Re:Aggressive atheism
« Reply #1 on: 2009-12-08 00:09:46 »
Is this the reason you've decided that our first principles now need revising? We've had these discussions before, and it seems that Pat Condell has already visited these ideas as well, and I think he comes down pretty strongly against dogmatism and contrasts it with spirituality and that this is his beef with faith, not the other stuff. see the entire video "The Curse of Faith" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPG3-1gogXU
So perhaps you want to make "faith" the sin, because its the term preferred by the religiously dogmatic. While I understand your reflexive response, if they told me the sun was shining, I'd look outside first just to be sure, but as a larger memetic strategy, that's simply letting your enemy write your playbook for you. If you want to attack the sin, then attack the sin, but if you just want to attack the sinners favorite words then you can leave me out of such a pointless exercise. Even if you take Condell's deeper context, I think he understands that too, but as an individual rant his aim is a bit more please his audience rather than construct a larger anti-memetic strategy. If we have to revise our basic ethics with every new rant, then perhaps they aren't so basic or ethical as we thought.
Re:Aggressive atheism
« Reply #2 on: 2009-12-08 07:11:20 »
[Blunderov] I vote to retain "dogma". "Faith" can also mean confidence based on due consideration. TMM "dogma" is more strongly redolent of rule based inflexibility and is less ambiguous.
[Blunderov] I vote to retain "dogma". "Faith" can also mean confidence based on due consideration. TMM "dogma" is more strongly redolent of rule based inflexibility and is less ambiguous.
Yes, I like Pat Condell's recent rant, and generally agree with it, I just don't think it follows that we edit our ethics. Long ago I thought we agreed that faith - in the sense that Pat Condell is ranting against - is a kind of dogmatism. I also think "faith" is sloppy word compared to "dogmatism". Yes it often means dogmatism, but often enough it just refers to cultural products of religion, or even just a synonym for "trust" whether reasonable or not or even spirituality. I haven't heard "dogmatism" used so loosely, it covers those things about "faith" we deplore, and is considerably less ambiguous.
The foregoing analyses will enable us to define an act of Divine supernatural faith as "the act of the intellect assenting to a Divine truth owing to the movement of the will, which is itself moved by the grace of God" (St. Thomas, II-II, Q. iv, a. 2). And just as the light of faith is a gift supernaturally bestowed upon the understanding, so also this Divine grace moving the will is, as its name implies, an equally supernatural and an absolutely gratuitous gift. Neither gift is due to previous study neither of them can be acquired by human efforts, but "Ask and ye shall receive."<snip>
Re:Aggressive atheism
« Reply #5 on: 2009-12-09 02:35:36 »
Gentlemen, do you really imagine that meme-wizards sit down and scribble down articles of dogma in order to compel people to faithful observation? In which case do you also think it logical to harness horses behind carriages?
Faith must vested in order to accept something as true which is not sufficiently proven as to reasonably suppose it to be true, or in the face of evidence which suggests or even proves the thing accepted as true to be false before that thing which is accepted as being true can be said to be accepted dogmatically. Thus dogmatism follows faith as carriages follow horses, the reverse is simply not supported by any evidence whatsoever.
Take for example the two great examples of Tonypandy in Josephine Tey's wonderful paen to Richard III, "Daughter of Time", patterned after a detective novel. You can read pages 102-105 which covers them at Google Books. In both instances people preferred to believe (vested faith in the veracity) in unsupported variants of what happened, and these ultimately replaced what had happened in fact in the collective conscience to the extent that public memorials to the imaginary events were erected in the lifetimes of people who knew from personal experience that the stories were mere fables, but the "received truth" then became dogma. In every instance I can think of where the history of a dogmatic belief is known, including the many examples of laws drafted to prevent imaginary doings by others, the vesting of belief preceded the creation of what later became dogma. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? "It is written, so I believe it" always begs the question of "why was it written"? When the answer is, "because there is reasonable evidence supporting what is written" then accepting what is written as true is scarcely dogmatic.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Gentlemen, do you really imagine that meme-wizards sit down and scribble down articles of dogma in order to compel people to faithful observation? In which case do you also think it logical to harness horses behind carriages?
In a which came first issue, I'm guessing there are all kinds of chaotic ways in which articles of dogma become dogmatic, for some individuals the chicken came first, and for others the egg. I don't think "meme-wizards" necessarily invent the dogma to be dogmatic or even to test people's faith. Generally I think its probably team work, with later adherents adding dogmatic flavors to preserve memetic fidelity and to culturally gang up on the less faithful of their belief community to bring them back in line.
Its an interesting process, and I think it probably deserves some study in a memetic sense, however for defining and expressing ourselves ethically I vote for the least sloppy approach relying on cognitive/definitional precision rather than social pressure or reaction to maintain memetic fidelity. We can address other people's memetic processes more effectively once we know our own starting assumptions better, and for that I think dogma is a more precise statement of what we deplore rather than faith even if a lot of dogma flies under the banner of "faith".
I think the Church can easily deal with other's issues of faith once we are clearer about our own assumptions rather than simply tossing the offending word "faith" back at the deluded. Most of them already have cultural immune responses to what they will view as misuses of the word "faith", whereas they are less comfortable responding to "dogma".
Attacking a blunt problem with a clearer solution seems much more tidy and effective than trying to use the same blunt language which to my thinking just makes the problem messier and blunter. "Faith is a virtue" is simply a manifestation of dogmatic thinking, but by failing to name dogmatism as the basic problem with their faith (by whatever processes they may have acquired it) we would simply play into their already well-practiced immune responses. "Faith" is a word they own more than all of us combined, so no matter your negative emotional responses to it, why play on their home field when we have better options? Would you rather fight harder, or fight more effectively?
Re:Aggressive atheism
« Reply #7 on: 2009-12-09 18:16:43 »
[MoEnzyme] "Faith" is a word they own more than all of us combined, so no matter your negative emotional responses to it, why play on their home field when we have better options?
[Hermit] As I have repeatedly expressed, my negative response to "faith" and its brother "belief" are far from emotional and are in fact perfectly rational and based in exactly the fact that the delusional own these words and concept fields to such an extent that the non delusional cannot go near either word without swallowing such a packet of poisoned axioms as to make the delusional world view the inevitable winner in any discussion based on them. We also cannot cannot use the same words with a different meaning and expect our meaning to have any traction outside of the inner core.
[Hermit] Having said that, I responded to the vote as asked, and suggest you attempt the same. Dogmatism is indubitably one of the fruits of faith, requires belief to swallow, and cannot stand even for a moment without these irreducible inanities of irrationality. Why argue dogmatically that we should address one evil consequent to irrational faith (placing unearned confidence in someone or something) and belief (accepting as true that which you do not have sufficient knowledge to accept as true, or knowledge to the effect that it is not true) when you can place the entire blasted tree and all its fruits upon the fire? I for one am not here to have conversations with the insane or to convert the delusional. Remember, "feed the hungry"? In my view, arguments that the condemnation of what leads to so many ills, including dogmatism, makes us less able to proselytize, must surely fail on the grounds that we are not a missionary oriented religion anyway.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Aggressive atheism
« Reply #9 on: 2010-01-09 20:13:04 »
Whenever I hear of public prayer, after shaking off my embarrassment at the ignominy that my fellow humans are prepared to subject themselves to, I am irresistably reminded of Samuel Langhorn Clemen's "War Prayer".
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Tas - use the format (I am replacing the "o" in "you" with "0" to make the format explicit) [y0utube]reference[/y0utube] to display video on the page. For example, for the above, [y0utube]eCNTfzepmbU[/y0utube] would be appropriate. Like this:
If you care to edit your above post, I will delete this advice.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Tas - use the format (I am replacing the "o" in "you" with "0" to make the format explicit) [y0utube]reference[/y0utube] to display video on the page. For example, for the above, [y0utube]eCNTfzepmbU[/y0utube] would be appropriate. Like this:
If you care to edit your above post, I will delete this advice.
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