| StoreTags: new, atheism, god, religion, science
Author: nagrom on January 04 2007 Viewed 11369 times. 12 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: emulsion, astroid, cbit, datathinner, soft, Doron, flies, bsr, GregTArtZ, mixedtape, everamzah, nicknotis
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Interview with Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith".
Basically a very rational argument for questioning, not religious freedom, but the acceptance of religion in society.
Also, if you scroll down a bit, there's an article about the origins of public school, which I implore everybody to read before sending your kids off to be hammered into cubes.
Anybody who was intrigued by the public school blurb, you may be interested in this book on the subject by John Gatto: link (it's free online) | |
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01/05/07
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astroid
cbit said: "astroid: re. preaching to the choir. as similar as the outlooks here are, i'd say that there are still important differences that are (hopefully) useful to talk about."
sorry for that. it was a bit of a personal attack. i appreciate your point of view, and i'll try to elevate my arguments.
01/05/07
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bsr
if you're manipulated, for whatever reason, you lose a fair share of responsibility (not all granted).
if someone abuses something i've said for their own ends - who's at fault?
edited: Jan 05 2007
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cbit
astroid said: "i think blaming religion or capitalism is aiming way too shallow."
did you check the video that nagrom linked to? please do if you haven't yet, i feel like i'm doing an injustice to the ideas he expresses so well by hashing it out here. Basically I disagree with you that aiming for religion is aiming too shallow: i think religion is one of main causes of human suffering.
01/05/07
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bsr
that's the major difference between us; i think humans are the main cause of human suffering.
01/05/07
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astroid
yes, i watched the video
i don't agree that religion is one of the main causes of human suffering. maybe one of the main methods.
also, evaluating how "bad" a cause of suffering something is would be tricky. you'd have to take into account the positives, and the popularity of the cause. the popularity is great, and the positives are without measure.
how do you seperate causes?
even in the reformation, the causes go back further than the catholic church-to the cultural clash between the germanic tribes and the roman empire. it's not reducing it to absurdity to point this out. many of the same systems of subjugation were fitted to the church from the purely empirical systems-taxation for example.
01/05/07
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cbit
astroid said: "i don't agree that religion is one of the main causes of human suffering. maybe one of the main methods."
can you elaborate on this? i don't understand what it means to consider religion a method of suffering.
01/05/07
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cbit
bsr said: "that's the major difference between us; i think humans are the main cause of human suffering."
This isn't a difference between us. For me the observation that 'humans are the main cause of human suffering' is self evident enough not to be worth mentioning, a truism that doesn't get you anywhere.
astroid said: "the popularity is great, and the positives are without measure."
are you talking about religion? No doubt there are some positive effects but what do you mean when you say they're beyond measure?
01/05/07
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bsr
it's used as a tool to cause suffering > emphasis on 'used'.
01/05/07
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bsr
it's not a truism that doesnt get you anywhere at all - it's speaks volumes - we're inherently not benign well adjusted people, it's in our nature to look out for ourselves and our family, it's evolution. to blame a 'thing' other than our nature is passing-the-buck.
01/05/07
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cbit
bsr said: "if you're manipulated, for whatever reason, you lose a fair share of responsibility (not all granted)."
as i read it, this is sideways from the point. It's not the people who have been manipulated who are being singled out for attack/blame; rather the unquestioning acceptance (and respect) of faith based belief - the taboo of challenging a notion because it happens to be part of someones faith.
01/05/07
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bsr
i disagree.
01/05/07
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astroid
cbit said: "cbit said: "Most 'rounding up' in the world so far has been either directly motivated, or facilitated through religious belief."
can you see what i mean by facilitated through religious belief? "
"cause" vs. "method".
cause means the driving force behind, and method means the mechanism by which another cause is fulfilled. i tend to think that subjugation of the "other," however it is defined, is the prime cause in itsself. religion has often been the method, for sure. it's a handy way of defining "us" against "them". it's a rather cute way, too, because you can say 'believe this, and we will spare you, you will become one of us' and then you have a nice friendly method of warfare.
but, i think it's important to determine which came first-like institutional racism was a product of colonialism (and make no mistake, the colonialism is still going on, in terms of mineral wealth and labor exploitation), religious warfare was a product of cultural clashes. it's a way to explain to an ignorant populous why they should hate and kill each other. what i'm saying is that, if we get rid of one method (or better to say 'style'), another will pop up in it's place. it's pretty much whack-a-mole.
what is there to be done?
exploring methods is always fascinating-propaganda, media, and religion are the current hot topics. but the causes are more important.
some causes that i mentioned before-migrations, overpopulation. some i didn't mention-the depletion of resources, like in the coming century there will be wars over water rights, for instance. they will be racist, classist, and religious in tone, but not in substance.
01/05/07
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bsr
people are sheep, people are dumb, people are naive, people have faults. if someone uses that to their advantage the people are not to blame. if someone uses religion as a tool to use those people that''s all it is - a tool used to manipulate.
01/05/07
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astroid
cbit said: "astroid said: "the popularity is great, and the positives are without measure."
are you talking about religion? No doubt there are some positive effects but what do you mean when you say they're beyond measure?"
beyond measure= cannot meaningfully be evaluated.
edited: Jan 05 2007
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cbit
bsr said: "we're inherently not benign well adjusted people, it's in our nature to look out for ourselves and our family, it's evolution. to blame a 'thing' other than our nature is passing-the-buck."
evolution: as you probably know, also strongly promotes altruistic behaviour: our innate sense of right and wrong is born of it (altruism is explainable in darwinian terms by remembering that evolution favours the selfish gene, not the selfish organism a sometimes subtle but important distinction).
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