it's a pretty good summary of the new atheists that you think that what people believe is in a cracker is cause for serious worry
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The idea that baseless belief is problematic has been around for a while. I personally have not found a convincing argument to the contrary. An extreme example would be WK Clifford: “it is wrong, always, everywhere and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
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thank you for explaining that true is better than false
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btw neurodeterminism is just as unfalsifiable as the existence of God :)
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I'm not making a claim about falsifiability. This is irrelevant. I am making a claim about basis for belief (or, rather, describing a common claim that has been around for a while)
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That speaks to superstitions not Religion itself. Try to understand that religion's about shared sacred values and the stories (often full of these silly superstitions) are meant to convey these values to as many people as possible? Denouncing religion does nothing to improve it.
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denouncing religion opens the possibility of those same values (or better ones... I can name a couple abrahamic "values" that are disturbingly unproductive or just plain harmful) being shared without the distraction of unnecessary superstitions that divide & confuse. how could
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that be anything other than good? to insist that human beings need to believe in unsupported myths in order to learn valuable things, is to infantilize humanity and sorely underestimate our potential.
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I am all for highlighting and discussing ridiculous and/or pernicious qualities of the teachings of specific sects. It's the condemning religion as a whole that I have a problem with. We need to improve the way religion is practiced, not naively condemn religion itself.
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if you take the myths, unfounded beliefs, and outdated "values" (homosexuality being evil, women being inferior in any way, etc) out of religion, literally all you have left is values that can apply to any human being without requiring them to believe in anything superstitious.
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Exactly. "Giving you bad reasons to be good when good reasons exist" is how I believe Sam says it.
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And you think religion necessarily must, by nature, involve these "bad reasons" ? (That's superstition not Religion) It's better in my view to see religion as a human universal that is due criticism, rather than wholesale condemnation.
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Depends. Organised, formal religions as we know them have no choice, their own rhetoric binds them to those reasons. When atheists and humanists criticize the core tenets of religions, they mean the core tenets of "holy" writ. Many of which are still lauded as Truth.
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Apparently symbolism is a hard concept to grasp for Sam.
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It's not symbolic, or are you arguing with every catholic priest and the pope? It's explicitly stated in the canon that it's not symbolic.
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people will believe insane stuff without religion and defend those convictions vigorously. humans are the problem
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this is akin to saying "people will get sick even if they wash their hands. what's the point of preventative actions when the existence of microbes is ultimately the problem." religion is one engine that perpetuates harmful/irrational thinking. sam and likeminded people do not
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insist that it's the ONLY such engine and in fact address many other ways that people tend to delude themselves outside of religious context. this doesn't make religion any less harmful for what it does or any less worthy of criticism.
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I'm not sure when you first started listening to sam but in 2010 on YouTube all he did was bash religion. he created a generation of fedora neckbeards that only now are getting fixed with Steven Pinker and John Haidt
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The ideology of far left individuals carries with it many dogmatic problems. Purity testing, demanding belief without evidence and ostracizing "heretics" who fall out of group think. Dogma is the foundational issue. Religion had monopoly on that for a long time. I think one 1/2
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2/2 issue is that moderate Christians don't see/don't call out the more radical believers. Sam calls out religion generally because the moderates are often helpless to recognize how scary the evangelicals are. Non-religious example is the media with Antifa. Failure of moderates.
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I honestly think the moderates are getting it from both ends; fundamentalists and atheists. There is a lot of hate towards people who are just trying to find some peace. Live and let live.
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I can definitely see that happening, although my caveat would be that I don't think Sam in particular wants anyone to hate theists. Sure, he'd like fewer believers, but his angle is just criticism. It's the people that want those kinds of changes legislated that scare me.
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