Paradisedreams2

Virgio,


Youngster: Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to write a post whose point seemed to be to insult me. I realize the complete lack of self-gratification you must get out of insulting people you don't know and responding to serious questions with pelvic-thrust mental masturbation must be very difficult on you, and yet you take the time to contribute anyways

ROFL!!!!!!!! Virgio! I never laughed so hard in my life till now I literally could not see the screen from the tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. I have been potty trained for 34 years and I lost control of my blatter for the first time since.

I'm sorry, I just had to say something and tell you as well I really enjoy listening to you both, I wish more conversations like the one your both having would pop up more frequently. Its refreshing.

Forgive the interuption I just listen from now on

Kim

Arrowman

virgio, I will be offline for a few days so be patient. Meantime, on the first point.

So you disagree with the proposition that atheism is the default position for human children. You therefore would propose one of the following:
1. All children are born with a belief in gods, and/or a specific belief in the Judeo-Christian God, or
2. Some children are born with a belief in gods (etc) and others are not.

Please tell us which of these is your position, and provide the supporting argument. If the answer is (2), please tell us how you tell the difference. If am guilty of false dichotomy (trichotomy?) here, please state your position.

Strelnieks

Ridicule has its place in discussion of religion and that is when discourse fails. As Ethan Allen said, when people attack reason using reason, they are being silly. If they attack reason without using reason, they don't deserve a serious argument. By making truth-claims based on "faith" (without evidence or argument that the other can access), they are saying, "This is not a discussion on fair terms. I am preaching". Then, I think, it is sometimes fair game to use humor and ridicule instead of pandering to them and arguing around and around in circles forever. Depends on the situation.

Strel

Bloop

This may be a tangent to the discussion at hand. I have had discussions with people that would classify as "fundamentalist christians" by american standards as well as swedish.

That discussion was about the public school system in Sweden and how it, supposedly, indoctrinated people into secular humanism or some similar term.

To me there is a huge differance in teaching secular humanism as the only system to go and what actually happens in our schools.

Christianity get no special treatment and the Bible is discussed on the same level as the Quran , Bhagadvadgita or the Humanist Manifesto (which was never mentioned in religion classes BTW,the UN declaration of Human Rights was however)

What fundamentalists seems to imply is because we ditched christianity some fifty years back we now have secular humanism as an all overruling system. The truth is that public schools are by law forbidden to promote any system over another, including secular humanism.

If this is indoctrination then anything is which would render the term more or less useless.

/Bloop

The Tiger and the Elephant

Virgio

To the first response, I disagree that their would be a conditioned response. If a person doesn't see evidence in something, this means that he first was questioning an idea, which negates indocrination because he is learning himself about the conditions and different ideas and examining them. He is thinking for himself, and not indoctrinated.

And I believe that teaching people only empirical evidence, can also be used for indoctrinating purposes. Usually by deciding which facts you tell and which facts you conceal or hide.

Ales

I would explain to my hypothetical child why I disbelieve in religions any time she asks me anything about it and let the decision up to her. Actually I would see it as a great faraminous benefit to her that she wasn't born in an obscurantist family. (If there is a succesful indoctrination by a parent who indoctrinates against the revealed religions, the offspring would hold the correct opinion only accidentally. What seems to me to be dishonest is the religious indoctrination before puberty and the extortion afterwards.)

Koyaanisqatsi

If I may?

You may, of course, "disagree" to your heart's content, that won't change the basic fact that Atheism--by direct definition alone--is the absence of belief in a god or gods.

It is the absence of belief. A=without; theism=belief in a god or gods. Atheism=Without belief in a god or gods.

The only reason you are attempting to object to it is precisely because it is the "default" position and you know it and subconsciously agree with it, which goes directly against your own cult indoctrination. To let it stand as a shining beacon of truth is to have your own darkness illuminated, which is why you (and just about every other cult member around here) try again and again and again to "dance around" the fact that atheism means "without belief in a god or gods."

Disagree all you want, but it won't change a goddamned thing and will only demonstrate your own indoctrination, since there is only one reason to fly so brazenly in the face of such an overtly direct definition.

A Theism. Without Theism. Got it? No theism. No theism zone.

Not a single one of us would "object to being compared to a chair in this manner" since it's spot on. A chair has no indoctrinated beliefs the way you apparently do and in this manner it is a perfect analogy for the "default" reality of atheism.

Talk about forced nonsense. "If you tell your children that they must" do anything at all, one can easily argue totalitarianism, so, congratulations, your deliberate and disingenuous wording (what Malaclypse called your "have you stopped beating your wife" approach) is a fait accompli and serves nothing.

Regardless, even if you told your children that they must ask for proof before excepting a claim, this is still not indoctrination in the negative manner we are all talking implicitly about here; it would simply be a beneficial caveat for your son or daughter knowing what we all know about the snake-oil salesmen that pollute our world.

In fact, to imply this is in any way, shape, or form a negative trait to teach your children--i.e., teaching your children to accept any claim without requiring some sort of standard for evaluation--is, IMO, reprehensible, so I'd ask you to justify doing such a thing. How would it benefit your children to teach them that they don't necessarily need any evidence to evaluate someone else's truth claim?

And there's your own strawman. You built it and now you're pointing to it.

Now do you see why we should teach our children to be critical thinkers, to place them on guard against people like you who deliberately set these fallacies up? You're the one who placed this qualifier there in order to create an argument that doesn't exist; to discard the original intent of your OP so that you could pretend that atheists are just as dictatorial as cult indoctrinators.

Doesn't it ever register to any of you that the majority of your posts here ("your" in the general sense, of course) are pathetic and transparent attempts to make it seem as if the theist and the atheist are on equal footing? And always at the expense of the theist position!

This post, especially, attempts to imply that we atheists indoctrinate just like you theists and the funny thing about it is not that we don't, but that you don't realize what an indirect affirmation this is of your own cult's complicity!

Just astounding. Freud is spinning so fast in his grave, he's achieving escape velocity.

No, you are not. You're forcing a totalitarian position onto the atheist that does not exist by using the word "must" so that you can imply that atheists are just as guilty of indoctrination as theists are, not realizing, as I stated above, that all you're actually doing is sealing the coffin on theism.

Judging from your unsupportable redefinition of atheism, I doubt it.

The term "valid" is defined on its own and "critical thinking" is not a perceptual state; it is a process based on the immutable laws of logic that is applied to such things as truth claims like the christian cult theology.

Again, you are attempting to force a straw man where one does not exist and offering no alternative in the wake.

No, it is not and you know that or should. If you don't, then you are once again demonstrating perfectly why critical thinking is a necessary tool to teach any child.

Apply context to the word "accepting" and you'll see what I'm talking about. No one here is arguing for totalitarianism, but you, hence your straw man. Accepting someone's beliefs as your own without a valid reason (i.e., compelling evidence in support of the belief) is the context of that sentence, not accepting that other people have other beliefs, i.e., tolerance.

You're using childish semantics tactics to force atheists into a corner of intolerance that the majority of us do not reside in.

I do, however, but that's beside the point. I have no tolerance for indoctrinating innocent children into fear-based cults and if any of my hypothetical children ever were to be indoctrinated into a cult, I'd do everything possible to deprogram them.

You see, I have no problems whatsoever using your own tools to pry someone from the cult mentality. Since your cults show no signs of remorse or moral confliction at indoctrinating people into a lie, why should I feel any remorse or moral conflict in deprogramming people from that lie?

This is precisely why I would teach my children to require compelling evidence before just accepting someone's truth claims and, IMO, precisely why you are trying to argue against it; so that your cult mentality remains intact and your sub-conscious remains in conflict, the way it is supposed to be for indoctrination to maintain its control over you.

Reason is the first casualty of religion as evidenced here by your direct assault on it, betraying your own indoctrination. No critical thinker would even attempt to muddy the waters on what "valid" means in the manner you are here attempting and that speaks volumes against your position, IMO.

Again, you're either confused over the word "acceptance" (i.e., tolerance) or deliberately muddying these waters.

As your own example proves, one can find something "aesthetically valid" all one wishes, theist or atheist, but when we're talking about the acceptance of a truth claim without compelling evidence, which is what we're really discussing here, then a different standard is to be applied.

Stop equivocating disparate meanings in order to stuff your straw man.

Again, you're the one dancing around the terms. The validity of a truth claim is a process of logic. Aesthetics has nothing to do with that process, other than to be a pointless "meta" observation of the process.

When someone says, "The validity of the claim has not been established," for you (or anyone else) to counter with, "It has been through aesthetics" is to make a pointless observation, more in keeping with Wildean witticism than anything cogent or salient.

It is merely an argument for subjective, personal feelings toward something; not toward an objective verification of the truth claim; i.e., did Jesus rise from the dead and therefore provide evidence of deity or not? To answer that question with, "Well, really, what difference does it make, it's just such a pretty idea, isn't it and therefore true enough for me," is a perfectly valid reason for an individual to believe anything they damn well please (not my child, hopefully), but it is not a valid reason to preach and indoctrinate others into the same belief system through obfuscation of this base reason.

Cults don't tell children that there is no compelling evidence for Jesus' resurrection or that the resurrection is a beautiful myth that didn't really happen, but that doesn't matter! If they did, then there would be no problem.

What cults like the christian cult do is teach/indoctrinate Jesus' resurrection as a fact of history and literal proof that he is "God." There is no mention of "aesthetics" or anything remotely esoteric like you're arguing for until ten or fifteen years later (in the reformed cults), after people have already been thoroughly inculcated into the belief and can say ridiculous things like, "Well, we know that Genesis and Revelations are fantasies, but nothing else is."

In short, there is no valid reason to teach my children anything other than critical thinking and certainly no valid reason to teach them to simply accept someone's truth claim based on how pretty they think it is.

That is not just laughable, it's detrimental and can result in suicide missions into the sides of building. Critical thinking cannot, IMO.

Then you consider the acceptance of fiction as non-fiction--that Jesus is "God;" a fictional character from ancient mythology--to be the result of critical thinking (setting aside your aesthetics sidetrack, of course)?

If you do, then (setting aside your aesthetics sidetrack, of course), could you kindly enlighten us as to what part of fundamentalism is a result of critical thinking? There is no compelling evidence to establish Jesus is "God," but fundamentalists will state that Jesus is "God" and that such beings factually exist without question.

Where is the critical thinking there?

More evidence of the pot calling the kettle black.

Stuff that straw man! STUFF IT!

That's like saying, "It is indoctrination when you tell your children that Santa Clause doesn't exist."

Stop hiding behind semantics to stuff your straw man. It's remarkably tiresome to have to keep revealing what you're obviously trying to obfuscate.

There's a perfect example supporting my previous contention. What the majority of "us" argue is that the alleged beneficial qualities are far outweighed by the detrimental qualities and/or that the beneficial qualities are the result of brainwashing, which, ultimately it can and is argued, would be a detrimental process.

Read the book Brave New World and get back to us. The people in that book (and in my high school class way back when) all thought that happiness through inculcation and indoctrination was a beneficial quality until the Savage comes along and demonstrates the ultimate hell they are all in. There are comparative levels to what we're arguing about, of course, but the ultimate level is usually the most prevalent; do the ultimate "goods" of cult indoctrination outweigh the ultimate "bads" of cult indoctrination? Based on the countless examples argued ad nauseum on this very site, the answer to the question for most of us is "no" based upon the due process of the argumentation we engage in and not as an a priori assumption.

We do not dismiss theist truth claims out of hand, no matter how much you (or anyone else) desperately wishes that were the case. Critical thinking is the due process applied to truth claims that results in conclusions; aka, valid reasoning. Get used to it.

If you believe that Santa Clause factually exists and punishes you for being "bad," then what does that say about your reasoning processes? If you believe that leprechauns magically blinked the universe into existence, what can we conclude about your cognitive abilities?

The "concept" of critical thought? What exactly would that be? The "notion of applying the evidentiary procedures and inductive reasoning of logic to a truth claim" perhaps?

Do you consider teaching someone a lie to be immoral? Set aside whether or not you accept the fact that the Jesus myths are lies, do you consider teaching someone a lie to be immoral?

Santa Clause, for example, does not factually exist or factually punish "bad" children. Do you consider it immoral to teach your children that Santa does factually exist and factually punishes "bad" children?

Atheists don't normally use words like "good" for precisely that reason. We use words like "correct." "This way of thinking is 'correct.'" Put that one on your straw man and see if it covers his privates.

This is just sickening. Cult members have absolutely no compunction whatsoever to "pass on that judgment" to their children, but we can't?

"Whatever you do, don't give your children the ability to discern our cult lies! That's immoral!"

That's because it isn't applicable to atheists.

Really? What do you call a lifetime's inculcation into believing something is true that cannot be demonstrated to be true, through indoctrination of "faith" (a baseless assumption) as the only requirement for establishing something to be true?

What do you call the straw man you are attempting with "aesthetics" as a valid reason to accept a belief as fact if not "brainwashing?"

No, it is not. When we listen to that "someone" talk, we aren't merely accepting that what they say is a priori the truth the way most cult members (especially fundamentalists) do and when we "fervently" try to "understand exactly what was said," we aren't doing so within the context of the a priori acceptance of the truth claim.

If I'm a student in a class on string theory, for an apt example, I don't just sit there and go, "I wholeheartedly accept a priori that the string theory is absolute fact" and then fervently try to reconcile all of the contradictory information my professor has inadvertently given me within his lecture that would clearly negate such a truth claim.

If I receive such contradictory evidence, then I will stand up in class (something no one ever does in church, BTW) and state, "Um, Professor, the evidence you gave us in support of the string theory does not support string theory. What's the deal?"

Atheists don't have temples and churches and synagogues and don't preach atheism throughout a child's entire lifetime through cognitive dissonance, inculcation and abject terror the way most cults do. Atheists do not form powerful political coalitions (though we should) in order to sway political and public opinion. Atheists do not get tax breaks or hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars doled out to them by the President.

Comparatively speaking, atheists have almost no voice in this country and ours is the only voice of reason.

Repeat that word, "Reason." Reason. The antithesis of Faith.

More equivocation and semantics games. What a pointless waste of a mind.

None of those people have different core beliefs than you do since none of those people have specific beliefs to begin with! They all believe Jesus is God and that Jesus died for our sins and that Jesus resurrected from the dead to give us eternal life, etc., etc.

You believe all of that too, so what "different faiths and viewpoints" are you talking about? That some of them are more indoctrinated into the lies than you are, like Genesis proving the world/universe is only 6000 years old? You both believe that God magically blinked the universe into being, what possible difference does it ultimately make to any of you when that happened? Because you think it gives your beliefs some sort of comparative validity to the Big Bang theory, or something? *shrugs*

Already have by applying critical thinking to your declarations. You should try it some time. It only hurts once.

Again with the equivocation. No one gives a shit whether or not people "think" differently; it's when those people force their beliefs and lack of reasoning on our children and communities that it becomes an issue; that and when cult members come in here and post obvious invective in order to incite commentary the way you did.

We ask only that people use their intelligence and not just spout inculcated platitudes, so if you are going to post here, expect every single thing you post to be carefully deconstructed just as we would have our posts carefully deconstructed in turn.

Unfortunately, that rarely happens here, but then what can be expected from people who think that Jesus created the Golden Rule?

Not, however, when they are asked to apply that intelligence to their own beliefs, which is why it is evidence of indoctrination and not critical thinking. Einstein believed in a god and refused to accept the conclusions his own theories pointed to with quantum uncertainties, but that doesn't mean the quantum uncertainties didn't exist or that his refusal was anything more than obstinate denial; a conflict borne out of his beliefs as opposed to his intelligence.

If it happened to Einstein, why would you think you (or others) would be immune?

By all means, though I know this wasn't directed at me.

No, he is not, but nice evasion.

"Heat?" No heat. Just a call for explanation.

Are you referring to the posts of people telling their deprogramming experiences?



And, BTW, who came up with the idea of a "scape goat?"

He would if he were posting on an Alcoholics Anonymous website! Take a look up the name of this site every once in a while and apply your aesthetical reasoning.

Perhaps that's the problem. You have somehow (I contend through the detrimental side effects of cult indoctrination) convinced yourself that "aesthetical reasoning" is on par or (as you imply) superior to the due process of logic and evidentiary requirements to evaluate truth claims, yet offered nothing cogent or salient in support of such a claim, not to mention the complete inability of such a standard effectively evaluating any truth claim.

Should our astronauts base their calculations on an Earth-centric solar system, with all of the orbits of the other planets being perfectly circular, because that's the more aesthetically pleasing "truth?"

Critical thinking and the caveat of requiring compelling evidence to support anyone's truth claims prior to the acceptance of those claims as truth (note the all important qualifier you keep dropping on the floor as you stuff you straw man) is not just a perfectly reasonable tool to give our children, it is arguably a vastly superior application of due process than the comparatively, historically detrimental "tool" that cults use, which is to say, "Believe or you'll burn in hell," and the subsequent reformed variations on this theme.

One process (critical thinking) helps to insure that our children will not become suicide pilots; the other leaves that possibility wide open and bleeding on the table.

(edited for formatting - Koy)

[ March 05, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Arrowman

Koy, you certainly may. Thanks for saving me the trouble!

virgio:

I am in substantial agreement with Koy's post and I will not duplicate it. Your response to him, is a response to me.

(But I do want to hear your response to my last post - which position do you hold in relation to children being born as atheists?)

This discussion, however, will go nowhere unless you demonstrate a basic understanding of the concept of atheism and in particular that it must be the default position for humans. That doesn't have to mean it's implicitly "better" than theism - after all, humans are born without the ability to read and write, either, and acquisition of those skills is generally considered to be a good thing - so you're not conceding much by acknowledging it.

Also, it would help if you showed a better understanding of [the nature, purpose and benefits of] critical thinking.

If you don't get those two things, it's hardly surprising that you think raising children without indoctrinating them in a religious belief is itself some sort of indoctrination. And there's not much point in taking the discussion further - it'd be like trying to discuss probability with someone who thinks you can beat the roulette wheel with the right system.