14-year old Pakistani girl activist shot by Taliban

[The Brain]

I find peace through imperialist war.

[Neil]

We had this discussion many times before so in short: any religion espouses the GIGO fallacy. So it is bad in the end.

So does being gay.  So straighten up.

[garbon]

We had this discussion many times before so in short: any religion espouses the GIGO fallacy. So it is bad in the end.

So does being gay.  So straighten up.

According to Seedy it is a key part of one's individuality.

[Viking]

Look, I want to live in a world where I am married to a blind-mute-nymphomaniac-brewery heiress, that belief can give me comfort and hope as well as give my life depth and colour. It just isn't true, my credit card will be rejected, I'll come home to an empty apartment rather than a mansion, my fridge will not be filled with beer and I will not get fantastic sex. The truth of your ideas matter. If you want to say that your ideas give you comfort, just don't pretend they are anything but fantasy.

You're refusing to see the good for the bad. All you can focus on is the negative affects of religion, and you've transcribed that to mean that everything that has to do with religion and spirituality is wrong, bad, and worthless (or worse, damaging) fantasy.

Spirituality made Mother Theresa save millions of lives.

Source?

Sisters of Charity ran hospices giving paleative care to the terminally ill. Mother Teresa saved precisely zero lives.

It helped Mahatma Ghandi direct a nation and a world toward peace.

Source?

Mahatam Gandhi directed a nation peacefully towards independence. His teaching and behaviour led directly to the greatest case of ethnic cleansing in human history and the second or third largest genocide. His influence in economics guaranteed that india remain poor and horrible until the end of the cold war. He didn't do what you said.

On the smaller scale, it guides my ideals and my ethics to be a positive, caring, understanding individual. It's helped me face things that might have destroyed another person. It's kept me sane during insane times, and it's helped me become the person that I am. It works in a very positive way for me, personally, every day of my life. That is enough for me to be perfectly happy with my trumped up fantasies and chemically-induced intuition.

I don't need non-facts to guide my ideals and ethics. I don't need non-facts to know to respect my fellow man, I don't need non facts to realize that mutilating foreskins and earlobes of infants is wrong. My rejection of non-facts have made me a better person because it takes away my excuses. I am responsible for my own actions and I cannot justify them with feelings, emotions or vicariously transfer blame or responsibility to anybody but myself.

It's also taught me to be accepting of other perspectives, seeing beauty where before I may have found confusion or disgust. Your way of looking at all of this has caused you to only see the negative, unhappy aspects of life. How can that possibly persuade anyone that your reality is the better one?

I have learned to accept other perspectives only if they are true and have utility. I am not prevented in seeing beauty at all since I find it in truth. I use truth to confront confusion and disgust and see my duty to understand and act in those cases rather than sit idly by. I see the positive and happy aspects of life in truth. False positiveness is negative and false happiness is unhappiness; you may just not know it yet.

My reality is the better one because my sole purpose in life is to remove the word "My" from in front of it.

[derspiess]

Sure, but so is taking communion, unless you truly believe that you're eating the body and blood of Christ. It has an affect on you, though, or at least it did for me. I may have never believed that I was eating and drinking Christ, but I did feel as though I was part of a community who believed in his teachings. All imagination, really, but no less important to my faith at the time.

Methodists do communion, but we don't do the transubstantiation thing.

But if it helps someone make a positive change in their life, isn't that an actual real value? Would it make it more of an actual real value if that person then went on to build a hospital for children, or to work harder to find a cure for cancer? At what point does it become more real and more valued?

I guess if it always had positive outcomes, sure.  But I'm a bit, ehm, skeptical on how often that is the case.

That's perfectly fair, I just don't see the point. Going back to value, where is the value in judging how another finds peace?

It's not like I go out of my way to judge people like that.  It's just when it's presented to me.  I'd prefer to let wiccans/pagans/whatever do their own thing as long as they keep to themselves about it.

OMG DERSPIESS THATS WHAT WE ATHEISTS THINK ABOUT YER CHRISTIANITY

[merithyn]

I don't need non-facts to guide my ideals and ethics. I don't need non-facts to know to respect my fellow man, I don't need non facts to realize that mutilating foreskins and earlobes of infants is wrong. My rejection of non-facts have made me a better person because it takes away my excuses. I am responsible for my own actions and I cannot justify them with feelings, emotions or vicariously transfer blame or responsibility to anybody but myself.

I've never discounted that this works for you. I'm not sure why you persist in claiming that my way of living shouldn't work for me.

I have learned to accept other perspectives only if they are true and have utility. I am not prevented in seeing beauty at all since I find it in truth. I use truth to confront confusion and disgust and see my duty to understand and act in those cases rather than sit idly by. I see the positive and happy aspects of life in truth. False positiveness is negative and false happiness is unhappiness; you may just not know it yet.

My reality is the better one because my sole purpose in life is to remove the word "My" from in front of it.

And yet from your perspective, your method of living , to you, is the only way to live, making it wholly selfish.

[Neil]

Mahatam Gandhi directed a nation peacefully towards independence. His teaching and behaviour led directly to the greatest case of ethnic cleansing in human history and the second or third largest genocide. His influence in economics guaranteed that india remain poor and horrible until the end of the cold war. He didn't do what you said.

His hagiography won critical acclaim and was directed by a guy who was in the Great Escape.  That's more than I can say about your hagiography.

[Neil]

I have learned to accept other perspectives only if they are true or have utility.

That's what makes me better than Viking, because I understand that religion is important to keep the proles down.

[dps]

I don't need non-facts to guide my ideals and ethics. I don't need non-facts to know to respect my fellow man, I don't need non facts to realize that mutilating foreskins and earlobes of infants is wrong.

Those aren't facts.  Those are values--non-facts, and hence harmful fantasies by your arguments.  I'm not saying that you have to have religious beliefs in order to have morals or ethics, but you have to believe in something, because the alternative would be to do nothing except to do anything you can get away with, no matter how vile or harmful to others, if it's in your self-interest or gives you pleasure.

My rejection of non-facts have made me a better person because it takes away my excuses.  I am responsible for my own actions and I cannot justify them with feelings, emotions or vicariously transfer blame or responsibility to anybody but myself. [/b]

Religious belief doesn 't take away one's responsibility for one's own actions.  And lots of criminals blame society for their actions without holding to any religious beliefs.

[merithyn]

I guess if it always had positive outcomes, sure.  But I'm a bit, ehm, skeptical on how often that is the case.

It doesn't when people who are less than honest use these methods against another. But one can claim the same of anything, not just Paganism or even just religion. When it has positive outcomes, it has value, imo. Therefore, the process of doing a Tarot reading can have value, even if it doesn't have magical qualities, per se.

It's not like I go out of my way to judge people like that.  It's just when it's presented to me.  I'd prefer to let wiccans/pagans/whatever do their own thing as long as they keep to themselves about it.

OMG DERSPIESS THATS WHAT WE ATHEISTS THINK ABOUT YER CHRISTIANITY

It's the bolded part that I don't understand. Why does it matter to you if they openly worship or practice their faith? It sounds an awful lot like "I don't care if they're queer so long as they don't act like it."  Should they never acknowledge that they aren't like you so that you can be safe in your coccoon of your version of normalcy?

[Viking]

I don't need non-facts to guide my ideals and ethics. I don't need non-facts to know to respect my fellow man, I don't need non facts to realize that mutilating foreskins and earlobes of infants is wrong. My rejection of non-facts have made me a better person because it takes away my excuses. I am responsible for my own actions and I cannot justify them with feelings, emotions or vicariously transfer blame or responsibility to anybody but myself.

I've never discounted that this works for you. I'm not sure why you persist in claiming that my way of living shouldn't work for me.

I'm not saying it shouldn't work for you, I'm just saying it is untrue and will eventually come into conflict with reality. You are the one telling me that I live a life without joy, happiness or meaning. That just isn't the case.

I have learned to accept other perspectives only if they are true and have utility. I am not prevented in seeing beauty at all since I find it in truth. I use truth to confront confusion and disgust and see my duty to understand and act in those cases rather than sit idly by. I see the positive and happy aspects of life in truth. False positiveness is negative and false happiness is unhappiness; you may just not know it yet.

My reality is the better one because my sole purpose in life is to remove the word "My" from in front of it.

And yet from your perspective, your method of living , to you, is the only way to live, making it wholly selfish.

WTF? I wonder if you are reading what I write. This has nothing to do with selfishness. My acceptance of an idea is mediated only by it's truth value, if that truth makes my life uncomfortable I must deal with it. Your acceptance of an idea is mediated by the comfort it gives you.

I ask you, which is more selfish? Is my putting truth as the highest ideal more selfish than your putting your own comfort as the highest ideal?

You have this the wrong way round, I am not trying to force my arbitrary truth on the world, I am trying to force the world on my arbitrary truth.

[derspiess]

It's the bolded part that I don't understand. Why does it matter to you if they openly worship or practice their faith?

For starters I'm generally uneasy about being showy about religion in general.  For me it's more of a private thing.  Even people in my own church make me feel uncomfortable if they make a big display about it.

But to go further I'll flat-out admit I dislike wiccanism/paganism. 

It sounds an awful lot like "I don't care if they're queer so long as they don't act like it."

Should they never acknowledge that they aren't like you so that you can be safe in your coccoon of your version of normalcy?

Yeah, kinda. 

[Barrister]

Mahatam Gandhi directed a nation peacefully towards independence. His teaching and behaviour led directly to the greatest case of ethnic cleansing in human history and the second or third largest genocide. His influence in economics guaranteed that india remain poor and horrible until the end of the cold war. He didn't do what you said.

[merithyn]

I'm not saying it shouldn't work for you, I'm just saying it is untrue and will eventually come into conflict with reality. You are the one telling me that I live a life without joy, happiness or meaning. That just isn't the case.

I never said that you didn't have joy, happiness or meaning. I said that you're missing a part of life that I am not. I also said that by only focusing on the negatives of religion you are missing all of the wonderful things that it's accomplished.

WTF? I wonder if you are reading what I write. This has nothing to do with selfishness. My acceptance of an idea is mediated only by it's truth value, if that truth makes my life uncomfortable I must deal with it. Your acceptance of an idea is mediated by the comfort it gives you.

I ask you, which is more selfish? Is my putting truth as the highest ideal more selfish than your putting your own comfort as the highest ideal?

You have this the wrong way round, I am not trying to force my arbitrary truth on the world, I am trying to force the world on my arbitrary truth.

By declaring that your view is the only "true" view, you are selfishly trying to force everyone else to live as you do, regardless of the vast benefits we derive by living differently. And please don't pretend that your view of the world doesn't give you comfort, because it obviously does. Not only does it give you comfort, but it also seems to provide you with a superiority complex over all of those who are handicapped by believing in religion.

I acknowledge that you have a valid world view, that it obviously works well for you, and that there doesn't appear to be a need to change it, even though it is very contrary to my own world view. You do not accord me the same respect. Which is more arrogant, especially since you've admitted that we're all, really, just guessing here?

[Maximus]

No, both statement have truth value independent of belief. One is a statement about a fact about x, the other is a statment about a fact about your state of belief. No belief is required for either statement to be true or false. They are either true or false independent of my belief in their truth or falseness.

The only fact that is relevant about a belief is it's existence. Belief has no effect on truth.

Are you claiming that the truth of the statement "I believe x" is independent of whether or not I, in fact, believe x?