Infected Euphoric atheists

So I dunno if RationalWiki is a full-on lolcow yet (how ironic that would be, since they were set up to oppose Conservapedia which is definitely a lolcow), but I notice they're rather snooty when it comes to atheism, especially defending the big-name antitheists such as Dawkins. To give just one example, Sam Harris being very, very racist against Arabs is on the "Reverse Stopped Clock," page, dismissed as "Hey, we all make mistakes." I'm skeptical he'd be on that page if he made the same remarks but was religious.

Also on the Ten Commandments page it outright says Hammurabi's laws were more just than Moses', which is... disputed, to say the least.
 
Militant atheism has always confused me.

At least with the fundies, they're operating out of a misguided sense of morals, and most of them honestly think that by being intolerant douche-bags -- or standing around holding a "god hates fags" sign -- they're actually helping people by keeping them out of hell.

These extremist Atheists march around doing the same things fundies do, but they can't even say they're helping anyone, since if there is no god to prove anything to, what's the point? They're just being douche-bags for no reason at all.

Besides, straight atheism's really not a very good perspective if you think about it. You can't prove god exists, but you also can't prove god does not exist.
If god does not exist, then by extension there is no god to judge you after death, so you can do anything in life and not have to worry about hell because it does not exist.
Yet, if a god does exist, then by wandering around acting like a dick to everyone you meet, all you're doing is sending yourself to hell for eternity.
So, based on probability alone, it's safer to act like god does exist, and you'll figure it out when you die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager


Besides, Christian denominations (and most religions) are really not that complicated if you boil their teachings down to what you're actually supposed to do in life. Jesus said it himself when he said what the 2 most important commandments were:
1. love god.
2. love thy neighbor.

which basically means

1. be grateful for what you got.
2. don't be a fucking dick.

Sounds like good advice to me. Why not follow it?
 
Militant atheism has always confused me.

At least with the fundies, they're operating out of a misguided sense of morals, and most of them honestly think that by being intolerant douche-bags -- or standing around holding a "god hates fags" sign -- they're actually helping people by keeping them out of hell.

These extremist Atheists march around doing the same things fundies do, but they can't even say they're helping anyone, since if there is no god to prove anything to, what's the point? They're just being douche-bags for no reason at all.
Psychologically they are likely the same
Besides, straight atheism's really not a very good perspective if you think about it. You can't prove god exists, but you also can't prove god does not exist.
If god does not exist, then by extension there is no god to judge you after death, so you can do anything in life and not have to worry about hell because it does not exist.
misguided morals can exist without a god
Yet, if a god does exist, then by wandering around acting like a dick to everyone you meet, all you're doing is sending yourself to hell for eternity.
So, based on probability alone, it's safer to act like god does exist, and you'll figure it out when you die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager
Well that assumes that there is only one possibility (christianity of atheism but not hinduism or islam) and that believing in god has no price in this world
Besides, Christian denominations (and most religions) are really not that complicated if you boil their teachings down to what you're actually supposed to do in life. Jesus said it himself when he said what the 2 most important commandments were:
1. love god.
2. love thy neighbor.

which basically means

1. be grateful for what you got.
2. don't be a fucking dick.

Sounds like good advice to me. Why not follow it?
1. implies that there is a god or that there is a reason to be thankful for what one has (in many cases one cannot be thankful for ones life because one has experienced nothing else)
2. every culture regardless of religion preaches this and they all fail to live up to it
 
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So I dunno if RationalWiki is a full-on lolcow yet (how ironic that would be, since they were set up to oppose Conservapedia which is definitely a lolcow), but I notice they're rather snooty when it comes to atheism, especially defending the big-name antitheists such as Dawkins. To give just one example, Sam Harris being very, very racist against Arabs is on the "Reverse Stopped Clock," page, dismissed as "Hey, we all make mistakes." I'm skeptical he'd be on that page if he made the same remarks but was religious.

Also on the Ten Commandments page it outright says Hammurabi's laws were more just than Moses', which is... disputed, to say the least.
Been reading RationalWiki a long time. I think they're being mostly sensible most of the time, but the individual biases of the editors really, really show sometimes, which I think is the result of the fact that they don't strive for neutrality and strictly sourced facts like Wikipedia.

At this point, RW is pretty much as nutty as the whole of the editors is. Think of it like The Iconoclast's contributions to CWCki. Most of CWCki is based on events that happened and evidence of which is archived. Then, deep in the edit history, is one loud scream about evils of liberalism which Chris is a perfect example of. It is one of the contributions to the wiki among the many. I'm afraid to go to CWCki and see if it's still in the current version.

(I have to say I'm not super active at RW and don't keep an eye on all pages. Just saying that RW in general seems to fall pretty solidly in the pattern I've seen on a lot of wikis. Nothing alarming. Yet. Will be fine as long as there's people willing to call bullshit. Also, I'm often extremely sceptical when people say "wiki X is under attack by Y" - look at the evidence and suddenly it looks like everyone's "attacking" the wiki, most often the people who are whining about the attacks.)

That said, I think RW is also being torn around by the same kind of schisms that sceptic community at large is involved in. The site is definitely not immune to m'fedoratip and related cluelessness.
 
Sorry for the sperg here, just my viewpoint, as a lousy athiest...

I tend to view extreme/aggressive atheists as "trying to get their own back" on fundies, or anyone they deem a fundie.
Personally, I used to be a dick about my atheism many years back - Trying to prove a "point". I see how childish that is now.

Screaming and conflict gets none of us anywhere. We must find philosophical accomodation with each other. This is vital.
We get older, we learn and we realise that politeness, along with rational dialog is the only way to find peace among us.

When I meet religious people or preachers, I am always polite, and keep my mind open, even when they try to step over the line
and attempt any conversion tactics. I merely say even great scientists and learned bishops have very little idea of the universe.

Even with aggressive religious types, showing courtesy is the first rule. "Turn the other cheek" is relevant to non-believers too.
 

Pascal's Wager is dumb. It presumes there isn't a God that would actually send you to Hell for making such a cynical, calculated ploy. There's just as much reason to assume that God doesn't mind if you don't believe, but would punish you for cynically gambling on the proposition. After all, you don't really believe if you're making such a calculation. You're just pretending to for hypothetical benefits.
 
Sorry for the sperg here, just my viewpoint, as a lousy athiest...

I tend to view extreme/aggressive atheists as "trying to get their own back" on fundies, or anyone they deem a fundie.
Personally, I used to be a dick about my atheism many years back - Trying to prove a "point". I see how childish that is now.

Screaming and conflict gets none of us anywhere. We must find philosophical accomodation with each other. This is vital.
We get older, we learn and we realise that politeness, along with rational dialog is the only way to find peace among us.

When I meet religious people or preachers, I am always polite, and keep my mind open, even when they try to step over the line
and attempt any conversion tactics. I merely say even great scientists and learned bishops have very little idea of the universe.

Even with aggressive religious types, showing courtesy is the first rule. "Turn the other cheek" is relevant to non-believers too.
These fools make atheists like myself look bad. I support religious freedom provided nobody is harmed, they should too. Otherwise they would still face persecution.
 
At least with the fundies, they're operating out of a misguided sense of morals, and most of them honestly think that by being intolerant douche-bags -- or standing around holding a "god hates fags" sign -- they're actually helping people by keeping them out of hell.
They're not doing what they do because it's "good". They're doing what they do entirely out of fear. In the same breath there are people who assault gay people and bomb abortion clinics in the name of their religion as well. They also encourage banning things like evolution which halts progress and potentially leads to further ignorance of science. There are also fundamentalists who encourage war with Iran that would lead to the end of the world, so Jesus can come sooner and so they can go to Heaven for being good Christians. There are fundamentalists who deliberately avoid going to hospitals for their children because they think God will cure them. How is telling someone "Your god doesn't exist bro" worse than that?
These extremist Atheists march around doing the same things fundies do, but they can't even say they're helping anyone, since if there is no god to prove anything to, what's the point? They're just being douche-bags for no reason at all.
Telling someone "If you don't believe the way I do, you're going to be burned alive forever and I'm going to laugh at you when it happens" is not "good".

I've met people who have this crippling fear of Hell that prevents them from doing things out of fear of it. People who spend their hard earned money to go to Church despite not believing in God entirely out of fear of Hell.

Jews do not believe in Hell. Their version of Hell is more akin to the Greek version of the underworld Gehenna and is more akin to purgatory. Christanity added Hell and Pagan influences later turned it into a "lake of fire".
Besides, straight atheism's really not a very good perspective if you think about it. You can't prove god exists, but you also can't prove god does not exist.
If god does not exist, then by extension there is no god to judge you after death, so you can do anything in life and not have to worry about hell because it does not exist.
Yet, if a god does exist, then by wandering around acting like a dick to everyone you meet, all you're doing is sending yourself to hell for eternity.
So, based on probability alone, it's safer to act like god does exist, and you'll figure it out when you die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager
Pascal's Wager is one of the most amusing and depressing arguments. It is an argument conceived by a mathematician about probability and it doesn't work as an argument toward faith.

The easiest way to kill Pascal's wager as an argument is to use the example of other religions. For instance, there's also Muslims who have a hell. Which is equally as bad as Christian hell. Who is to say you're not pigeon holing yourself into Christianity only to pick the wrong religion by accident and going to Muslim hell?

It also portrays God as someone who is a bit of an idiot and reveals a great deal of the pettiness of Hell. That he's someone who can be fooled by just doing something so you can avoid his consequences and not because you want to believe in him.

Also this argument basically states you should be agnostic toward anything just to avoid the consequences. Like I should just believe in Unicorns and Dragons because I might get killed by one if I don't take precautions. Since I don't lose anything by just believing in those things out of fear.
Besides, Christian denominations (and most religions) are really not that complicated if you boil their teachings down to what you're actually supposed to do in life. Jesus said it himself when he said what the 2 most important commandments were:
1. love god.
2. love thy neighbor.

which basically means

1. be grateful for what you got.
2. don't be a fucking dick.

Sounds like good advice to me. Why not follow it?
Yes if you simplify an entire book down to just two messages and ignore everything else like the chapters that talk about how much you should beat your slaves, or in what instances rape is permissible, then yeah it sure sounds swell. The Bible also says "it doesn't matter what you do in life, you MUST believe in God otherwise you go to Hell by default". Which entirely defeats the purpose of being a good person if that's not what you're judged on.

You're just picking things from the 10% of "morally good" common sense passages from the Bible that exist in other religions that predate Christianity and ignoring the 90% of horrible passages that you'd expect to hear out of a fundamentalist Muslim in Saudi Arabia.
 
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But yah, the radical atheists are almost as bad as any other form of radical (well, for lolcow standards...far as I know no radical atheists have ever murdered someone because they were religious, but the opposite has been done a billion times)

I know this is late and I hope nobody has brought it up, but yes it has happened.

The Columbine Shooters asked a girl if she believed in God and she said yes and shot her.

During the Cultural Revolution many Buddhist nuns were raped, tortured, and killed. Many religious people were set to labor camps where they died. All in Moa's attempt to wipe religion from China
 
I know this is late and I hope nobody has brought it up, but yes it has happened.

The Columbine Shooters asked a girl if she believed in God and she said yes and shot her.

During the Cultural Revolution many Buddhist nuns were raped, tortured, and killed. Many religious people were set to labor camps where they died. All in Moa's attempt to wipe religion from China
Yeah, if you look at world history and compile those who have been killed for believing vs those who have been killed for not... you're likely to come up with roughly similar numbers. Neither side is going to compare favorably when it comes to body count.
 
They're not doing what they do because it's "good". They're doing what they do entirely out of fear. In the same breath there are people who assault gay people and bomb abortion clinics in the name of their religion as well. They also encourage banning things like evolution which halts progress and potentially leads to further ignorance of science. There are also fundamentalists who encourage war with Iran that would lead to the end of the world, so Jesus can come sooner and so they can go to Heaven for being good Christians.

Telling someone "If you don't believe the way I do, you're going to be burned alive forever and I'm going to laugh at you when it happens" is not "good".

I've met people who have this crippling fear of Hell that prevents them from doing things out of fear of it. People who spend their hard earned money to go to Church despite not believing in God entirely out of fear of Hell.

Jews do not believe in Hell. Their version of Hell is more akin to the Greek version of the underworld Gehenna and is more akin to purgatory. Christanity added Hell and Pagan influences later turned it into a "lake of fire".

Pascal's Wager is one of the most amusing and depressing arguments. It is an argument conceived by a mathematician about probability and it doesn't work as an argument toward faith.

The easiest way to kill Pascal's wager as an argument is to use the example of other religions. For instance, there's also Muslims who have a hell. Which is equally as bad as Christian hell. Who is to say you're not pigeon holing yourself into Christianity only to pick the wrong religion by accident and going to Muslim hell?

It also portrays God as someone who is a bit of an idiot and reveals a great deal of the pettiness of Hell. That he's someone who can be fooled by just doing something so you can avoid his consequences and not because you want to believe in him.

Also this argument basically states you should be agnostic toward anything just to avoid the consequences. Like I should just believe in Unicorns and Dragons because I might get killed by one if I don't take precautions. Since I don't lose anything by just believing in those things out of fear.

Yes if you simplify an entire book down to just two messages and ignore everything else like the chapters that talk about how much you should beat your slaves, or in what instances rape is permissible, then yeah it sure sounds swell. The Bible also says "it doesn't matter what you do in life, you MUST believe in God otherwise you go to Hell by default". Which entirely defeats the purpose of being a good person if that's not what you're judged on.

You're just picking things from the 10% of "morally good" common sense passages from the Bible that exist in other religions that predate Christianity and ignoring the 90% of horrible passages that you'd expect to hear out of a fundamentalist Muslim in Saudi Arabia.
I've read more of the bible than every Christian I know. Not once was hell mentioned.
 
I think most of the pop culture concepts of hell come from Dante's Inferno, not any religious texts.
If I'm not mistaken, the christian concept of Hell came from the Norse. Queen Hel ruled over the dead in the underworld and punished those who broke oaths, murdered, and committed cowardice by running away from battle. The christians took this idea and over time, and with the help of Dante's Inferno, Hell became what it is now in christian religion.

Which is kind of a slap in the face to the old Nordic religion because Hel wasn't only a goddess that doled out punishment. I seem to recall she also escorted those who died of old age to Valhalla. I might be wrong on that though. If anybody has more info on that please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
 
I think most of the pop culture concepts of hell come from Dante's Inferno, not any religious texts.

Or the Book of Revelation.

Even the synoptic gospels have some of it.

"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels[.]" Matthew 25:41.
 
Or the Book of Revelation.

Even the synoptic gospels have some of it.

"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels[.]" Matthew 25:41.
There would have to of been some verses mentioning a sort of Hell. Add to that, Dante's Inferno as Dudeofteenage said and one could get some of the pop cultural context of it. Don't forget Coldgrip mentioning where the name Hell would of been lifted from.
 
I think most of the pop culture concepts of hell come from Dante's Inferno, not any religious texts.
The concept of Satan being Lucifer who was the Snake is the garden of Eden is a more modern invention.

I was reading that in the middle ages the general consensus on it was that the snake was a woman, and that she was Lilith Adam's first wife. Which makes way more sense in the context of the story than Lucifer did it. This is also how it is painted on the Sistine chapel.
04_3ce4-14B2ECDC882027A5A15.jpg

The modern concept of Lucifer being the snake is usually derived from an out of context New Testimate passage. And has since been popularized by Dante's Inferno and other modern inventions.
If I'm not mistaken, the christian concept of Hell came from the Norse. Queen Hel ruled over the dead in the underworld and punished those who broke oaths, murdered, and committed cowardice by running away from battle. The christians took this idea and over time, and with the help of Dante's Inferno, Hell became what it is now in christian religion.

Which is kind of a slap in the face to the old Nordic religion because Hel wasn't only a goddess that doled out punishment. I seem to recall she also escorted those who died of old age to Valhalla. I might be wrong on that though. If anybody has more info on that please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Norse is a possibility but I'm more inclined to believe Hell is largely Pagan in origin.
 
If I'm not mistaken, the christian concept of Hell came from the Norse. Queen Hel ruled over the dead in the underworld and punished those who broke oaths, murdered, and committed cowardice by running away from battle. The christians took this idea and over time, and with the help of Dante's Inferno, Hell became what it is now in christian religion.

I suppose it's possible the word for it came from the Norse, but the concept of an eternal punishment goes back as early as the Sumerians and Hittites and the like. I think it's much more likely a modification of the Hebrew concept of the afterlife as developed from similar concepts from Mesopotamia etc. Judaism doesn't make a huge deal out of damnation, so it's easy to miss that they do have such a concept and that it was developed further in Christianity.
 
If I'm not mistaken, the christian concept of Hell came from the Norse. Queen Hel ruled over the dead in the underworld and punished those who broke oaths, murdered, and committed cowardice by running away from battle. The christians took this idea and over time, and with the help of Dante's Inferno, Hell became what it is now in christian religion.

It was the opposite, specifically that the Norse concept of Valhalla was introduced to provide a competing afterlife with the Christian one, since "eternal life" was a selling point that the original Norse religion couldn't directly match. Prior to contact with Christianity, Nordic religions didn't really have any concept of life after death.

The word 'Hell' does come from Germanic, but it's only used in the Germanic languages, so it says less about Nordic influences on the Christian religion than it does about proto-Germanic influences on the Germanic languages. In Romance languages hell is usually translated as some variation of Inferno (l'enfer in French, infierno in Spanish), which just means "a big fire".

Or the Book of Revelation.

The line in Matthew 25:41 is a reference to judgement day, not to what happens when sinners die prior to judgement day. I guess Dante didn't invent the concept of hell from whole cloth, but he did unify several concepts that had previously been distinct, or at least not explicitly linked (including the one you've mentioned, and also the place that the fallen angels were consigned to) into one place. Most of the biblical references which are now interpreted as referring to "hell" were originally the Greek word 'Hades' which really just means death or the grave.

So I guess the concept of hell did exist before Dante, but the concept of hell as something that exists right now is a novelty, or at least a relative novelty compared to the New Testament.

Norse is a possibility but I'm more inclined to believe Hell is largely Pagan in origin.

I would love to know what definition of 'pagan' you're using that excludes the Norse. Presumably you're thinking of the various Celtic-Britannic belief systems?
 
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