don't see how you can argue that when the Nazi's drew on centuries of Christianity's antisemitism even Martin Luther's well known fulminations against Jews.
— Tom Storm
Centuries during which the Church was more often than not trying to protect Jews from the greed of the powerful and the prejudice of the masses.

Not to mention a 99% Christian nation supported Hitler.
So, since China is in majority atheist and their people support a ruthless and racist dictatorship, it reflects poorly on atheism?

even Martin Luther's well known fulminations against Jews
Just because warmongers often brandish religious reasons does not mean they are motivated by religion. The Nazis used Martin Luther to rally the masses, instrumentally, like they used Darwin or Wagner. It does not follow that their ideology was inherently Lutheran, Darwinian or Wagnerian. — Olivier5

Nice try. I'll go one more but we need to move on.

Your point was that Nazi's were only possible because they removed the Judeo Christian tradition from culture? Clearly wrong.

Gott Mitt Uns - one small example of the Judeo-Christian tradition was not removed from uniforms. The Nazi's cheerfully changed the look of most things but kept this?

My mentioning 99% of Germany as Christian goes to the point that the Nazi's emerged from this tradition and remained overwhelmingly popular. I see you overlook the Nazi's Positive Christianity an official part of their thinking and attraction.

Christians protecting Jews? Some yes, but this doesn't change the Christian roots of anti-semitism - the Jews as Christ killers.

Martin Luther's work On the Jews and their Lies recommends the following:
to burn down Jewish synagogues and schools and warn people against them
to refuse to let Jews own houses among Christians
to take away Jewish religious writings
to forbid rabbis from preaching
to offer no protection to Jews on highways
for usury to be prohibited and for all Jews' silver and gold to be removed, put aside for safekeeping, and given back to Jews who truly convert
to give young, strong Jews flail, axe, spade, and spindle, and let them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow

You can see in this the makings of Kristallnacht and the forced labor camps, no? And no I am not saying Nazism is Lutheran. You seem to miss my point. I am saying that the ethos of the Nazi's draws source material in the Christian tradition you believe they removed. No, they took and intensified the worst of it.

At no point would I argue that all Christians are anti-Semitic or that all Christians supported Hitler. But that's not what's needed to support my point.

The rejection of the judeo-christian tradition by the Nazis is what allowed them to do what they did — Olivier5

I don't see how you can argue that when the Nazi's drew on centuries of Christianity's antisemitism even Martin Luther's well known fulminations against Jews. Not to mention a 99% Christian nation supported Hitler. Of course, anti-communism and nationalism played a role too.

From Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform:
The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good."

Nice. I discovered Stenger way too late in all this.

But one implies the other. — Wayfarer

Only if you derive an ought from an is.

'Unfounded' according to what criterion? That no double-blind, peer-reviewed papers exist on them? — Wayfarer

I'm talking about Bible believing literalist Christians and infallible word of God Koran believing Muslims. Plenty of evidence that their beliefs are unfounded. Mere archeology will do for that.

But as the critics of the new atheists point out, many of the greatest crimes against humanity of the twentieth century were committed by atheists. — Wayfarer

Well the Christians were responsible for the crimes of a dozen or more centuries or so before that.

I recommend that individuals deeply scrutinise that question and try and come to the best possible decision. — Wayfarer

Sensible. But as soon as someone responds via a guru or a pastor or a mullah the trouble begins.

But for the most part we agree. Except that silly stuff about the hyperuranion... :joke:

That’s the salient point. When I did interact on the Dawkins forum, I asked them, OK what do you have to replace it? Evolutionary biology? What are the implications of that? Even Dawkins, when asked, agrees that Darwinian principles are a terrible basis for any kind of morals philosophy. (When I saw him acknowledge that on a TV debate my respect for him went up a notch.) — Wayfarer

Dawkins has made many different comments on ethics over the years. He generally does not recommend Darwinism when it comes to ethics. Usually a simple minded utilitarianism.

The point is what religious ethical system do you recommend and why?

Religious ethics are generally based on subjective interpretations made by the believer or upon the views of particular sect/school. Hence the often hateful sectarian divisions and many schisms and isms. There's not a problem faced by secular ethics that religious ethics doesn't share.

How do people come to agreement about matters like capital punishment, abortion, gun ownership, the role of women, gay rights, human rights, etc? Religions disagree about these matters very much. Many advocate nasty prejudicial world views. Looks to me that our primary tool is reason to sort this one out.

They were just a rehash of Comte's tired positivism. Their pitch was wrong in the sense that it was an ineffective caricature. I am not against caricatures. — Olivier5

The arguments presented are actually pretty much those of Bertrand Russell as I stated above.

Not a single Muslim fundamentalist, or Jewish or Christian for that matter, was ever deterred or convinced by their pro domo arguments. On the contrary, I suspect that their aggressive form of no-godism put off quite a few well-meaning folks among their audience. — Olivier5

Untrue. If you talk to the counsellors at Recovering From Religion many people actually come to them via abusive fundamentalism because of Dawkins and Co's arguments. I've met a number of people who were fundamentalists and de-converted following exposure to Hitchens, Harris and co, amongst other things.

More importantly, there are political consequences to the death of the god(s): the French revolutionary terror, Stalin, Hitler, are reminders that men need ethics and that historically their ethics was derived from religion. So once religion is dead (at least for the West, it is), whence come ethics? — Olivier5

Nonsense. This has been addressed in other threads. Religion's consequences: witch-trials, shunning of gay people, anti-semitism, pogroms, Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of men of learning, slavery and numerous wars. The Nazi's had significant support from Christians and even had 'God with Us' on army belt buckles.

I could go through it all line by line, but life’s too short. — Wayfarer

No one has time. I know that basic atheist arguments have helped a lot of people so I don't think we can write these guys off, even if you and others think the work is beneath you intellectually. I think of it as a reasonable starting point if someone wants to explore further. Most of it is just footnotes to Russell's Why I am Not A Christian from the late 1920's. Gave a lot of people their start in ideas.

I personally wouldn't give a toss about belief systems but certain theists keep trying to change laws and politics to suit their unfounded beliefs and I don't much care for this.

Even though literal fundamentalists would be the last people in the world to take them on board. If you can believe Dinosaurs in Genesis then nothing Richard Dawkins says will make the least bit of difference. They’re not worth the time. — Wayfarer

Now you see, that's not accurate is it? Heading into straw man land, even. You only have to talk to support workers at Recovering form Religion to know that many fundamentalists (Southern Baptists, JW's, etc) do leave the faith, often after hearing arguments from people like New Atheists. No one is not worth the time.

No way. I know my fundamentalists. Any work that deconstructs literalist fundamentalism is significant.

The 'New Atheists' themselves didn't like that definition but it suited a very marketable media proposition. So well in fact that we are still talking about them. It's the old 'new and improved' routine so beloved of advertising and so superfluous to the cause of free-thought.

I didn't follow them closely but I think they were almost entirely right for the most part in their dedication to debunking and going after fundamentalisms. This fundamentalist mindset remains a serious problem for the world and these not so new atheist polemicists have done some fine work in this space. They have not been intending to provide academic philosophical dissertations on the nuances of theism, just good and basic ammunition against nasty, hating, often violent theists and the more banal reasons for accepting theism as reasonable.

Let's face it no one is going after Christians like academic David Bentley Hart... for a start he's a progressive non literalist and a sophisticated theological thinker (also a part-time, anti-atheist polemicist). No one is going to shun their child for being gay because of Hart's form of Christianity. No one is going to vote for a Presidential candidate because Hart says they should.

I think the alleged New Atheists were brash and strident and unacademic and pithy and polemical and for the most part they got their pitch right.

Nice polemic by Torres who remains an atheist despite some prominent celebrity atheists having political views he dislikes.

Beyond having enough money to operate a secure but frugal lifestyle (up to $75,0000 what do you think the mechanism is of money's contribution to one's number of friends, happiness, frequency of satisfying orgasms, happiness, et al?

The theory that money makes people happier has to account for the happiness of people who have not a pot to piss in. How do the poor manage to be happy--enough poor people are happy enough to make the question worth asking.

And what happens after $75,000? Does too much wealth begin to sour? I ask because I've never come close to $75,000, so I know not what it would do for me. — Bitter Crank

When people talk about money or happiness, flights of fancy may ensue.

Everyone seems to know that happiness does not come from wealth and that a rewarding life is generally found outside of money and possessions. Not sure how many people willingly accept this. It's like everyone wants to test this empirically to see if it's true.

For what it's worth, I have known a few outrageously wealthy individuals and they were some of the most lonely and unhappy people I have met.

I think it is equally possible to be happy (whatever that really means) whether you are rich or poor. Happiness comes from personal qualities and how you think.

No worries I thought your response was funny. Many of them became 'The Man' in the end. I was being flip with my counter reformation comment which is too pompous for the subject matter.

Is this a new "counter culture"? — Noble Dust

More properly I guess it's the counter reformation culture. :worry:

The 1960s protest movement played a key role with the expression in the music and the development of counterculture. This was linked with the rise of sociology and women's liberation. There was also punk rock and other genres, which spoke of alienation, but also with a radical idea of transformation. — Jack Cummins

But counterculture was also a commercial venture that made a lot of people rich whilst they played at being hippies. One of the nastiest things about the 1960's is how many of those counterculture figures ended up running the corporations and mainstream advertising/marketing worlds that have screwed us over ever since.

The corporo-technik elite is more likely to lull you with hope and happy talk rather than despair. Hopelessness and despair are not useful corporate values. — Bitter Crank

I don't think there is a conspiracy either way here. Having some strong personal connections to media (TV, radio and on-line news) the one thing all producers I've known agree on is that bad news and tales of disaster and woe provide the strongest interest, bringing in the highest potential revenue. Through a lens of perpetual crisis is how news and 'non-fiction' media locate and deliver their narratives.

If you insist on an oligopolistic conspiracy - a divided public that thinks everyone is corrupt and nothing changes is less likely to vote and take actions to maintain civil society. Instead they'll simply look for distractions and buy shit to cheer themselves up.

However, when corporate / technocratic elites and the media control the prevailing narrative, if that narrative is one of division, woe, apathy and hopelessness, then what does that mean for us, the masses? — CountVictorClimacusIII

People need a sense of what is real and where to find out reliable information.

Bear in mind, I am not saying there is a coordinated conspiracy to feed us nonsense - it's simply that bad news and stories of danger and woe resonate strongest and are click bait and ratings $$ successes. As everyone knows, humans are drawn to car crashes, they're compelling.

It's hard to judge people. — Gregory

In relation to what?

The bitter irony is that some of the best humanitarians I’ve met or heard about were/are atheists or agnostics who’d make better examples of many of Christ’s teachings than too many (whom I refer to as) institutional Christians — FrankGSterleJr

Not sure that's an irony these days. One of secular humanism's primary drawcards is as a place to find morality given the continued demonstrations of immorality by believers and churches.

Sorry to be a pain but paragraphs would help make your thoughts readable. Or were you going for a dreamlike stream of consciousness effect....

Edit - I just skimmed it and see it was a quote.

If by "individual" what's also meant, indeed presupposed, is embodied, then this question makes no sense whatsoever. (Unless, despite given that death reduces a lived body to a corpse (i.e. supple flesh to rotting meat) there's evidence of 'disembodied consciousness', which, of course, there isn't.) We are each of us, in fact, individuated by our bodies which are always uniquely positioned in and moving through spacetime, incorporating our unique self-experiences in the biochemical continuity of memories, every moment until each body's irreversible brain-death, no? Thus, dead means your you – "self-consciousness" – ceases ... like a candle's flame flickered out or a symphony's final note fallen silent. — 180 Proof

I think this can be the only reasonable understanding. People seem to want to peddle the notion of consciousness as briefly inhabiting our body then, at death, flying off to heaven/next life/whatever - but it seems pretty clear that consciousness is what the brain does and we have zero evidence of any disembodied consciousness existing. And frankly, having seen many people with brain injuries and organic diseases like dementia, it appears clear that consciousness is a fragile thing entirely dependent on one's corporeal conditions or meat suit...

I've always thought of dreams as a kind of mental bowel movement.

What does it matter to you if you end up terminally ill after the vaccine?
Do you really take solace in other people benefitting from the vaccine?

Are you willing to die for others? — baker

Yes. And you make me laugh.

I think it was Rollo May who made a similar inference, that we are now in an age of the transient, where we have nowhere to anchor our ships so to speak, and have lost our connection with ourselves and others, or our "love", with violence now manifesting itself as the most desperate attempt for connection with others in the wake of this sense of loss, apathy, and hopelessness. — CountVictorClimacusIII

I don't think this is accurate. When Christianity was a prevailing myth there were anti-Semitic conspiracies, witch trials, shunning, torture, religious wars, pogroms, brutal sectarian divisions, any manner of persecutions and apocalyptic cults, women were second class citizens and the average person had a stunted future.The idea that Christianity provided a stable meaningful society is one of those poetic half-truths.

Some would argue (Steven Pinker, a primary example) that the world is safer, healthier and happier today than ever before in history. There has been minimal collapse of meaning.You can even see in America that some of the angriest and most unhappy folk are those with a strong faith. Shared meaning does not bring with it contentment, despite what some commentators believe. What we have seen for the past decades is the common good, education and jobs undermined by corporatism and a very unhelpful media. For my money, a lot of social problems in the West stem just from this.

I am wondering about the conspiracy of woe and how that relates to the idea of the posturing of the Nietzschean nihilist. Meanings have been broken down, and often we stand alone, with no gods to turn to, but simply our own selves, and the reflection of self in human relationships. — Jack Cummins

Nah. Conspiracies and tales of woe often ran side by side with Christianity through the ages. In fact, even today you will see that there are many Christians involved in some of the nuttier conspiracies. The idea that there is something empty which needs filling is poetry. The primary difference today is that crazy ideas are better organised and more readily available thanks to the internet.

We know that f=ma but we don’t know why it is - that is not really ‘explaining a mystery with another mystery’, though. It’s recognising the limits of knowledge. — Wayfarer

I agree with this. Have I misunderstood you? I was saying it is explaining 'a mystery with a another mystery' if you use God as an explanation.

The fact that we don't know why reason works is a philosophical question that may well have a physicalist answer one day. Who knows?

However, just one other point is that you raise the question of superstition and I think that is interesting, and perhaps it is the shadow of reason,and even the reason why people turn to sources such as clairvoyance and ideas of 'new age' philosophies. — Jack Cummins

People have never left behind the world of superstition and magical thinking. This is an evergreen pursuit. We talk about this era of science, but how many people know anything much about science? As almost any educator will reveal, science is one of the least understood subjects. I have come to think that many people choose their beliefs based on aesthetic criteria. Science seems to convey a cold world, astrology by contrast provides meaningful connections. Atheism is a world without magic, God ushers in romanticism. Etc, etc.

Many people then proceed to an argument for a higher intelligence, but if you only say that physical laws aren’t explicable in their own terms, then you can leave it as an open question - which is the best philosophical stance. — Wayfarer

Yes, very much. I suspect that explaining reason via God is just another God of the gaps idea - no different than explaining why there is 'something rather than nothing' using God. Explaining that meaning is only possible if there is a God is functionally no different than saying the Magic Man did it. Explaining a mystery with another mystery.

You're barking up the wrong tree. What materialism can't provide a satisfactory explanation for is meaning, and the faculty that perceives it, namely, reason. — Wayfarer

The general argument seems to be that reason and the foundations of logic can only be possible if there is a god or higher consciousness as the guarantor of their fidelity. Physicalism is self refuting - isn't that what the pre-suppositionalist apologists say (and Kant and others)?

It does seem that since the enlightenment reason has been predominant. I think that it is a good thing because it is probably the strongest function, because it is able to bring critical thinking to emotion, intuition and sensation, but they should not be forgotten or ignored. — Jack Cummins

This is a common view but is it accurate? Firstly, reason is popular because humans have learned from experience that it actually provides practical results. This was perhaps inevitable. But there is minimal evidence that emotion or intuition or sensation are abandoned. The arts are rich and productive; musicians, novelists, playwrights and painters abound; creative, emotional websites and flight of fancy blogs overwhelm us; clairvoyants and superstitions of all sorts remain prevalent. This idea of a post enlightenment paradigm which has a grip on contemporary culture seems widely off the mark to me.

But, I do wonder if you are looking at it more from the perspective of events and politics. Where does mental illness fit into this framework? — Jack Cummins

People have always found reasons to despair even in alleged times of cultural meaning (not that there ever was such an era). Mental illness is a separate matter.

As I said, the various platforms of media have been selling us conspiracies and stories of woe for a long time now - of course it has impact on some people.

The whole question of where we are going can open up feelings of despair individually, and I think that this can also open up a cultural sense of despair. In some ways, this despair may be evident as much in entertainment which has no inherent meaning, just as much as in that which is outrightly expressing nihilism. We have had postmodernism and even post truth, so what is next. — Jack Cummins

I don't think there is any particular peak in despair or loss of meaning - but it's something the media like to create and whip up anxiety about. It helps sell things. Jordan Peterson has certainly found a good earn in pandering to and massaging this dystopic view and offering a conservative restoration or perhaps even a kind of counter reformation lubricated by cartoon Jungianism. The reality is there is no 'post truth' and postmodern has almost no influence on anything important. There are just events and politics.

Is the modern West in decline? is the culture corrupt? Are we lost and in despair? — CountVictorClimacusIII

How would you measure this? Seems to me a lot of marketing, popular culture and Youtube posturing is energetically selling this idea. Probably aligned with the familiar whining that everything was so much better in the old days.

I was being flip. The idea of the 'fair go' is a key Australian myth. That all Aussies get the same opportunities and understanding. But many people do not and never did get fair goes here - our Aboriginal population, for instance. Like we see in many other countries, neo-liberalism and user pays corporatism has us by the balls and a lot of folk are hurled onto the scrapheap. Hence Scotty from Marketing - we don't have Prime Ministers anymore.

We have one of those in North Dakota. What's yours like? — frank

Ours is a not very perspicacious neo-liberal knob-jockey.

What are your thoughts on this idea? Are we born from a negation - God's denial of Himself and his subsequent self-annihilation? — CountVictorClimacusIII

It's not an unfamiliar idea. I can't really engage with it however as I don't accept the proposition that a God existed/exists. I also don't feel any sense of abandonment or aloneness at the thought of being without theistic supervision. There is no hole or deficit in creation that needs filling. To me this idea reads a bit like a Marvel adaptation of deism.

The time to believe something is when there is good evidence for it. However, this just kicks the debate down the road into the what-counts-as-evidence territory.

All this is reasonable. A last thread holding the notion of a soul in place for many people is the ostensibly mysterious nature of consciousness, first person experience. Most philosophers still maintain that it can't be readily accounted for - hence this matter has special status as a putative destructor of physicalist positions.

“Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides.”
― David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory

And this from an atheist. You can see how it doesn't take much for someone to be led to a belief that if consciousness is remarkable, it might be a fundamental substance of reality (perhaps part of a higher consciousness) and thus, like the last train out of town, life after death arrives at the conversation.

I agree. I am not a philosopher but Searle's routine involves defending realism. I would not be able to repeat it even if he told it to me himself.

A naive person looking at a forest sees something very different to an ecologist. As we look at something, we do so through a paradigm, based on our knowledge, and all that gets mixed into the vision, If that helps. — Pop

I understand the idea and it sounds alarmingly like common sense.

As Wayfarer pointed out there is no mind independent observation, and all minds operate through a paradigm, which is biased towards that paradigm. It means there can be no reality, as envisaged by naive realists. What there is instead is interpretations of reality. It means nobody's interpretation of reality can have absolute authority. In reality there is no reality! :lol: — Pop

While I can't recall how he does it doesn't John Searle (amongst others) present arguments against this?