Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

Post by Ded10c »

Psychedelic Rhino wrote:And comparing atheism to satanism is a painfully dated mindset and only shows that those that make the parallel are still stuck in an old-school ignorance. Something that was probably instilled by their parents. About as rational as paralleling the belief in Zeus to that of an atheist.
This is not the case; as explained above, there are some branches of atheism that go under the moniker "stanism" (it's generally more anti-christianity than anything else).
Psychedelic Rhino wrote:Everyone is an atheist, it's just that some still cling to one last god of their particular choosing because of where and when they were born, and who pounding that particular dogma down their throat.
Saying that everybody would be atheist were it not for indoctrination is patently untrue. I know several individuals who have chosen their own religion - one who converted to Islam from Christianity, two who were raised Atheist who became Christian, a Muslim who became Jewish and a Christian who became a practising Wiccan.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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Psychedelic Rhino wrote:And comparing atheism to satanism is a painfully dated mindset and only shows that those that make the parallel are still stuck in an old-school ignorance. Something that was probably instilled by their parents. About as rational as paralleling the belief in Zeus to that of an atheist.

Everyone is an atheist, it's just that some still cling to one last god of their particular choosing because of where and when they were born, and who pounding that particular dogma down their throat.
Wow, did you actually read anything above or are you so blinded by your own beliefs that you just cherry-picked what you wanted to argue with.

I mean, I can agree with some of what you said, to repeat what I said in my second freakin' sentence I'm a Deist not a Christian but really now, really now, did you have to word your opinions like that? NO ONE here was up-in-arms over their faith, NO ONE here was trying to indoctrinate someone else, NO ONE here even really cared what other people's opinions were, this was just a fun discussion started by the topic of satanism in the modern world.

Please, I don't care if you're an Atheist or Scientoligist, or what have you but don't come barging in to a friendly discussion to tell everyone that they're wrong and stupid and need to stop believing in some silly millennia old book. If you have something of relevance to add to the topic then please do so, just remove your char-tinted-glasses first so you actually know what we're talking about.
AHadley wrote:This is not the case; as explained above, there are some branches of atheism that go under the moniker "stanism" (it's generally more anti-christianity than anything else).
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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yet spare the young virgins to be split up among the conquerors, is pure evil by any modern sensibility.
Given the importance and necessity of War as an evolutionary force, this is actually quite an enlightened approach. Modern man however, with its weapons of mass indiscriminate slaughter, can make no such claims.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

Post by Psychedelic Rhino »

There's certainly allot of sensitive people in this forum. The reactions say allot more than the original content, and thank goodness, they were painfully too long to read. Sorry if you took my comments as a personal affront to whatever you feel is the truth or that I might have misunderstood. I skimmed those ultra long posts past the first paragraph. I've found if the post is ultra long and contains a subjective subject, the individual generally is typing more to himself than to share any thoughts with others.

But since you want to compare/confuse atheism to ANY religion or belief. . . what do you label a Santa Claus, the Easter rabbit or a tooth fairy non-believer? Being an atheist is simply that, a non believer in an unfalsifiable entity, nothing more. Being a deist is every-so-slightly less pie-in-the-sky compared to a theist that wants a personal god, but you're still fantasizing out of reality. . . that is until you can falsify 'it' in some manner.

As to 'gods vengeance' and sanctioning the murder of every man, woman, child and infant and spare the young juicy virgins for the spoils as "enlightened", I suppose Christianity will work. At least it's something to rationalize Matthew 21:22. Mass indiscriminate slaughter has pretty much stopped in the last 30 years by most western nations with the advent of advanced weapon technology. But even if the west were to say. . . carpet bomb Iran with nukes. . how does that wrong make Numbers 31 right?
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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... you've lost me, Rhino, I don't know how you can decide that simply skimming a post is enough to formulate a complete opinion on it. Feel free to continue on your crusade of logic and reason, I don't bloody care, I'm clearly not worth your time to actually listen to so I will return the favour.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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Psychedelic Rhino wrote:There's certainly allot of sensitive people in this forum. The reactions say allot more than the original content, and thank goodness, they were painfully too long to read. Sorry if you took my comments as a personal affront to whatever you feel is the truth or that I might have misunderstood. I skimmed those ultra long posts past the first paragraph. I've found if the post is ultra long and contains a subjective subject, the individual generally is typing more to himself than to share any thoughts with others.
If you have not even bothered to read the argument in the first place then you are not in a position to make a counter-argument. This is similar to the telling-off I give GBD when he tries to lecture me about the BZ story having never read the briefings or debriefings. If you want to join a discussion you could at least make sure you know what it's about.


You can't deny that Atheism requires faith. You don't believe an entity exists, but there's no evidence to support your claim. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The middle-ground is called igtheism. An igtheist doesn't believe in the existence of a god - but they don't believe in the inexistence of one either. It's a bit like Schrödinger's cat - until you open the box, your god neither exists nor does not exist. Who can say.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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I look at it as guidance for warriors on the subject of child killing. I may be wrong, never having read the book concerned.
Atheism does not compare to any religion, it is simply the rejection of traditional narrative attempts to explain our existence.
It offers no alternative but the facts of science, it does not offer a story or any moral guidance. It does not replace that which it denies.
Deep philosophical analysis of the universe and the nature of our existence shows atheism to be profoundly at odds with our actual nature, which one might describe as Homo Sapien Narrativus. Wise man who tells stories. We create story's with our existence and truth with the stories we create. "Gods" are an imagined extension of our own cultural (pan species even) consciousness, to say that they do not exist is to profoundly fail to understand what you actually are.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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If you're going to keep the full-on subjectivism and completely ignore the boundary between reality and fantasy (which fair enough is perfectly valid from your philosophical viewpoint) then you're going to have issues with the direction this discussion is heading. Here we're using existence as a literal term, not an abstract way of saying something exists as a concept.

In that sense, Atheism is "God does not exist". You can't prove that. It requires faith. So no, Atheism is not a religion - but it is undeniably similar in that regard.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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Proving a negative is always difficult, particularly in the face of such vast (Universe sized) quantities of evidence to the contrary.
Usually the Atheist has a very narrow concept of what a "God" may be. It makes denial easy.
Atheism is little better than an admittance of ignorance, as indeed is the unquestioning belief in scripture.
You are a story written and read in the language of cells, DNA and RNA. It's not fantasy, it's just a question of perspective. What is reading you?
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

Post by Psychedelic Rhino »

All I'm saying is the 'conjecture' has to be falsifiable.

Dogmas and religions are not. That is why this planet has had tens of thousands of them and currently hundreds. The religious belief a person has, 98% of the time, is dependent on when and where they were born and their parents.

700 BC, living along the north shores of the mediterranean, I would have bet my life Zeus was the boss sky daddy.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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I'd argue that modern Atheism and even modern Feminism are in fact religions. Belief structures based on dogma.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

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Nielk1 wrote:and even modern Feminism
Eeh...

Hell of a can of worms there. I know what you're referring to but I'm not sure I'd consider it "feminism". Most feminists (including all the ones I know personally) are egalitarians but this, whatever it is, doesn't match their outlook in the slightest. It needs a new name.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

Post by bigbadbogie »

I usually try to avoid getting into this type of argument, since it will never, ever, ever end and it's nearly impossible to convince any party to change their views.

I haven't read everybody's posts, so these arguments may have already been made. I'm just going to state my own opinion.

I consider myself an Atheist. I don't believe in anything supernatural at all. I don't actually *believe* in anything. I accept facts with which I am presented. Facts which are commonly considered true and backed up with evidence. I also accept that facts are subject to change based on tangible evidence. For instance, if a supernatural entity presented itself to me via sensory input and it could be proven beyond any doubt that my senses were not impaired, I would be entirely willing to adjust which facts I deem true.

Currently, I consider religion to be a political hijacking of superstition. I think that superstition stems from something which evolved in advanced animals; fear of the unknown - a survival instinct. As the human brain evolved, it did something that no other animal brain had truly done; recognised the inevitability of death. The animal brain cannot cope with this at all. Therefore, it evolved a defence against it; the superstitious belief in life after death - cushioning fears of the unknown and death with the imagination. From this, religion evolved. The need to belong to a 'tribe' or faction which is a survival instinct dating from well before advanced animals became another integral foundation of religion.

Fear of death combined with fear of social rejection combined with a need to satiate human curiosity leads to religion.

Fear of social rejection and its consequences drives people to a particular religion such as Christianity or Islam. This explains why there are relatively few superstitious individuals who do not adhere to a particular religion (*relatively few* - although there are many in the West).

The idea of a 'creative force' which is responsible for the Universe satiates human curiosity.

As for me, I consider science to be what satiates my curiosity.
Inevitably, I do fear social rejection due to the fact that I do not adhere to a religion, although I feel at home among some fellow atheists and secular society in general.
I do fear death as I do not believe in an afterlife. I try to find comfort in the notion of eternal sleep - to never again be forced to exist or to suffer.

This is my opinion. I wait to be proven wrong with tangible evidence.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

Post by MrTwosheds »

At the core of this is communication, Most other Terran lifeforms appear have a fairly limited ability to communicate compared to us. Primarily it is this ability that makes us so different from them. Religions are a result of an expanding transfer of information within our species, they are a narrative explanation of our existence and a store of accumulated knowledge intended to be passed down the generations.
But they become ritualized and frozen by institutionalization. They go out of date and eventually appear ludicrous. But they are essentially a specific form of data transferal and preservation. Really this information should be constantly reviewed and updated as the sum of Human knowledge expands. Obviously this has not been happening at a rate equal to the accelerating accumulation of knowledge.
However they have and still do fill a specific need that practices such as Science do not, the shaping of a communities moral viewpoint. It is a very important function, one we really cannot afford to lose.
Terms such as "supernatural" and "Gods" are misleading. Anyone scientifically studying the life forms of this world cannot avoid coming to the conclusions that We are a 4 billion year old entity of massive diversity and potentially limitless capability and that we are not really the little self contained individuals we tend to think we are. We are a self replicating information structure of massive complexity and depth, our own bodies "know" more than we do! Put the old books back in the library, look in the mirror and deny god to just one tiny little part of it's own image... It's much more than an outdated concept, people believe because at some deep level they know there is a real truth behind those ancient words.
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Re: Off-topic (was Battlezone 3 RANT)

Post by Nielk1 »

AHadley wrote:
Nielk1 wrote:and even modern Feminism
Eeh...

Hell of a can of worms there. I know what you're referring to but I'm not sure I'd consider it "feminism". Most feminists (including all the ones I know personally) are egalitarians but this, whatever it is, doesn't match their outlook in the slightest. It needs a new name.
If they're egalitarian they're probably 2nd wave, not modern. IDK if the term can be salvaged. I love 2nd wave though, I watch Christina Hoff Sommers.

***

The reason Atheism is a religion, at least in my eyes, has more to do with a major distinction in different groups. Those that take the literal meaning of only believing that which can be proven, they're fine. Good ol' skeptics. The ones that go around tearing down the expressions of others because it disagrees with their sensibilities and spout talking points like dogma, they're in a cult.


I'm probably agnostic. In my case it's a simple case that I accept that I can have beliefs I can't prove. Should proof arise that is contrary, I will change my views. It's not atheism because I believe in something, it's just a more mutable agnosticism. Mutable belief is healthy, strict unquestioning adherence to dogma is not.


Religion itself is a control structure, basically just like society, it's just based specifically on intangible rewards and punishments over ones in the real world (law) like legal society is. It's not on it's face bad, it's just a social structure.

Plenty of people go through life thinking that when they die they are done. If people can cope with that, it's not a good explanation for the beliefs that build religion. The basis of such belief is probably something far more ingrained in our search for knowledge and understanding.
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