Comment author:poke
12 December 2007 10:41:48PM
11 points
[-]
It's amazing how many supposedly rationalist movements fall into the trap of crippling "reverse stupidity." Many in the atheist movement would not have you make positive pronouncements, not have you form organizations, not have you advocate, not have you adopt symbols or give the movement a name, not have you educate children on atheism, and so on, all because "religion does it." I think in the case of atheism the source is unique: every (modern) atheist knows his or her atheism is a product of scientific understanding but few atheists are willing to admit it (having taken up also the false belief that some things are "outside science"), so they go looking for other reasons, and "reverse stupidity" offers such reasons in abundance.
Comment author:joemarzen
07 December 2011 06:34:51AM
-11 points
[-]
I think atheists would do well to encourage agnosticism, seems like an easier sell to me, training wheels? Much of the atheist movement reeks of fundamentalism. By definition atheism is closed minded. So much of science is unknown. I don't discount the idea that the possibility of collective consciousness or any number of other things viewed as supernatural, and therefore dismissed, exist. Read some theoretical physics, we don't understand a lot of stuff. That stuff could be the basis completely different ways of thinking about reality. It may very well be that what we perceive as reality is a small part, or an expression of something that no one has begun to understand. It's cliche but what if we are programs running on some ultra advanced computer. Would the operator of that computer not be a "god." Dismissing that idea is silly, creating computers of that complexity is science fiction but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility. Who's to say we'd be the first one's to do it.
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It's amazing how many supposedly rationalist movements fall into the trap of crippling "reverse stupidity." Many in the atheist movement would not have you make positive pronouncements, not have you form organizations, not have you advocate, not have you adopt symbols or give the movement a name, not have you educate children on atheism, and so on, all because "religion does it." I think in the case of atheism the source is unique: every (modern) atheist knows his or her atheism is a product of scientific understanding but few atheists are willing to admit it (having taken up also the false belief that some things are "outside science"), so they go looking for other reasons, and "reverse stupidity" offers such reasons in abundance.
I think atheists would do well to encourage agnosticism, seems like an easier sell to me, training wheels? Much of the atheist movement reeks of fundamentalism. By definition atheism is closed minded. So much of science is unknown. I don't discount the idea that the possibility of collective consciousness or any number of other things viewed as supernatural, and therefore dismissed, exist. Read some theoretical physics, we don't understand a lot of stuff. That stuff could be the basis completely different ways of thinking about reality. It may very well be that what we perceive as reality is a small part, or an expression of something that no one has begun to understand. It's cliche but what if we are programs running on some ultra advanced computer. Would the operator of that computer not be a "god." Dismissing that idea is silly, creating computers of that complexity is science fiction but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility. Who's to say we'd be the first one's to do it.