The Skeptics Thread

[BoriquaSNK]

Thought it might be interesting to hear how many of us on these boards are of the Atheist, Agnostic, and Skeptic variety. Not trying to dole out flame bait, just curious.

I "came out" as an atheist to a few of my friends at dinner a couple of months ago and was absolutely astounded at just how indignant many of them were, I was literally compared to a child molester for having "lost a cornerstone of human morality". Surprisingly, I lost a lot of friends (many of my friends are pretty conservative, I guess I should have seen it coming) simply by giving an opinion.

That led me to read Dawkins, who is absolutely incredible, and Carl Sagan, who is even more incredible, and a slew of other "godless" thinkers including Sam Harris, Chris Hitchens (brilliant asshole), Ayn Rand (brilliant asshole again) among many others. I have to say, it was a surprisingly transformative moment in my life. I was also surprised at just how badly atheists and agnostics are discriminated against in America.

So, anybody else in the club or did I just post a huge flame pit?

 

[galfordo]

damn, you had some shitty friends

wtf are you doing with all these hillbillies boriqua, i thought you were a hipster

 

[BoriquaSNK]

damn, you had some shitty friends

wtf are you doing with all these hillbillies boriqua, i thought you were a hipster

There's no PBR in my fridge my friend. My haircut is not asymmetrical either.

I always liked having friends that disagreed with me, it made for lively conversations. Apparently the folks in question were more interested in my take on policy.

 

[abasuto]

You having to endure that is just wild to me due to my upbringing. I had an uncle who became a born-again after his old lady left him and the bulk of my inner family literally disowned him.

At first no one cared, but he became one of those preachy style christians, always trying to convert people.

He quickly was never invited to any family dinners, weddings and such due to that.

 

[Lagduf]

I doubt they were really your friends anyway.

 

[BoriquaSNK]

@abasuto and @duf - I didn't really "endure" anything, it's not like I was abandoned. I agree, they weren't really friends. I just had a lot of people who stopped hanging out because I didn't believe in an invisible man in the sky. I didn't rub it in anyone's face or anything...but if it came up I gave my POV.

What I was more concerned with were the societal issues, I mean, if you're a member of an atheist organization...like in college for example...you can't put that on a resume. It's looked at with such vitriole.

Whereas if you're part of a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish organization that's looked at positively. There's a disconnect there that I don't understand.

Believer or not, I highly recommend Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show On Earth, it's basically a celebration of biology and evolution. The man actually manages to make you get all warm and fuzzy over bacteria.

 

[Lagduf]

Have watched Cosmos?

All the episodes are on Hulu, and while it's dated, it's still good stuff. Carl Sagan is just such an inspirational and positive guy to watch. Cosmos really helps to put our place and "role" in the Universe in to perspective.

 

[BoriquaSNK]

LOVE Cosmos.

What's amazing is that it's still relevant today, 99% of what he talks about on that show is still true.

Anyone who hasn't seen it needs to, it's on Netflix commercial free as well.

I also recommend The Root of All Evil series by the BBC, kinda provacative but you see Dawkins in his element. Great documentary.

 

[Deuce]

I've experienced similar things. Most notably from my mother, who is a hypocrite of the highest order, but that's an entirely different story.

You're not alone in noticing the discrimination. People don't like the idea that someone can be a good person without believing in a higher power (or, to be more precise, believing in their higher power of choice).

Pepsi. The taste of a new generation.

 

[norton9478]

There's no PBR in my fridge my friend. My haircut is not asymmetrical either..

Is that supposed to apply to Hillbillies or Hipsters?

There is such a fine line, and those traits could apply to either.

 

[norton9478]

I don't like Dawkins or Sagan or any that shit.

I don't need a 300 page book or some asshole with an IQ of 195 to tell me that religion is stupid.

 

[norton9478]

During the presidential campaign, people were making a big deal out of the president's father being a Muslim.

That wasn't such a bad thing. The truth was that he was a Muslim who latter turned atheist. I argued that in order for Barry to be president, it was better to just say that his father was a Muslim.

@abasuto and @duf - I didn't really "endure" anything, it's not like I was abandoned. I agree, they weren't really friends. I just had a lot of people who stopped hanging out because I didn't believe in an invisible man in the sky. I didn't rub it in anyone's face or anything...but if it came up I gave my POV.

That's the thing. If you are one religion and you are another, they always can see you as one of them. Almost that you could convert to xx. But if you are certainly atheist, they know there is no hope.

 

[Lagduf]

I don't like Dawkins or Sagan or any that shit.

I don't need a 300 page book or some asshole with an IQ of 195 to tell me that religion is stupid.

I wouldn't say it's stupid but more so that it's ignorant.

It's just an outdated, unfounded superstition.

It's how people attempted to explain the universe before the development of the science.

We're just as smart today as we were 10,000 years ago with regard to what our brains could learn and understand. We know more today, obviously, but fundamentally we're the same today as we were millenia ago.

I'm not really one of those religion hating atheists. A lot of bad shit has been done in the name of religion, but bad shit has been done in the name of many other things too. Religion isn't the cause of the problem, bad people who use any means necessary to motivate others to do their deeds are.

 

[norton9478]

I wouldn't say it's stupid but more so that it's ignorant.

It's just an outdated, unfounded superstition.

It's how people attempted to explain the universe before the development of the science.

We're just as smart today as we were 10,000 years ago with regard to what our brains could learn and understand. We know more today, obviously, but fundamentally we're the same today as we were millenia ago.

Actually, I think that the smart among us are probably much smarter today than they were 10,000 years ago. It's all part of evolution.

 

[Lagduf]

Actually, I think that the smart among us are probably much smarter today than they were 10,000 years ago. It's all part of evolution.

I really don't think that's the case, although how does one quantify intelligence?

Better invent the time machine so we can give IQ tests to the Ancient Egyptians.

 

[norton9478]

I really don't think that's the case, although how does one quantify intelligence?

Better invent the time machine so we can give IQ tests to the Ancient Egyptians.

Well, I only think it's a part of what is going on.

Of course our ability to record the past and learn from it, is the biggest part of what has put us on the moon.

But you can't discount the effect of inherited intelligence either.

As much as I'd like to think otherwise, I have to admit that intelligence is somewhat related to genetics.

Over time, intelligence has been a big factor in survivability. And those who survive, replicated.

And during the last few hundred years, people have selected partners of similar intelligence levels.

 

[Grandmaster]

i am Muslim, but i am somewhat new to Islam (been studying and doing my best for a couple of years now). i guess the important thing i try to convey to people first, is the existence of God. the Quran (i.e. God Himself) encourages people to think over the creation and the things they see, everything around them, above them, below them, inside them, etc. there are so so many signs and evidence of God. whether or not people believe in God, the reality is we are all dependent upon Him for the rain, sun, food, air, or any other provision you can think of. i mean, if you look closely, you can see this sort of beauty, intelligence and precision. and for me, it is very inspiring.

you can use examples of things we create or other animals create. like say a beehive. you look at the hive and know that it didn't just appear out of nowhere. there was something that designed it. and we accept this. but its strange to me people don't or can't accept the idea of ourselves being created because we are so proud and i might say arrogant. the fact we are thinking at all, is a blessing and we should be humble for this.

skeptics are smart people, and i myself have gone back and forth before i had to stop and realize what all this really is. i enjoy topics like this though and i hope everyone benefits from it

 

[SouthtownKid]

I'm not as interested in the "morality" side of it, since so, so, so, so, soooooo many religious people could use a complete reset of their own moral compass and have, imo, a fatally skewed (or hopelessly contradictory) view of what right and wrong actually are.

What does bother me about atheism is the incredible and shocking lack of imagination of people who are absolutely sure that nothing larger than them exists in the universe. I'm immediately suspicious of anyone who is absolutely sure about this in either direction.

A lot of times, the people I've met who have chosen atheism have done so in response to a specific religion -- most often, Catholicism -- rather than spirituality in general. I think most people who are not themselves Catholic can agree that the Catholic Church is historically not really about spirituality but about power. Specifically, using the Christian teachings to manipulate the uneducated masses through the centuries in order to consolidate the Church's own power and line their coffers...to which end, they've invented a host of assorted crazy, cult-like additional rules to further bend things their way, that have nothing to do with the religion they supposedly represent. The end result of this is that institutions like the Catholic Church have poisoned many people's minds against any kind of spirituality at all.


To my mind, the Catholic Church isn't more than Scientology with a couple thousand-year head start. And I think someone else here once quoted Grant Morrison when he said that "Organized religion is to spirituality as porn is to love."

Anyway, long story short, I think the idea many people get stuck with -- that the only two possible choices are either full-blown Catholicism/Christianity/Islam or whatever, or NOTHING -- is outlandishly limiting and represents an incredible lack of imagination and vision. "If I don't accept this one specific religion's Bible as being true, that then excludes the possibility of anything spiritual existing." What an incredible leap in logic (unworthy of any scientist). It just seems like those people haven't put much thought into it beyond a knee-jerk recoiling from a specific religion/specific idiots they've encountered. But blindly doing the exact opposite of something is just as bad as blindly following something, because you are still allowing "it" to control how you perceive the world. Usually, the best thing to do is to come up with a third path on your own.

Agnostics or skeptics, I have no problem with at all, and in many ways, I believe represent the best way to approach the universe around us: unsure and questioning. That is the only way the human race gets anywhere. Where would science be if we didn't first imagine things to look for, leading us then to discover them? Atoms come to mind immediately. Invisible spectra. Things we couldn't see or prove existed -- until we did. But imagining their possible existence came first.

I guess choosing not to believe anything you can't yourself see is a relatively harmless way to live your life overall. But refusing to believe in the possible existence of anything you can't yourself see is completely moronic. Hopelessly stupid. There are at least a thousand things we could not "see" only a century ago, that existed only in a few people's imaginations, that we now know for a fact to exist. There is no reason not to expect to discover at least a thousand more things in the century to come, in the century after that, and so on. The people who can't grasp that simple axiom are where my disgust comes in. People who somehow manage to be more stupid than me tend to irritate me anyhow, but those people in particular. I guess I find lack of imagination more offensive than lack of knowledge.

Anyhow, congrats to anyone who slogged all the way through that. Allow yourself an extra beer with dinner.

 

[Metal Slugnuts]

lol Dawkins

Organized atheism is different from organized religion how?

I didn't buy that shit in high school and I'm sure not buying it now.

That said, I'd say I'm a skeptical agnostic. I don't think we came from a bearded man in the sky but I also don't think we can explain everything away with halfbaked scientific theories. As long as people recognize how limited our knowledge really is, be they Christian or atheist or Jew or Muslim or whatever the fuck, they're cool in my book.

A lot of my friends are semidevout Christians though.

EDIT: Damn you STK, beat me to it and more eloquent to boot.

 

[BoriquaSNK]

@duf - Personally, I think it's not so much that religion is the whole problem, though it's certainly a huge part of it, but that it's the lack of reasoned science and ethics that is the problem.

Stalin was an atheist but he was also a monster who succumbed to the same societal superstitions that the czar did before him. Thus, he was just as ruthless as the czar.

So a reasoned society with a strong ethical foundation, without religion, would be pie in the sky ideal IMHO.

@norton - I'm with duf on this one. I think intelligence is the act of innovating against the problems at your disposal. I have no doubt that Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton, Al-kwharizmi, et al would still be considered geniuses if they grew up in modern times...hell Darwin was an amazing man in his own right.

 

[Metal Slugnuts]

This thread totally calls for...

 

[Lagduf]

Well, I only think it's a part of what is going on.

Of course our ability to record the past and learn from it, is the biggest part of what has put us on the moon.

But you can't discount the effect of inherited intelligence either.

As much as I'd like to think otherwise, I have to admit that intelligence is somewhat related to genetics.

Over time, intelligence has been a big factor in survivability. And those who survive, replicated.

And during the last few hundred years, people have selected partners of similar intelligence levels.

I don't think those persons were smarter because they had an inherently better brain, rather, they had a better disposition towards learning.

 

[Lagduf]

Kan needs to be banned from posting in this thread.

I agree with STK, in that, I'm always suspicious of those atheists who are really nothing more than hate filled anti-religious reactionaries.

 

[Deuce]

But refusing to believe in the possible existence of anything you can't yourself see is completely moronic. Hopelessly stupid. There are at least a thousand things we could not "see" only a century ago, that existed only in a few people's imaginations, that we now know for a fact to exist. There is no reason not to expect to discover at least a thousand more things in the century to come, in the century after that, and so on. The people who can't grasp that simple axiom are where my disgust comes in. People who somehow manage to be more stupid than me tend to irritate me anyhow, but those people in particular. I guess I find lack of imagination more offensive than lack of knowledge.

Well put. As ferociously atheist as I am, I am completely open to the possibility (even inevitability) that science is unlikely to ever run out of things to discover. It's not future scientific possibility that I reject, but the concept of spirituality itself, and everything that springs from it. I consider the old philosophical saw, "Why are we here?" to be completely devoid of merit. How we got here is a far more interesting and useful subject.

 

[Mike Shagohod]

I really don't think that's the case, although how does one quantify intelligence?

Better invent the time machine so we can give IQ tests to the Ancient Egyptians.

I'd love to be one of those to go back in time. To be in awe of the Pyramids being built by slaves, and for them to probably think of me and the time travelers "as Gods" with out tactical gear and AR-15s, AK-47s and M1 Garands, driving around in Horseless Carriages called Hum Vees.

I'd walk right up to the Pharaoh and slap his bitch ass, gun him down and tell all the Egyptian honies to get to suckin or die. Think I'd find Cleopatra while I was at it, and introduce her to the perfection of vibrators since it's apparently her who (supposedly) created the first one. *LOL*