Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

[Iam90]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

Utility is an arbitrary purpose, though, and so the rest of activity is, as well. A decision is fundamentally backed by dogma regardless of the logical validity of the argument for that decision.

yes this is true in a way on a very fundamental level but it's pretty irrelevant. i think we're all assuming to be operating within a human paradigm; when you get so basic as to analyze the validity of things like survival, you're deconstructing everything to the point where all discussion concerning human activity is meaningless

[Vendetta21]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

Stargroup.

Take logic and reasoning. You'll find that 100% of mathematicians agree with rushy.

statistics can determine a lot of useless **** if you don't take the time to critically think about things from an inside view

i'm not saying it's possible to view as many things with an inside view than it is with a broad mathematical view but those statistics can be interpreted in a lot of useless ways

making religion the enemy is like making stupidity the enemy. it's detracting from where a real focus should be by focusing on meta-elements (and also issues that you aren't going to make a lot of progress with whatever specific problem domain they create by combating on this meta-level.) i haven't found a reason to try to deal with anything beyond a case-by-case basis. i have a feeling a smarty like rubix or iam90 could come up with something tho.

[MrRubix]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

Devonin:

Alright.

Ledwix:

I'm in a mad rush this morning so I'll make this quick.

I think you're confusing what it means to believe in something, similar to the common misconceptions that atheists "believe" in something just as arbitrary as a theist "believes" in God. There's a difference between a belief and lack of belief.

Your initial point was that we are all religious because we either hold a belief about a God/Gods and/or hold some belief about the origin and/or purpose of the universe. A belief is another way of effectively saying "in my opinion" or "what we think" about some positive statement, and it may or may not be true. This is different from a factual statement where knowledge and facts are concerned, defined as "justified true beliefs" (what's true for me is true for you). A lack of belief simply means "I won't claim this to be true and I am reserving judgment until I have evidence" or simply "I don't care enough to form an opinion and therefore have no belief one way or another." Atheism, for instance, is a sort of non-theism. It simply means "lack of theistic beliefs," meaning you do not subscribe to any one theistic belief. It does not mean you are saying there is no God with certainty. But we can claim that all evidence points to other explanations that suggest that we live in a Godless universe or a purposeless universe.

"Purpose" is typically defined in religion as a sort of "higher purpose." If you want to lob "humanized causal purpose" into that category as a way to say that everyone is religious because we all "do things," then good luck to you. You may as well call an apple religious because it falls from a tree.

You're trying to argue that any sort of "purpose" is somehow "religious" in nature. I am saying this is clearly false -- "purpose" is, in itself, a highly loaded term. We can define it as either a function of "higher purpose" (a certain end-goal or meaning invoked by a higher authority) or a "human purpose" (something we do in our everyday lives with some desire or goal). The former has no evidence and the latter does -- the latter one isn't a "belief" in the same manner. I don't hold any positive beliefs about the purpose of the universe. I hold true to the facts and evidence that tell me that I do what I do because of utility, which is a well-evidenced concept that ties into events just as arbitrary as the apple example I mentioned earlier (at their origin and core). This isn't a religious statement, but is instead a simple function of causality through evolution and necessary conditions. But again, if you want to define this "purpose" as "religious," then you must, logically, claim that an apple falling from a tree is religious or that a bear eating fish is "religious" or that a rock sitting still for centuries is "religious."

[Iam90]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

statistics can determine a lot of useless **** if you don't take the time to critically think about things from an inside view

i'm not saying it's possible to view as many things with an inside view than it is with a broad mathematical view but those statistics can be interpreted in a lot of useless ways

making religion the enemy is like making stupidity the enemy. it's detracting from where a real focus should be by focusing on meta-elements (and also issues that you aren't going to make a lot of progress with whatever specific problem domain they create by combating on this meta-level.) i haven't found a reason to try to deal with anything beyond a case-by-case basis. i have a feeling a smarty like rubix or iam90 could come up with something tho.

i actually mostly agree with u i just dissent to a certain degree. obviously the consequences of religion aren't truly inherent to religion, but underlying factors - ignorance, fear, etc - basic human problems - but i do think that religion, given its specific subject matter, is an incredible amplifier of these basic human problems. i don't know any other system that can take problems like fear and amplify them and justify them to such a degree with its dogma - because it necessarily invokes the highest justifications; eternity, omnipotence, etc.

that's why i'd like to see people more educated on the subject of religion... if we didn't have concepts like God to fall back on, maybe we wouldn't be so deft at justifying our basic flaws...

but probably we would. who knows

[MrRubix]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

The problem is that people do things in the name of religion. It augments and organizes unjustified thought into a potential weapon, and that's what I dislike about it. You don't see atheists organizing together and doing awful things in the name of atheism.

As religion is an emergence of the human psyche/ego, again, the only way to stomp out the negative effects is to promote education. We typically find that the more educated/intelligent one is, the less likely they are to be religious. I don't have a problem holding an arbitrary belief in a God as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. But what I DO have a problem with:

-Telling kids that they will burn in hell for their sins
-Promoting nonsense about not questioning authority under rule of God
-Teaching falsehoods and spreading misinformation about science based on religious scriptures (such as trying to argue that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, etc)
-Trying to push religious doctrine into schools, public policy, government, etc.
-Causing harm to others in the name of your religion or scripture

[Oni-Paranoia]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

The problem is that people do things in the name of religion. It augments and organizes unjustified thought into a potential weapon, and that's what I dislike about it. You don't see atheists organizing together and doing awful things in the name of atheism.

As religion is an emergence of the human psyche/ego, again, the only way to stomp out the negative effects is to promote education. We typically find that the more educated/intelligent one is, the less likely they are to be religious. I don't have a problem holding an arbitrary belief in a God as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. But what I DO have a problem with:

-Telling kids that they will burn in hell for their sins
-Promoting nonsense about not questioning authority under rule of God
-Teaching falsehoods and spreading misinformation about science based on religious scriptures (such as trying to argue that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, etc)
-Trying to push religious doctrine into schools, public policy, government, etc.
-Causing harm to others in the name of your religion or scripture

Completely agree.

[kommisar]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

but then morals and assimilation!!


the least america could do is remove religion from their system entirely. I'd be sad to see an excellent presidential candidate not get voted in because he doesn't believe in god.

[D!LL]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

I look through this thread and see a lot of people that just shouldn't be in here talking about anything.

More so than anything else.

War is hell. Don't pretend to understand it.

For those of you who have a semblance of what's going on, more power to ya', and for those of you who actually know what's going on... You're too far and in between.

Zat is all.

[fido123]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

War is hell. Don't pretend to understand it.

You don't have to know what it's like to be in a war, to try to understand and think about the politics behind it.

[stargroup100]

Re: Iraq war documents leak shows US is ****ing awful.

Goddamn I need to stop posting this late at night. I don't even remember typing that.

I'll have to find some time to read this thread at some point because I'm too sleepy right now. -__-