New Atheism’s Idiot Heirs

[Formless]

Your post gave me an excellent idea on forms of atheism/atheism and identity which would have included (among other things) this.

Then I put it off for several days and now I forgot what I wanted the thread to be like.

I would also have included apatheism, which is the belief that the question of the existence of gods is irrelevant to living a moral life, among that list. It's not strictly atheistic, and leans more towards agnosticism, but it's a rather interesting concept. Atheists say "God is not real." Agnostics say "We cannot know whether God is real." Apatheists say "It doesn't matter whether or not God is real." Also, apatheist is a cool theological vocabulary word to bring up in discussion (though my favorite one of those is henotheism, which is the belief in the existence of multiple gods but only considering one worthy of worship).

My favorite vocabulary word here is "ignostic", or, "what is this thing you call 'God'???"

Amazing how hard that question is to answer. Especially the more science knowledge someone has (and many people will give you meaningless metaphors that really reveal how empty religious belief is). Its kind of more basic than atheism or agnosticism, in a way that really appeals to me. Of course, its also pretty compatible with either one, so...

[Jub]

Also, yes I see you Jub. But your posting has gotten so pathetic I'm starting to think I'm just rewarding you by responding. Those anecdotes, for instance, clearly aren't meant to prove anything, they are meant as demonstration. Anyone who properly understood rhetoric or argument would know that and understand they don't need proof to do their job, but you just keep trolling on and on, not understanding the purpose of a topic statement, not getting how uncontroversial my central thesis is to anyone with psychology knowledge (or common sense), not seeing past the bubble you grew up in, failing to engage with the points being made, etc.

*yawn*

You're down to posting anecdotes, begging the question, and now finally trying to blame me for your lack of being able to close out an argument.

So I'll accept your concession.

[Formless]

You can stuff your "concession accepted" bullshit up your ass. It wasn't cute five years ago, and it isn't cute now. You don't have to prove an anecdote happened when its purpose is to demonstrate a point, only when it is being used as evidence. Again, we see that you have literally no understanding of how arguments work, but that wasn't a surprise. You don't seem to have any real world knowledge that would be applicable to this conversation at all. Now. GET OUT.

[Jub]

You can stuff your "concession accepted" bullshit up your ass. It wasn't cute five years ago, and it isn't cute now. You don't have to prove an anecdote happened when its purpose is to demonstrate a point, only when it is being used as evidence. Again, we see that you have literally no understanding of how arguments work, but that wasn't a surprise. You don't seem to have any real world knowledge that would be applicable to this conversation at all. Now. GET OUT.

Are you going to make me leave? Go ahead, call a mod if you will, or just keep ranting about me and tell me how little I get it. This is all pretty humdrum.

Now do you have something to actually say that is falsifiable or are you going to dance around with anecdotes, try to argue false equivalencies, maybe with a few appeals to emotion tossed in for good measure? If not I'll take your concession and sit here enjoying your impotent bluster.

[Formless]

For the third time, you obnoxious asshole, whether those anecdotes are falsifiable or not is completely irrelevant. I could have cited a fictional fable to demonstrate the same ideas, but I don't know any which would fulfill the same function as the story that came from my own life experiences. You are free to disbelieve that my sister experienced homophobia in church or that she even existed at all (although my brother Sorchus can confirm that you are just being a stubborn fuck), it Does. Not. Matter. In contrast, your own anecdotes are the wrong way to use them, because you use them as the sole evidence that irreligious families aren't uncommon in the first world. I hate to tell you, but I don't believe it. Not the part where you claim to have grown up irreligious (I'm not such an obnoxious person as to not trust you talking about yourself) but because its inapplicable evidence. And also a moot point. It had nothing to do with my own claim that even atheists have emotions related to religion that effects their beliefs about religion.

But the biggest strike against you is that you never actually address the central argument of the post. You never address the importance of emotions in Utilitarian philosophy which you implicitly follow. Nor the importance of treating people as having real, important emotions that effect their belief systems, because we don't all subscribe to a Vulcan lifestyle. The closest you came to addressing my actual points... was a strawman. I never said anyone needs special treatment, you brain tumor. No one here has.

[Jub]

For the third time, you obnoxious asshole, whether those anecdotes are falsifiable or not is completely irrelevant. I could have cited a fictional fable to demonstrate the same ideas, but I don't know any which would fulfill the same function as the story that came from my own life experiences. You are free to disbelieve that my sister experienced homophobia in church or that she even existed at all (although my brother Sorchus can confirm that you are just being a stubborn fuck), it Does. Not. Matter. In contrast, your own anecdotes are the wrong way to use them, because you use them as the sole evidence that irreligious families aren't uncommon in the first world. I hate to tell you, but I don't believe it. Not the part where you claim to have grown up irreligious (I'm not such an obnoxious person as to not trust you talking about yourself) but because its inapplicable evidence. And also a moot point. It had nothing to do with my own claim that even atheists have emotions related to religion that effects their beliefs about religion.

You're really not worth the effort, but fuck it, I'm bored so let's go.

Canada has a reported rate of irreligion of 23.9% with 4.9 million people reporting as such in the 2011 census.

Canadians are also split on whether religion, as a whole, does the world more harm than good.

Hell, with 1.1 billion people estimated as being irreligious that makes irreligion that 3rd most common religion other than Christianity or Islam.

So yeah, many irreligious people will come from homes where they were raised without it and that's a simple fact based on the raw numbers. This should be obvious enough that evidence wasn't required but I guess you're bubble has less than 24% of the population self identifying as irreligious. That's sad, maybe you should move to place with less crazies walking around.

But the biggest strike against you is that you never actually address the central argument of the post. You never address the importance of emotions in Utilitarian philosophy which you implicitly follow. Nor the importance of treating people as having real, important emotions that effect their belief systems, because we don't all subscribe to a Vulcan lifestyle. The closest you came to addressing my actual points... was a strawman. I never said anyone needs special treatment, you brain tumor. No one here has.

Emotions aren't important to high-level decision making. Do you think that world leaders sit down and think about people's feelings when signing a trade deal; when passing new laws that update school curriculums; when creating a mutual defense pact; or when bailing out an industry? Do CEOs care about feelings when they request 10% more staff be hired or let go or when deciding where to build/lease/buy new locations? No, of course, they don't because, in the grand scheme of it all, our feelings don't fucking matter. The sun won't stop fusing hydrogen just because you're hurt over a name someone called you, the economy won't rise or fall based on my insulting the people of the Middle East on this message board, and the nukes will fly even if I start to praise Trump and Kim in some foolish attempt to have them see reason.

From a strictly high-level authoritarian technocratic viewpoint none of this fluff matters. At the individual level, it helps to get people you interact with on a daily basis to like you; I still tell the owner of the cafe I work at, to his face, to fuck off when he deserves it. He asked me just the other day if I forgot that he signs my checks and I, completely stone-faced, looked at him and said, "I don't really care, now get out of my way I have shit to do". I've been there less than 3 months and he takes it because I'm a key part of his staff and he knows it. So how's that for an anecdote about feelings?

[Dragon Angel]

It's more, I think, Jub is attempting to make arguments with the assumption that everyone can reach the kind of super-enlightened proto-Vulcan-like state apparently he has reached, and he assumes once everyone else has reached that state that they all will see the exact same worldview as him. Reach the exact same conclusions he has. I dunno, I guess super-enlightened proto-Vulcan-like Jub has apparently seen all or sufficiently close to all info about Islam, the Middle East, Africa, ... and feels he has enough information to render his final judgement on the matters.

However, in this super-enlightened proto-Vulcan-like state, Jub has missed many crucial details, and in trying to talk to Jub about those missing details and educate him he resists any of them. Resolutely.

When attempting to explain that 99.99 repeating % of the human race is not in his specific version of the super-enlightened proto-Vulcan-like state, all he says in response is some variant of "well they should be". Damn the difficulties and moral and ethical dilemmas involved in forcefully transitioning someone from their culture to "my preferred view of culture", those don't matter because I reached it and I did fine! I had bad circumstances too, don't I also deserve applause and recognition?!

When attempting, too, to explain that you cannot divorce human emotions from intellectual debate on certain topics, because well, frankly, humans are still animals with emotions below our sapience, Jub refuses to acknowledge it. All he says is "feelings don't have a place in this". He continues to deny it when further elaborated about that religion itself is, essentially, very based in emotion and it cannot possibly be taken away without great difficulty. It could possibly be psychological torture, depending on how you imagine it would happen.

He also continues to speak with the tone that Islam has such potential for great civil disorder that you can point to <Islamic countries> and find examples of these each. Despite being told that these countries can believe in something radically different each and grouping them as effectively a monolith is a fallacy, which is an irony considering his love to pepper his sentences with mentions of fallacies. Despite being told that many of these beliefs can be due to other factors such as lack of education, local culture independent of Islam, and may not actually be as central tenets as he believes. Despite ... you know where this is going.

While utterly resisting any attempt to dissuade Jub from his super-enlightened proto-Vulcan-like worldview that has incomplete facts, Jub betrays his own emotional attachment to this issue. All mitigating factors are explained away as insignificant, all alternative viewpoints on things he so pompously states are Solid Truth dismissed as irrelevant or unimportant. His conclusions are the only conclusions that can possibly be reached, even when factoring in ideas that severely unbalance the equation Jub is trying to paint. Jub only further preaches that more people should reach his specific super-enlightened proto-Vulcan-like worldviews.

In short, Jub has the attitude of an arrogant prick of the highest order. Completely and utterly selfish, unable to even comprehend or attempt to bother comprehending the points of view from people who have not reached his frankly utterly absurd mental state, and from his words actively looking down on them. If they don't reach the state he is in, then damn the sociopolitical events that are happening that could be making their lives Hell on Earth, that is no excuse. He went through Hell (even though it is nowhere near the kind of Hell people in warzones live in) too! They deserve what is happening to them.

...

p.s. Way to be creepy in posting your NSFW Twitter account in response to me and going "well I have friends who are not my gender so" and other progressive positions to back up your liberal cred in a discussion on Islam. I'm sure that has a place in intellectual debate too. Doesn't really make you look any less like a piece of shit but hey, I haven't reached your super-enlightened proto-Vulcan-like level yet I suppose.

[LadyTevar]

Are you going to make me leave? Go ahead, call a mod if you will, or just keep ranting about me and tell me how little I get it. This is all pretty humdrum.

Be careful what you wish for, you just may get it.

Due to the refusal to back up facts, to the 'broken record' tactics, and because someone DID report you for these, Thread is Locked, and you, JUB,
have now been warned to start following the rules of debate.