Sam Harris

It’s ‘faith’ in anything that is anti-reason.  I’m just saying that the term ‘atheist’ doesn’t automatically mean pro-reason.  Others here imply that being an atheist is enough.  It’s just a first step.

Yes, it was the first step for me as a child. I realized what I was being told in church wasn’t the truth. I still clung to silly superstitions for a long time, however.

It takes time to break free of that and realize that there is no supernatural agency to appeal to for help. The “there’s no atheists in foxholes” adage speaks volumes about what it is like to be human and have fear of dying or be in severe pain. It is more than most people can handle.

So, bottom line, you’re right. It is a first step but one we all need to have taken to get to the next step. If we can’t get people to give up their god and move on from there, what chance do we have of getting them to accept science and let go of silly superstitious non-sense. It is silly to fight among ourselves about the meaning of words because I think that shows them we don’t have anything to offer….that we don’t have any answers.

I agree 100% and I don’t consider this fighting.  It’s just the word ‘atheist’ freaks people out and it usually shuts down the discussion.  It’s time to have a positive term that identifies us as pro-science and reason.

mormovies - 25 August 2012 04:22 PM

I agree 100% and I don’t consider this fighting.  It’s just the word ‘atheist’ freaks people out and it usually shuts down the discussion.  It’s time to have a positive term that identifies us as pro-science and reason.

How about “naturalist” as opposed to “super-naturalist”?
Or Adeist.
Or Non-faither
Or Evidenceurites
Or “The Show Me State”.

Man, I can’t ever use the right word with you. )

Ok, “fighting” is not a good word…how about arguing?

And, I like evidenceurist. Unlike adeist, or nonfaithist, it is about what we ARE now about what we are NOT. I like it. You better patent it.

Religion Divides & Spirituality Unites.

That’s a nice sounding cliche but pretty meaningless.  Reason and living in reality should unite us.  Tribalism, whether religious or spiritual, is always a divider.

Yeah, but people need something to cling to. Unfortunate and sad. But, true. Atheism is never going to be the norm IMHO. Our brains fool is so well and sometimes so completely into believing there is an unseen other. Also, people want there to be a reason/purpose for their lives and have more meaning than just living and dying and even “making your own meaning.” That’s not good enough for a lot of people. Like that movie Cloud Atlas—people want to believe what they do and what they say MATTERS. Affects others. Carries on. I think anyone who is an atheist has a brain that makes it really really hard to understand this need people have.

I’ve sort of reached a different conclusion.  People seem to not want a ‘meaning’ to this existence.  They don’t want to be responsible and actuall work to accomplish anything here on earth because they so want to believe that the next world will be a paradise.  So why bother even trying?  Just demand that others have the responsibility to take care of you, party now and wait for the afterlife.  I see this as really dividing the world right now.

Majority of One - 16 November 2012 10:32 AM

Yeah, but people need something to cling to. Unfortunate and sad. But, true. Atheism is never going to be the norm IMHO. Our brains fool is so well and sometimes so completely into believing there is an unseen other. Also, people want there to be a reason/purpose for their lives and have more meaning than just living and dying and even “making your own meaning.” That’s not good enough for a lot of people. Like that movie Cloud Atlas—people want to believe what they do and what they say MATTERS. Affects others. Carries on. I think anyone who is an atheist has a brain that makes it really really hard to understand this need people have.

What about 10,000 years from now (assuming humans survived)? Will people still believe in Gods?

mormovies - 16 November 2012 11:20 AM

I’ve sort of reached a different conclusion.  People seem to not want a ‘meaning’ to this existence.  They don’t want to be responsible and actuall work to accomplish anything here on earth because they so want to believe that the next world will be a paradise.  So why bother even trying?  Just demand that others have the responsibility to take care of you, party now and wait for the afterlife.  I see this as really dividing the world right now.

I don’t understand what you mean. All the people that I know that meet that criteria (“waiting for the afterlife”) are not partying. To party is to have fun. To have fun is to sin. To sin is to go to hell. And they want to go to heaven. So instead of partying, they do good deeds and avoid sin. Right?

So instead of partying, they do good deeds and avoid sin. Right?
>> Yeah, right.  In their dreams.

I don’t know if humans will still be around in 10K years. Maybe then, they might have moved on from jesus/mohammed but I truthfully don’t see humans ever giving up spirituality of some form. I could be wrong but in 10K years who’ll know?

And, for the record, I hope religion only lasts another few decades and then reason and evidence begin to rule. I can hope, can’t I?

Majority of One - 16 November 2012 10:07 PM

I don’t know if humans will still be around in 10K years. Maybe then, they might have moved on from jesus/mohammed but I truthfully don’t see humans ever giving up spirituality of some form. I could be wrong but in 10K years who’ll know?

And, for the record, I hope religion only lasts another few decades and then reason and evidence begin to rule. I can hope, can’t I?

I don’t know what spirituality is. Please explain what it is in your words.

Our cultures are not static. Cultures evolve. Ideas evolve. New memes (analogous to genes) are created—we call this variation. And the unfit memes (analogous to genes) lose out to better memes (analogous to genes)—we call this natural and artificial selection.

Consider the unfit meme of altruism (actually its the whole set of moral knowledge of altruism—and actually its a memeplex, which is a set of networked memes—memes that generally go together).

The fit meme, actually memeplex, is Objectivism—which is the whole set of philosophical and moral knowledge of Objectivism.

Soon altruism will be extinct. Everybody will be an Objectivist.

Another unfit memeplex is the Justified True Belief, the epistemology created by Aristotle and still has to this day 99.9+% penetration in the human population. The fit memeplex is Popperism.

Soon Justified True Belief will be extinct. And everybody will be a Popperian.

And soon after that all evil memes will be extinct.

PS

- Popperism is the philosophy created by Karl Popper. I good source to learn about Popperism is http://fallibleideas.com/knowledge-creation

- And a good source to learn Objectivism is the rest of Elliot Temple’s site: http://fallibleideas.com/

- This is where we discuss these ideas and more: http://groups.google.com/group/beginning-of-infinity/subscribe

I define spirituality as believing that humans are somehow connected to the “universe” or the cosmos in some way.Different people would define even that in different ways which doesn’t conflict with my definition. There’s probably as many ways to be spiritual as there are people who call themselves spiritual. Also, I think a lot of people can’t let go of the god they were indoctrinated with as a child but get that religion is manipulative and a business. They believe in a god but don’t perscribe to a religion and therefore call themselves spiritual. Hope that helps.

As to objectivism, I’m a fan of Ayn Rand’s but I think she is a bit extreme politically. She came from Russia where she formed opinions that drove her work and her viewpoint. I think we should move more toward objectivism and away from altruism but I can’t see pure capitalism working any better than pure communism mainly because we can’t get to “pure” either way. Humans are always going to act in ways that are unpredictable to some extent.