Starwind1988 said:
I really hope this is a troll and not a real person, because if it's really a person's thoughts then this person is a cynical asshole who lives in a fantasy version of the world.
Not a troll. Nice to meet you too.
What the hell is a fundamentalist atheist? Do you mean anti-theist's?
Pretty much, yeah.
Not all atheist's are anti-theist's.
No, they most certainly aren't. Never claimed otherwise.
More over, how are they a bigger problem than ANY religious fundamentalist group. These are the people who blow themselves up in crowded centers and snipe abortion doctors. The most annoying thing a "fundamentalist atheist" might do is flame you on youtube or twitter.
Or kill a few million people, firebomb churches and mosques, and slaughter priests, nuns, and lay believers in the name of atheistic-ideological purity. It happened in the USSR, it happened in Germany, it happened in China, it happened in Cambodia. The quantity of people dead from regimes like those - ones that mandated state atheism or had virulently anti-religious leaders - are, in terms of pure number, much higher than from any religious conflict. Saying that anti-religion is harmless strikes me as disingenuous.
Atheists only represent between 5 to 7 percent of the whole population. How can they be more of a problem then a group that represents billions?
The religious extremists you refer to number in only the thousands, out of those billions. Minority groups can nevertheless have disproportionate effects. Like, for example, brutal anti-religious dictators like Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.
Whether or not we're smarter I'll agree is debatable, but morally we are vastly superior to those even a few generations ago. Who can possibly argue that the near global ending of slavery does not mark a moral good of the current age. Virtually every large civilization practiced slavery. This was common for thousands of years, and now it's an increasing rarity. It's openly illegal in all first world societies. This say's alot about the morality of today that is head and shoulders above those times. The increasing equality of the sexes and equality among ethnicity is also both relatively new and a moral step forward.
You raise a good point: indeed, many abhorrent things have been rightfully banned in our modern society. But there is a difference between something being regarded legally and being altered morally. We can talk about how
de jure slavery has been eradicated from the world, but has slavery gone away? No, it hasn't, if the frankly huge numbers of trafficked people and
de facto unpaid workers there are in world. Furthermore, have we reduced any of the actual causes of slavery that exist within people? Meaning, are we any less greedy, selfish, bloodthirsty, or willing to deny the humanity of others for the sake of profit than we were ten years ago, or ten thousand years ago? No, no we are not.
We might have more material comforts and know more trivial facts than our ancestors did, but we're still the same people. Same people, fighting the same wars, abusing the same others, making the same mistakes, and all for the same reasons. Times change, people don't, not for better or for worse.
Moral relativism is a descriptive idea with numerous possible meanings to different kinds of people. What are talking about with it being a plague exactly?
Moral relativism as in "rejection of any and all objective moral principles." I think that it is abhorrent because it erodes at our willingness to believe in and act to defend important sensibilities. You mentioned slavery, sexism, and racism as things you held to be morally wrong, or at the very least were things that deserved to be destroyed. I agree, but a stance of moral relativism would require one to hold such concepts as not "wrong" in any universal way, but merely "disliked" by different people and "approved of" by others. There is no right or wrong, just preference and opinion, and widespread belief in that saps people of their will to stand up for what is good. It is the kind of attitude that justifies horrid behaviors by saying that there is nothing inherently wrong with things like hatred or genocide - there are simply results, and different methods of achieving those results. It is a poisonous, nihilistic view that many people claim to have but few grasp the actual implications of. Morally indefensible and logically inconsistent.
I don't know anybody who thinks that animal lives outweigh human ones. And my mother is a card carrying member of PETA. Again, I'm not sure where you get this from, but my first instinct says Fox News.
I don't watch Fox News. And I have met people that believe that animal life is either equivalent or superior to that of human beings. It ties in with that unpleasant phenomenon of people claiming they would rather save their drowning dog than a drowning stranger. You would find few people to actively campaign for that point of view, but a surprising number would save the dog.
"Mankinds destiny is to rule this planet" Don' we already?
It would certainly seem so.
I know the ignorant desert god you probably worship promised you dominion over the world, but that's not the real world...All this talk of destiny does is make me think that I'm glad that people like you are vastly becoming irrelevant to regular society
I understand that we disagree, but there's really no need to be rude.
As people simply choose to live good lives and strive to look out for each other, the idea of a "grand destiny" fades into obscurity.
You speak as though a desire to lead a good life and a dedication to care for others are mutually exclusive to the concept of destiny. On the contrary, I find that one usually leads to the other.
Nothing in our human experience supports this idea and nothing about it is either moral or right.
The "human experience" refers, I'm assuming, to the collective beliefs of people and the circumstances they commonly experience in their lives. Considering that many of the actual humans living those lives believe in destiny in some form, I would certainly say it has support there.
If what you meant was more along the lines of "it cannot be proven through physical means that people have a destiny," then you are certainly right. It cannot be proven in any laboratory that mankind is already destined to rule the Earth and expand out into the universe, but I could easily argue by looking at history and human nature that it is nevertheless bound to happen. The history of the human race is one of constantly pursuing new lands and new experiences, with unceasing expansion into every corner of the planet, dominating every other form of life. Mankind is like a vapor: we naturally fill whatever container we are placed in, and with the recent jumps forward in technology we have been able to achieve that on a much larger scale. Look up in space, and what you see is a great emptiness. The second that man landed on the moon, the boundaries of our world expanded outward from Earth and into that void, and like Earth it is only natural that we expand outward into it without end.
I kind of agree with this, except the part where it's inevitable. It's not.
Allow me to clarify: what I meant was less "it is a 100% guarantee that it will happen" and more "if humanity is to survive in the long-term, then this
must inevitably happen." Seeing that this is an "unpopular opinions" thread, I hope you'll forgive for stating that belief in what was likely to be the most controversial way. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
I don't want to hear about "reason" from someone who thinks they have a great "destiny" ahead of them. I also don't want to hear about it from a person who thinks some angry bloggers are the equivalent to murderers and racist demagogues.
I don't believe I ever claimed that bloggers and murderers were moral equals. If I gave off that impression, then it was not my intent.
Sexual liberation is another good. I know that your angry, jealous desert god thinks sex is icky and that women are icky too...
I get the impression from your references to gods that there is an underlying hostility towards more than just my own person in this debate. I'm not certain what "desert god" you think I believe in, but I can assure you that I believe neither of those things are "icky." Neither do any of the major Abrahamic religions, if that's what you're referring to.
...but when we repress our sexual natures is when we see true depravity arise. One of the reasons America is still so messed up about sex is because we were basically founded by puritans who had a whole host of sexual dysfunctions.
You are mistaking "self-control" with "repression." Having a genuine, mature handle on one's base urges is not denying that they exist, but acknowledging them and then moving past them, because they are simply unimportant and, for the most part, a distraction. The kind of sexual liberation we see today, however, doesn't do that: it proclaims and glorifies irrational pursuit of pleasure, and wallows in those misguided feelings, refusing to turn its attention to things of actual importance or recognize the potential harm it might cause.
Being obsessively fixated on sex is not a sign of maturity - precisely the opposite. A genuine, mature relationship between people is based on their partners mind and personality, not their body or how they look, but that is all that sexuality is bound to. Caring so much about sex causes people to lose sight of the actual qualities of the people they interact with, instead seeing them as mere bodies which they can extract some salacious pleasure from. It turns people into objects, which is first step towards any evil. Give me a society that cares about modesty and maturity, promoting real care and love, over some "enlightened" Las Vegas hole any day.
Again, someone who believes in destiny shouldn't be telling us what qualifies as science.
I never claimed destiny was a science. Psychological therapy, however, does claim to be a science, something that can be proven and demonstrated with objective, repeatable facts. If it cannot do this, it is by definition a pseudoscience. I hold that that particular field is based more on the subjective and the impossible to falsify than on evidence. Psychological therapy could call itself a faith without issue, but being a science requires physical evidence that it cannot provide.
While I can agree with the whole telling your kids their "special" thing, what's that got to do with conformity?
Being constantly told that you are "special" causes people to think of themselves as beyond reproach: that no rule or norm applies to them because they are so perfectly unique in their own extra-special way. Such an attitude causes people to act out in outrageous ways in order to prove this delusion to themselves and others. They have no regard for others, or for the common good. Thus, the conformity of the society is broken down by their childish antics, all without good reason.
The more I read this over the more I think your ideal world would likely be something straight out of Orwell.
I'm curious as to what makes you think this.
While I agree that third parties are kind of a waste of time, I don't see where you get the whole infantile thing. So these people have different ideas about government. At least they seem to give real thought to their own positions, which is more than can be said for you. There's nothing wrong with wanting to start a third party and the fact that the system is kinda rigged against them at this point doesn't mean they won't be relevant in the future.
When I look at the US political system at the moment, I see a state of extreme political polarization: both parties have been pushed to the margins by unrealistic ideologues that care more about spiting the other side than actually putting their beliefs into practice, and thus we experience deadlock and unrest due to their unwillingness to work together. What this country needs is reconciliation, moderation, and unity under the core principles that
all people in our nation share - namely the idea of America itself.
What it definitely does not need are fringe lunatics breaking down that unity further by campaigning for ludicrous, populist stances that will be as disastrous in practice as they are nonsensical in principle. Having a dozen independent parties jockying for power will do nothing but divide our country further, not help bring it together, and every Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders only makes it that much harder for a broad political union to be achieved, seeing that they can only drive the misguided towards their pointless ventures.
Hence, "infantile."
This became much longer than I thought it would. Sorry to all the people scrolling past this.
Combustion Kevin said:
Cynicism and pessimism are not cleverness, however trendy that may be, and assuming the worst does not make you a realist, that is the exact definition of a pessimist.
Agreed.
