature=player_embedded

I mean... I don't even know where to start counting the flat out "wrong" 
things. Its like if someone gave the biggest right wing creationist 
websites on the internet a mouth piece, and assumed that if "he" smiled 
and laughed at his own jokes, it was "actually" funny. Mostly, its just 
an endless diatribe about what he "imagines" is wrong with atheists. 
See.. Comedy is supposed to point out things people "do" believe, and 
why its absurd, not make shit up about what you "imagine" they believe, 
then make long whiny speeches about how wrong it is.

If this guy was on a forum, instead of a stage, no one would be 
laughing. Why? Because the only "joke" he makes is in the first few 
moments, when he goes, "Oh, I never had one of them in my house 
before!". The rest.. Is just diatribe. There is no, "And then they 
brought up this argument, so I shot it down.", or, "He/she said X, and I 
had a come back." a 4 minute speech about all the BS you "imagine" is 
wrong with something is "not" a comedy routine, its a sermon.

> One of the things that alternate ideas do is force us to reexamine what 
> we believe in.  The debate about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, for 
> example - what that has done is galvanized a large part of the scientific 
> community that deals with evolutionary science, and it seems that we are 
> discovering more things that demonstrate evolution in practical terms.  
> If we didn't have Creationists challenging the very idea of Evolution, 
> it's likely we wouldn't have had the advances.

Bullocks. We where making progress even without them. The only thing the 
recent ID movement has done is generate a "few" cases where people dug 
around in papers that where ***already*** published, 4-5 years before, 
but which the creationists didn't bother to look for, which already 
showed why they where wrong. Well, in one minor case they "may" have 
taken a slightly closer look at one thing they claimed to be 
"irreducible", but, the reality is, everything they have said was 
"already" refuted, multiple times, by things published years before ID, 
the Disco Institute, or Dover, where ever even on the radar.

This is how ID works:

1. See something that looks designed.
2. Google a few papers for key words that might "imply" design.
3. Ignore 500 other papers, and decades of research in "real" sources, 
like Pubmed (or claim you looked there, but didn't find anything...)
4. Assert that evolutionists haven't looked at it.
5. Stare incomprehensibly at the 500 papers, 3 books and 2,000 research 
programs "already in existence" which address the imaginary problem already.
6. Go back to 1.

> The lack of a challenge 
> often leads to complacency and lazy thinking.  But having to structure a 
> debate, even against something that you and I think is patently 
> ridiculous, helps science.
> 
No, it just wastes time and money. The only thing that ID has done is 
emphasize, at least to scientists, that science education in the US 
isn't "bad", so much as, "terrifyingly bad", and there are people 
actually trying to either replace it with something worse, or get rid of 
it entirely, and most of the politicians are too fracking ignorant to 
get why this is not a good thing. So.. Yeah, I am sure that figuring out 
that the Titanic is sinking "after" your ankles are already wet is 
"useful" in some vague sense. Otherwise.. they haven't done jack, since 
100% of their arguments have been "entirely" on "old" definitions, "bad" 
statistical math, "incorrect" assumptions about the state, direction and 
progress of the science, and a "completely" wrong assertion that 
quibbles over "details" about how much, and when certain "kinds" of 
evolution happen, is a sign that science can't decide on "how" it 
happens in general. I.e., not knowing how much of the water on your lawn 
is wet from the sprinklers or recent rain means you are wrong about both 
how rain *and* sprinklers work, and you need to invent "intelligent 
wetting" to replace them. How does that help "shake up" the scientific 
community?

>> Ah, but.. There is a rising tide of people in the US that not only fall
>> for everything said, starting at the "blogged about it" stage, and
>> presents "everyone" prior to that, including news agencies that don't
>> present "both sides", or actively promote the "big
>> science/pharma/government/whatever" side of things, as being "part of a
>> vast conspiracy to hide the truth.
> 
> So what's the alternative?  And to add a constraint, an alternative that 
> doesn't limit the rights of those who push a particular point of view?
> 
All you can do is point out why the conspiracy theorists are wrong, and 
sometimes that "means" saying things that some of their supporters, like 
it or not, are going to see as "attacks". Its impossible to avoid those 
heavily invested in fallacies making such claims. Just because they do, 
and are deeply offended by such imagined "attacks", we should just stop 
doing anything that bugs them? Again, you can't do that. Its seen by 
such people, and those that generally support them, as backing down for 
lack of conviction, or facts, not as, "refusing to engage the wacko."

>> or.. if you are lucky, someone wondering, "Could I
>> be wrong." Another "trend" in recent years seems to be the insane, and
>> often ***specifically worded*** this way, idea that, "One should have a
>> right to not be offended." Bullshit! 
> 
> I agree with this.  However that also means that you and I don't have a 
> right to be offended by religion.  That's a two-way street.
> 
Uh.. No, thought I was clear. We have no right to "not be offended", and 
by extension, we can be offended by anything we want too. Its like free 
speech. Just because I have to let someone talk doesn't mean I have to 
"like" them talking, or do nothing at all to try to stop people 
listening too it. If I did, then I wouldn't be exercising "my" rights. 
Sure its a "two way street". That is why respect has to be earned, not 
handed to every half wit that shows up with some sort of opinion. They 
can hold it all they want. They want me to respect it... well, accepting 
that they hold it isn't the "same" as respecting it. Yet, truth be told, 
most of the people we have been talking about a) assume respect must 
come automatically to "their" ideas, especially if religious, and this 
is practically written in the same law that ironically is "supposed" to 
limit its influence of the people that are not *supposed* to be giving 
it undue respect, and b) no one else's deserves the same treatment.

Well.. Sorry, but (b) pretty much automatically denies (a), in my mind, 
even if it wasn't based, almost exclusively, on the ignorance of the 
other sides actual positions, failure to understand the evidence, and/or 
random assertions that where pulled out of their imaginations, instead 
of based on anything in the real world.

>> That said. Not stopping long enough to find out what I *am* arguing
>> against, but just concluding that it is a personal attack, is, imho, at
>> least as good a reason for calling someone an irrational fool as
>> "actually" belonging to, or supporting, what ever it is I *am* arguing
>> about.
> 
> It's about presentation, Patrick.  If your goal is to persuade someone 
> that they're being what you consider an "irrational fool", using 
> inflammatory language to get the point across will cause them to raise 
> their shields (that's human nature) and to fight back.

Yeah, yeah. Framing. As in, framing the argument to the point where you 
find yourself painted in to a corner, because you where unwilling to be 
a bit less than "nice. But, seriously, its beside the point. I am not so 
stupid I don't know to adjust my approach when I am dealing with someone 
that "is" able to change opinion, and not addressing the "audience" 
through ridicule of the object my comments are directed at. The argument 
amount to, "Well, someone might be listening, who would change their 
mind if you where nicer." But, the truth is, most of them won't change 
their minds because they have "never" found themselves in a situation 
where someone wouldn't back down from their supposed spiritual leader, 
or continued to challenge them. People don't give up, or question, 
religion, or even its assertions, because other people "play nice" and 
try to avoid offending. They do so because other people "do" have 
drastically different opinions, which they will defend as aggressively, 
and "some of them" wonder how anyone could be so "sure", and go looking, 
then find out that, in the case of creationism, they have been lied to 
since the first day someone sat them in a pew.

Look, I guess my point is that the same tactic that works on one person 
doesn't work on another, and being directly, and unapologetically, 
challenged, instead of someone dancing around the issues, "will" show 
some people that there are those strongly willing to defend something, 
not just a lot of people trying really hard to mix two incompatible 
things together. Some of them are going to ask, "Ok, how can they be so 
sure." You need both tigers "and" kittens in your tool box, because the 
other side isn't going to just go, "Oh, well, since they are using 
kittens, we should stick with those too."

>> Hmm. Ok, then how is this, "Its not the one its directed at that is at
>> issue, since they are unlikely to change, its those watching, who see
>> that the only response they can give is incoherent, or non-existent."
> 
> Those watching are likely to see someone "on the attack", and that gives 
> the "recipient" of the ridicule the ability to draw sympathy from those 
> on the sidelines.  If you want to affect those watching from the 
> sidelines, you have to not make the target of your discussion into a 
> victim.  What's more, if the "attack" is seen to be unprovoked, you're 
> more than likely going to drive those on the sidelines (and on the fence) 
> to *help* the "victim".
> 
They claim "victim" regardless of how nice you are. They claim fracking 
victim even when 90% of the listeners are "convinced" they won the 
argument. Are we even talking about the same thing? I am not talking 
about just showing up an calling someone names. I am talking about 
showing why they "deserve" some of the names. If people can't see the 
reasons, they are not going to change their opinion just because I, or 
anyone else, said it in a "nice way". On the contrary, in most of the 
situations I have ever seen, "they" are the ones name calling, claiming 
other people think certain things, misquoting them, and committing both 
slander and libel, *then* getting offended when someone fights back. If 
I was talking about just walking into a room with one and blurting out, 
"you're an idiot", you would have a point. I am not.

These people could make it look like the fracking talking maple syrup 
bottle, Ms. Butterworth, was trying to leap at them with a knife, and 
the press would fall for it, even *with* the discussion on fracking 
tape. Just look at what they do with Dawkins. The guy is nice, polite, 
non-aggressive, he will state, "I think religion is made up", in a tone 
that would make you imagine that he was discussing the time on his 
watch. Look at what "just saying that" gets you. The wackos practically 
insist he showed up dressed as a ninja and tried to rip their throats 
out with his teeth. This isn't someone taking "horrible" offense at the 
suggestion that someone might not believe in god, the way they do, this 
is someone "intentionally" making it sound like they where attacked by a 
commando raid and held at gun point.

If you can't even be mild and "nice" and avoid being called a monster...

>> Part of the point of
>> making them look even more foolish is to show fence sitters that the
>> issue isn't your "unwillingness" to face them, but that you can't stop
>> laughing while doing so. ;)
> 
> At some point, it's not a question of "unwillingness", but a question of 
> "is it even worth my time?".  If you or I spent all of our time trying to 
> convince people all the things we think are ridiculous are ridiculous, 
> we'd have scarce time to ourselves.
> 
Sigh.. Again, we tried that for "decades". If its worth "their" time to 
make multi-billion dollar organizations "dedicated" to telling people 
how unwilling "we" are to address their imaginary points.. Somehow I 
tend to suspect you better **find** time to deal with it. Just because 
something is ridiculous doesn't mean it won't become the "norm", if no 
one does anything to point out how ridiculous it actually is, 
**especially** the people whose jobs are directly effected by whether or 
not some twit gets themselves elected to office some place, then votes 
the next week to ban vaccines in the state, along with some other 
supporters who, "don't know the facts, but heard about that poor woman", 
or some BS, based on such "ridiculous" crap.

You can't ignore or lose every "public" battle, other than the ones in 
court, and expect to win the fracking war on the idea. All it takes is 
enough fools to make the truth "illegal". Just look at the insane 
bullshit that goes on in the so called "war on drugs". Which is more 
about propaganda than actually "stopping it", which would require.. most 
of the money wasted going to preventions, recovery and research on how 
and why they work, and not on busting 5,000 pounds of relatively 
harmless weed, even while a ton of something worse enters some place 
else, and 50 new crack houses open up.

>> Some of them though.. Like the Catholic League, thankfully just "lie"
>> about how many they have. Someone worked out that, based on their public
>> records, and the dues needed to "be a member", either each one "claimed"
>> only actually put in about 30 cents, or the numbers where "exaggerated",
>> by like.. 10,000 times the actual number, and there where less than a
>> few hundred "actual" people in the entire organization.
> 
> I think part of the problem is that the tax law is too convoluted; it 
> allows people to work around disclosing what their actual assets are.  
> The LDS Church (again as a convenient example) is a huge business with 
> large business holdings.  Beneficial Life, for example - a major 
> insurance company in the US - is (or was, this could have changed, I 
> suppose) owned by the church.  What do you suppose the tax advantages are 
> for having an insurance company that's owned by a religious organization?
> 

No kidding..

>> Right.. Because no one can come along and just declare, by fiat that
>> Stem cells are useless, or, like in India, we should be using Vedic math
>> and science, including alchemy, instead of "western" ideas...
> 
> There are short periods of idiocy in policy, again, that's one of the 
> things that happens in a free society.
> 

Would be a nice argument if not for the "minor" flaw that "some" such 
idiocies lead to increasingly "less" free societies.

>> This principle is only true if science is "allowed" to seek the correct
>> answers. 
> 
> Taking a "devil's advocate" position, at what cost do those answers 
> come?  Do we decide a class of people we can reasonably agree on as 
> people (ie, let's leave the debate about embryonic stem cells out here) 
> need to die in order to continue the research?  Let's say all people with 
> red hair are determined to have the right genetic makeup to advanced stem 
> cell research, but the research can only be achieved by extracting 
> something that they need in order to live, thus causing their death.
> 
If we where talking about anything to extreme, you would have a point. 
We are talking about people claiming a threat to a way of life that 
***isn't even*** the one they claim they based it on in the first place, 
with entirely imaginary consequences, if they fail to defend it, at the 
expense of halting, reversing, or at least, in the US, slowing to a 
crawl, most of science (and no, evolution is, by their own admission, 
just what they "thought" was the weakest link in the chain). A better 
argument would be, "Would it have been a good idea to jail the nut that 
caused the thugi people to self exterminate, by abandoning all their 
food, walking into the wastes, and starving to death, *before* it 
happened, or is there some 'right' gained by it being religious, that 
said that Britain should have just sat back and watched, even if they 
had even, at the time, been aware of it happening, or their 
representatives willing to do anything?"

I am sure that, should enough creationists ever get into power and start 
banning things in science they don't like, it won't be the end of the 
world, but.. what country is going to accept the millions of refugees 
that leave in disgust over it, or in the years that follow, as they 
institute more and more religious laws, take away more freedoms, and 
make the country more an more like.. well, Afghanistan or Iran? lol

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Stephen wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:55:24 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> 
>> Stephen wrote:
>>> On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 10:57:34 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>
>>>> andrel wrote:
>>>>>  but it gives you no useful information.
>>>> It's really a test of "are you a fanatic" or not, atheist style. :-)
>>> I don't think so. 
>>> Maybe you have been influenced too much by the Evolution Vs Intelligent Design
>>> debate. Who is saying that a higher intelligence is God, other than your wackos
>>> who are trying to slip it in the back door? 
>> Nobody. That's the point.
>>
> 
> Is this a case of: Did. Didn't. Did. Didn't. Did. Didn't. Didn't. Did. Didn't.
> Did. Didn't. ?
> 

More like:

1. We don't know, but not likely yours
2. Did so!
3. Repeat at #1

Sometimes they get semi-creative, depending on whether this week they 
have Casey Luskin chained in the basement or not, and try:

1. Wasn't designed.
2. Was, but maybe by like.. snicker.. space aliens.
3. Repeat as #1

They can't seem to get their own "leaders" to agree that ID isn't 
religion, and isn't about the Abrahamic god, instead of just "some 
undefined intelligence, that somehow was around, some place". Once in a 
while they take turns slapping each other in the face, then it all 
settles down to "We are not 'specifically' talking about the god of the 
Bible.", again, for a few days, then one of the morons babbles the wrong 
thing again, and they have to try to sweep it under the carpet.

Mind, last 4-5 months, it almost looks like they have totally given up 
on the fiction, or... lost track of the muzzle they use on their 
leaders. Can't be making the ones that "took it serious" that it was 
about design, but not theology, too happy, but then.. the ID people 
don't bother to remove people from their list of supporters over such 
trivial things as, "No, I don't support them.", "Hell, they lied to 
me.", "Oh, it 'was' about theology? Count me out now.", or anything 
short of, apparently, actually giving up ID (and possibly not even then, 
if you ever did previously).

-- 
void main () {

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

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message