Pastafarian wins right to wear strainer in driving licence photo

[The Minsky Moment]

Malthus already made the point that this guy is an obnoxious schmuck. Now, go away and find me a court ruling where it explicitly states that obnoxious schmucks don't get the same protection of the law that everybody else does. (though that might not be too relevant since Austrian law doesn't fetishize precedent like common law jurisdictions do).   

What you call fetishing precedent, others call the rule the law.  Obviously I can't speak to Austrian law, but in the US there is the First Amendment free exercise clause and a long line of decisions. 

This was a political protest for freedom from religion and against the special dispensations granted to religions.

If so, it is was a stupid one that weakens the cause by associating it with juvenile behavior.  It is beyond my comprehension why any committed atheist would applaud such foolishness.

[Viking]

I don't understand why Viking got into a long discussion of memes (something that isn't relevant) with Raz (an insane person).

I don't either...

[Viking]

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Humanist, Volume 57, Number 1

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm


I've never heard the local priest say that Jews were evil (as a Catholic I don't see pastors).  But it's nice that Viking doesn't have to call me a liar now.

Dickwad, you used quotation marks quoting the man as saying religion is evil. You fail at grammar again. Religion is evil =/= Faith is an evil. This is willful misrepresentation.

[Viking]

The point you continue to avoid dealing with is that the argument for being allowed to wear the pasta strainer is precisely the one that is used for being allowed to use the turban.

No, it's a *parody*. The guy doesn't really believe that he has to wear a pasta strainer. What he's testing is the court's willingness to test the sincerity of his belief.

Well his sincere atheism, sincere humanism and his sincere skepticism mean that he feels that it is his moral duty to wear the pasta strainer. How hard is that to understand? Niko Alm (the guy's name) is a long term atheist, humanist and skeptic activist. He has a facebook fan page where he is self described as an athlete. This is the concluding part of a three year campaign to be allowed to wear the strainer.

The point of the exercise is to show that the sikh turban is only separated from the pasta strainer by your individual perception that Sikhism is a real religion while Pastafarianism is not. Your congnitive dissonance lies in your inability to realize that both religions are untrue and you know it and both use silly argument to be allowed to wear silly headgear but only one is attention whoring while the other is the will of yet another non-existent god.

Meh? I'm not a Sikh. Of course I don't think Sikhism is "true". How on earth would I have an "... inability to realize that both religions are untrue"? I simply don't understand what you are attepting to say. Are you alleging I think Sikhism is "true"? Strange.

What I have, is the ability to respect the ways of other people, even if I don't happen to believe in them myself. 

You know that the metaphysical claims of Sikhism are non-true. If you thought they were true you would be a Sikh.

What I am trying to say is that both Sikhism and Pastafarianism use untrue claims about the nature of the universe to justify wearing silly head-dress on drivers license photos. I'm baffled why you don't seem to realize that. It seems that just because the Sikh believes that god told him to wear a turban his irrational belief has to be validated by society.

I'm not trying to deal with Sikh "cognitive dissonance" but rather non-Sikh cognitive dissonance when approaching the issue of religious exceptions to various reasonable regulations and laws.

And I'm saying it is a fantasy to think this stunt will do anything of the sort. Most reasonable people - including atheists - will just think this guy's an attention whore. And rightly.

You somehow concluded that I agreed with Muslim arguments FOR Islam because I agreed with some Muslim arguments AGAINST other religions. It does not follow from the statement "Yes, the Muslims are right, Judaism and Christianity are false religions." that "Yes Islam is true." That is the leap you accused me of taking when you very well know that I find Islam to be just as untrue as the rest and in fact I hate Islam a bit more than the other because of its highly immoral teachings. It may have been a rhetorical argument, but it was an exceedingly false one which did nothing but try to obfuscate the issue.

This is not a debating society or a court of law. The is no judge, jury or committing which will grant one of us a diploma or document to demonstrate that one of us won the debate. We are participating in dialectic, not debate.

Your rhetorical question did not even deal with my issue. It just suggest to me that you do not understand what I am saying. This might be because I don't express myself clearly enough or it might be because you aren't interested in understanding me, merely refuting me or it might be in denial because if you had to deal with my actual arguments you would have to deal with your own congnitive dissonance.

What you seem to miss completely is that the point of the act is to show how silly special dispensation to religious people is silly. You, however, ignore this argument, preferring to continue arguing that being rude to religious people makes you a dick, regardless how true your criticism might be. What I cannot understand is why you can't deal with the argument I am making.

Dude. Lighten up.

To address your argument: there are various types of attacks one could make on (say) Christianity. Some attacks are consistent with atheism (Christianity cannot be true without proof of the existence of a "god", and that proof lacks); others are simply not (Christianity is a falling away from a "perfect religion" that would otherwise exist; Christianity is false because it does not acknowledge the existence of Mohammed as the seal of the prophets).

I'm not saying you are actually a believer in Islam; what I'm saying is that finding the particular Islamic attack on Christianity "compelling" is inconsistent with what I know you are - an atheist.

Why is that? Thinking that if there was such a thing as the creator of the earth that knows everything he would not take a wife, father a son, try and fail with new revelations each for Abraham, Noah, Moses and Jesus. I don't have to believe in a god to agree that if a god did exist he certainly would not be as incompetent as the god of christianity and judaism would be. Muslims has many non-theist arguments against Christianity and Judaism.

[Barrister]

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Humanist, Volume 57, Number 1

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm


I've never heard the local priest say that Jews were evil (as a Catholic I don't see pastors).  But it's nice that Viking doesn't have to call me a liar now.

Dickwad, you used quotation marks quoting the man as saying religion is evil. You fail at grammar again. Religion is evil =/= Faith is an evil. This is willful misrepresentation.

I dunno Viking - seems to me that when Dawkins says religion is evil, that's pretty much the same thing as saying faith is evil.  You can try and argue otherwise, but I'm doubtful.  And that's a far ways from being "willful misrepresentation".

[Viking]

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Humanist, Volume 57, Number 1

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm


I've never heard the local priest say that Jews were evil (as a Catholic I don't see pastors).  But it's nice that Viking doesn't have to call me a liar now.

Dickwad, you used quotation marks quoting the man as saying religion is evil. You fail at grammar again. Religion is evil =/= Faith is an evil. This is willful misrepresentation.

I dunno Viking - seems to me that when Dawkins says religion is evil, that's pretty much the same thing as saying faith is evil.  You can try and argue otherwise, but I'm doubtful.  And that's a far ways from being "willful misrepresentation".

evil =/= an evil

Raz is claiming that Dawkins thinks that Religion is metaphysical evil. Dawkins doesn't accept that metaphysical evil exists. Lets not get stuck in the issue that faith is not religion (another theist cop-out). Dawkins uses evil meaning a natural phenomena with bad consequences, he even compares it to Smallpox.

[The Brain]

I also self-describe as an athlete on the internet. Proves nothing.

[Berkut]

That would presume that I think religions are inherently bad things, which I do not.

If someone came along and said "Hey, lets imagine this concept. And this concept would have the power to motivate people to act in ways they would not act otherwise. Sometimes radically so. And this concept - it is completely false. It has no truth to it - 100% made up." So what we are talking about is a idea/concept/whatever that has significant power, and yet the fundamental basis of it lies on a falsehood.

Would you be inclined to accepting that overall a huge number of people accepting this falsehood as true would not be "an inherently bad thing"?

I think you can sit around forever and argue about whether Commies (as a fill in for atheists) are worse than Crusaders, or who has done more Bad Things in the name of God as opposed to Good Things in the name of god. And you won't ever really get anywhere - there aren't any means to measure in a way that will be convincing to anyone invested in the discussion.

On the other hand, I've never really understood the more fundamental argument that a system of thinking about our lives, responsibilities, culture, and society based on something that is not true can actually be a positive thing. That religion, assuming it is in fact false, can be a net positive. That in the end, humanity can be better off believing in something that is simply wrong.

One could argue that for every person that acts irrationally for some false belief, the same false beliefs might keep someone from acting in a way we think of as "bad". 

No question, one can make such an argument. And like I said, I don't think that argument can ever have a satisfactory conclusion. I don't buy it, but I realize that I cannot convince anyone invested in the answer otherwise.

What I am saying is that fundamentally I reject the idea that humans can, overall, be better off believing in something that is not true as opposed to accepting reality. This is not a religious position, although it applies to the question of religion.

I realize that this is something of a philosophical position, and probably pretty much impossible to "prove" per se. But I operate under the premise in my personal life that the truth is always better than not truth, and I think it applies on the macro scale as well as the micro.

[Berkut]

so, i don't think viking deludes himself--unless he believes all atheists are smarter than all religious people, which is ridiculous and something few would actually believe

Sticking to the serious point here. I don't think religious people are smarter or stupider than atheists. I don't think a person who loses their religion gets smarter by doing so, nor do I think anybody adopting a religion loses any IQ points. Even if there was a working measure of intelligence (IQ tests measure nothing other than your ability to take IQ tests) then I don't think intelligence would even correlate to religiosity. I think that religious faith is not a result of logic, reason or brainpower, but rather an emotional issue.

"Stupid is as stupid does." - F. Gump

Religion makes people do stupid things, that makes them stupid, it doesn't mean they lack intelligence.

FWIW I have yet to meet a religious person that I consider highly intelligent.

Wow, you haven't met very many religious people.

I know many extremely smart people who are religious. I find it rather odd, I must admit, since I don't really understand how that works, but there is no question that it does.

[Malthus]

But I operate under the premise in my personal life that the truth is always better than not truth, and I think it applies on the macro scale as well as the micro.

I dunno about that - I once tried "truth" in answer to "honey, do these pants make my butt look ugly?" and I didn't like the results. 

[The Brain]

so, i don't think viking deludes himself--unless he believes all atheists are smarter than all religious people, which is ridiculous and something few would actually believe

Sticking to the serious point here. I don't think religious people are smarter or stupider than atheists. I don't think a person who loses their religion gets smarter by doing so, nor do I think anybody adopting a religion loses any IQ points. Even if there was a working measure of intelligence (IQ tests measure nothing other than your ability to take IQ tests) then I don't think intelligence would even correlate to religiosity. I think that religious faith is not a result of logic, reason or brainpower, but rather an emotional issue.

"Stupid is as stupid does." - F. Gump

Religion makes people do stupid things, that makes them stupid, it doesn't mean they lack intelligence.

FWIW I have yet to meet a religious person that I consider highly intelligent.

Wow, you haven't met very many religious people.

I know many extremely smart people who are religious. I find it rather odd, I must admit, since I don't really understand how that works, but there is no question that it does.

I live in Sweden. But my guess would be that we also have slightly different standards you and I.

[Ed Anger]

lolz, religion threads.

[Viking]

Wow, you haven't met very many religious people.

I know many extremely smart people who are religious. I find it rather odd, I must admit, since I don't really understand how that works, but there is no question that it does.

In my experience the smarter the religious person the more elaborate the cartwheels he/she has to perform to get around the problem of lack of evidence for and massive amounts of evidence against the existence of god. Basically smart believers have to work harder and smarter to get around their own cognitive dissonance, which is not too much of a problem, because they are smart ones capable of working harder and smarter.

[Barrister]

Why is that? Thinking that if there was such a thing as the creator of the earth that knows everything he would not take a wife, father a son, try and fail with new revelations each for Abraham, Noah, Moses and Jesus. I don't have to believe in a god to agree that if a god did exist he certainly would not be as incompetent as the god of christianity and judaism would be. Muslims has many non-theist arguments against Christianity and Judaism.

One of the central tennets of Christianity was that Jesus was a man as well as the son of God.  That while on earth he was not a perfect, omnipotent being, but flawed as we all are.

And who ever said that the revelations failed?

[Barrister]

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Humanist, Volume 57, Number 1

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm


I've never heard the local priest say that Jews were evil (as a Catholic I don't see pastors).  But it's nice that Viking doesn't have to call me a liar now.

Dickwad, you used quotation marks quoting the man as saying religion is evil. You fail at grammar again. Religion is evil =/= Faith is an evil. This is willful misrepresentation.

I dunno Viking - seems to me that when Dawkins says religion is evil, that's pretty much the same thing as saying faith is evil.  You can try and argue otherwise, but I'm doubtful.  And that's a far ways from being "willful misrepresentation".

evil =/= an evil

Raz is claiming that Dawkins thinks that Religion is metaphysical evil. Dawkins doesn't accept that metaphysical evil exists. Lets not get stuck in the issue that faith is not religion (another theist cop-out). Dawkins uses evil meaning a natural phenomena with bad consequences, he even compares it to Smallpox.

You are parsing these words awfully closely.