3 ms·

Yea, I meant we should have made progress, maturing past it, but people are the same as always.

inflatableDodo 8y ago
As far as progress goes, I kinda agree with John Gray - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-interview-atheism https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-intervie...
- acqq 8y ago
  He has a lot of valid points ("we outsourced the slavery and pollution") but he somehow likes religions more than atheism, which is definitely inconsistent: he recognizes the "false beliefs" in the everyday Western world (keeping the eyes closed about the mentioned "outsourcing"), but then avoids to treat the same the religions which obviously can't all be true. Only atheism is consistent with the existence of all other religions (simply claiming that it's the humans who invented various mutually conflicting stories about one or more "deities"). He also claims that the atheism "is a religion" which is by definition false: "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods." Moreover, the changes brought by enlightenment were actually revolutionary and immense. But what is his correct observation is that no rights are fixed and that the most of the humans who have them now can as well lose them fast.
  - wallace_f 8y ago
    Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. And some large part of it is in fact junk and even sometimes dangerous. But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Human beings are really bad at reason. Just in my opinion. Atheism is an affirmative answer to a question about your faith in the unknown. So I agree with him, again just personally.
    - acqq 8y ago
      > Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. If you take a honest look in what religions are "really about" you'd come to: hell. Deities providing a place to torture human souls. Even Buddhism (as a developed religion, not as an idea on which it was established) has its hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) The proof that all of these stories are actually produced by humans and even have one origin is that the concept of hell effectively didn't exist around 3000 years ago but then appeared in all the cultures which mutually exchanged goods through the trade routes around 2500 years ago. The timing also doesn't fit with any of the religions claiming they have "the truth": the concept of hell was surely unknown to early Judaism but was provably spread across the cultures centuries before the Christianity appeared. > But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Like, we can imagine hell really good, and obviously successfully spread the invented stories about it. Heaven on another side is either non-existence, or profoundly uninteresting or obviously produced for a mind of sex-obsessed hormone pushed teenagers who will therefore be motivated to die for their "religion" (virgins always ready for sex). > Human beings are really bad at reason. Should we then prevent them from trying to reason about their religions? Or shouldn't we support them exactly to do so? The problem is, raising people to "not do something" because they will be "punished" in the afterlife provably doesn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now -- the human civilization constantly being near to complete annihilation. By pure nature of how probability works, there will be sooner or later some false alarm that will indeed trigger the actual detonation of the nuclear weapons. The only sane action by humanity would be to reduce their amount to the scale which makes humanity's annihilation impossible. We are very far from that at the moment. Because it's so profitable making these weapons. Yes, human beings are really bad at reason. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-109020/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-k... "military and intelligence leaders responded by unveiling their proposal for a pre-emptive thermonuclear attack on the Soviet Union, to be launched sometime in late 1963. JFK stormed away from the meeting in disgust, remarking scathingly to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “And we call ourselves the human race.”"
    - louisswiss 8y ago
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Thanks for the link. An on-point article in the context of my comment. I liked this quote, even if I'm not 100% in agreement: >On the whole, they are older and wiser myths than secular myths like progress
  - inflatableDodo 8y ago
    To be honest, that article is a bit of a fluff piece, his essay in the New Statesman on the subject puts his point across better. - https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940 https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940

As far as progress goes, I kinda agree with John Gray - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-interview-atheism https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-intervie...

acqq 8y ago
He has a lot of valid points ("we outsourced the slavery and pollution") but he somehow likes religions more than atheism, which is definitely inconsistent: he recognizes the "false beliefs" in the everyday Western world (keeping the eyes closed about the mentioned "outsourcing"), but then avoids to treat the same the religions which obviously can't all be true. Only atheism is consistent with the existence of all other religions (simply claiming that it's the humans who invented various mutually conflicting stories about one or more "deities"). He also claims that the atheism "is a religion" which is by definition false: "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods." Moreover, the changes brought by enlightenment were actually revolutionary and immense. But what is his correct observation is that no rights are fixed and that the most of the humans who have them now can as well lose them fast.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. And some large part of it is in fact junk and even sometimes dangerous. But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Human beings are really bad at reason. Just in my opinion. Atheism is an affirmative answer to a question about your faith in the unknown. So I agree with him, again just personally.
  - acqq 8y ago
    > Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. If you take a honest look in what religions are "really about" you'd come to: hell. Deities providing a place to torture human souls. Even Buddhism (as a developed religion, not as an idea on which it was established) has its hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) The proof that all of these stories are actually produced by humans and even have one origin is that the concept of hell effectively didn't exist around 3000 years ago but then appeared in all the cultures which mutually exchanged goods through the trade routes around 2500 years ago. The timing also doesn't fit with any of the religions claiming they have "the truth": the concept of hell was surely unknown to early Judaism but was provably spread across the cultures centuries before the Christianity appeared. > But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Like, we can imagine hell really good, and obviously successfully spread the invented stories about it. Heaven on another side is either non-existence, or profoundly uninteresting or obviously produced for a mind of sex-obsessed hormone pushed teenagers who will therefore be motivated to die for their "religion" (virgins always ready for sex). > Human beings are really bad at reason. Should we then prevent them from trying to reason about their religions? Or shouldn't we support them exactly to do so? The problem is, raising people to "not do something" because they will be "punished" in the afterlife provably doesn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now -- the human civilization constantly being near to complete annihilation. By pure nature of how probability works, there will be sooner or later some false alarm that will indeed trigger the actual detonation of the nuclear weapons. The only sane action by humanity would be to reduce their amount to the scale which makes humanity's annihilation impossible. We are very far from that at the moment. Because it's so profitable making these weapons. Yes, human beings are really bad at reason. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-109020/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-k... "military and intelligence leaders responded by unveiling their proposal for a pre-emptive thermonuclear attack on the Soviet Union, to be launched sometime in late 1963. JFK stormed away from the meeting in disgust, remarking scathingly to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “And we call ourselves the human race.”"
  - louisswiss 8y ago
wallace_f 8y ago
Thanks for the link. An on-point article in the context of my comment. I liked this quote, even if I'm not 100% in agreement: >On the whole, they are older and wiser myths than secular myths like progress
- inflatableDodo 8y ago
  To be honest, that article is a bit of a fluff piece, his essay in the New Statesman on the subject puts his point across better. - https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940 https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940