10 ms·

I can't stand this platitude that there are no atheists in foxholes. I have been inches from death and never questioned my atheist beliefs.

erikpukinskis 16y ago
The foxholes platitude, as I understand it, posits that when faced with death, everyone turns to spirituality. I don't think that's what the parent's quote was really about. It seems to me the quote is saying that you can stop worshipping the spiritual world, but you can't avoid worshipping something... money, prestige, science, comfort, fun, etc. While I disagree with the "worshipping anything other than god will eat you alive" sentiment... in general I agree with the concept. The idea that you could rid yourself of unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs is a charged mixture of hubris and absurdity. Atheists shed some small set of (generally preposterous) beliefs, and then imagine they are free of faith. It's like rich white kids eschewing BMW's and designer clothes and thinking they've escaped privilege.
- crasshopper 16y ago
  Atheists ... imagine they are free of faith. Don't assume. you can't avoid worshipping something Don't assume.
  - PakG1 16y ago
    Anyone who comes to a conclusion about something inevitably in the end has faith. The fact that I sit in a chair right now, I know obviously that the chair can support me. But at the end of the day, I don't know for sure, so that knowledge is also rooted in faith that it will continue to support me and won't spontaneously break. And I've had chairs spontaneously break on me before too, so there's physical evidence in my history that my conclusion isn't a sure thing. The only people who don't have faith are skeptics, and I'm talking about skeptics who are skeptical about everything here. Like they aren't even sure of their own existence. Faith is a logical requirement of any personal conclusion whether you like it or not. http://xkcd.com/242/ http://xkcd.com/242/ Even if you experiment to beyond reasonable doubt, you still risk that you could be wrong. Any true scientist trusts in the scientific method, but the scientific method itself leaves things open to new questions, new evidence, and new experiments. That's what makes the scientific method wonderful. But that's also why any conclusion by the scientific method also in the end has a final requirement of faith for any immediate conclusions.
    - sofal 16y ago
      You've moved the goalposts considerably with your definition of faith being merely a reasonable acceptance of a proposition based on evidence. This is far from the prescribed as well as the descriptive definition of faith.
      - lotharbot 16y ago
        Pick your favorite ancient European or Middle Eastern religious or philosophical writing and look at the actual usage of the word "faith" (or the word translated as "faith"). You'll find that its definition is something along the lines of "reasonable acceptance of a proposition based on evidence" with the followup of "acting upon that proposition in the face of emotional uncertainty". Or, more simply, classical faith is the triumph of reason and experience over emotion and fickleness. It's only been about the last 140 years (with the rise of Christian Fundamentalism and the associated mysticism and anti-intellectualism) that "faith" has been used to refer to belief without reason or evidence. The parent poster is moving the goalposts, but he's moving them back toward where they actually belong.
        sofal 16y ago
        It doesn't matter where you think the goalposts should be. Moving them in order to make a counterpoint is a fallacy.
        lotharbot 16y ago
        It's not a fallacy to move the goalposts back to where they belong after someone else has misplaced them. It is only a fallacy when the same person places them in one place and then another.
        sofal 16y ago
        Maybe we're not seeing eye to eye on what was being said. erikpukinskis defined faith as "unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs". Okay, fine. Then he states that atheists imagine they are free of those. crasshopper's comment basically means (correct me if I'm wrong), "don't assume that atheists imagine they are free of unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs." I agree. At most, atheists claim freedom from a more severe subset of those kinds of beliefs specifically regarding religion. PakG1 then stretches the definition of faith to include even those beliefs which are examined and based on knowledge and past evidence. Let me know where you think the first misplacement was.
thrdOriginal 16y ago
While an interesting personal anecdote, your comment has nothing to do with what DFW is talking about. He touches on multiple platitudes throughout his speech (and names them as such): this is not one of them.
- crasshopper 16y ago
  It relates in the following way. DFW presumes to know the internals of other people's minds, and to instruct them on how to be better. Same with the no-atheists-in-foxholes conjecture.
  - thrdOriginal 16y ago
    Is this serious? After reading my comment did you even bother re-reading the speech? By your analogy, every philosophical, psychological, sociological, et al text relates to the platitude your originally mentioned. The actual meaning of your original comment still has absolutely nothing to do with DFW's speech. This whole thread is like watching a student defend a paper about a book he never read and doesn't understand, but whose opinion is bolstered by yet more students with even less comprehension of the text than him.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - crasshopper 16y ago
      No need to get upset, mon. I'm sure they just feel similarly. I dislike this: Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. To me that says people cannot choose what to do with their own minds. Like the atheists-in-foxholes saying, it denies a freedom that I cherish and denigrates a goal that I aspire to. This is all very much a sidelight. We're just messing around on the internet, right? No hard feelings.
    - crasshopper 16y ago
      Your harsh words have been bothering me so I'm writing again. * I did re-read the speech. * Not every text relates to the foxholes platitude. * Even if you don't think there's a connection between what I said and what DFW said, so what? We are on a tangent off a tangent off a tangent in the middle of the internet. * I feel like you maybe are frustrated at somebody or something else and taking it out on me via the internet. Not nice.
discreteevent 16y ago
Maybe not a foxhole but a child of ours who was very sick. Since then I just don't partake when there is an argument about the existence of something bigger than ourselves. Each to his own.
DavidMcLaughlin 16y ago
What an interesting thing to take away from the quote, maybe I assume too much because I've read the whole speech but certainly I did not think he meant to say what you are implying. What I took from it personally is that people tend to find meaning in life from something - a deity, a job, money, fame, looks, their own business - and that it doesn't really which of those you choose you're essentially taking a leap of faith that it will deliver happiness.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- crasshopper 16y ago
  David, I find DFW's perspective interesting but overly didactic. The above was not meant as a takeaway or summary of what he wrote.
cageface 16y ago
I always took it to mean that atheists were too smart to wind up in a foxhole in the first place.

erikpukinskis 16y ago

The foxholes platitude, as I understand it, posits that when faced with death, everyone turns to spirituality. I don't think that's what the parent's quote was really about. It seems to me the quote is saying that you can stop worshipping the spiritual world, but you can't avoid worshipping something... money, prestige, science, comfort, fun, etc. While I disagree with the "worshipping anything other than god will eat you alive" sentiment... in general I agree with the concept. The idea that you could rid yourself of unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs is a charged mixture of hubris and absurdity. Atheists shed some small set of (generally preposterous) beliefs, and then imagine they are free of faith. It's like rich white kids eschewing BMW's and designer clothes and thinking they've escaped privilege.

crasshopper 16y ago
Atheists ... imagine they are free of faith. Don't assume. you can't avoid worshipping something Don't assume.
- PakG1 16y ago
  Anyone who comes to a conclusion about something inevitably in the end has faith. The fact that I sit in a chair right now, I know obviously that the chair can support me. But at the end of the day, I don't know for sure, so that knowledge is also rooted in faith that it will continue to support me and won't spontaneously break. And I've had chairs spontaneously break on me before too, so there's physical evidence in my history that my conclusion isn't a sure thing. The only people who don't have faith are skeptics, and I'm talking about skeptics who are skeptical about everything here. Like they aren't even sure of their own existence. Faith is a logical requirement of any personal conclusion whether you like it or not. http://xkcd.com/242/ http://xkcd.com/242/ Even if you experiment to beyond reasonable doubt, you still risk that you could be wrong. Any true scientist trusts in the scientific method, but the scientific method itself leaves things open to new questions, new evidence, and new experiments. That's what makes the scientific method wonderful. But that's also why any conclusion by the scientific method also in the end has a final requirement of faith for any immediate conclusions.
  - sofal 16y ago
    You've moved the goalposts considerably with your definition of faith being merely a reasonable acceptance of a proposition based on evidence. This is far from the prescribed as well as the descriptive definition of faith.
    - lotharbot 16y ago
      Pick your favorite ancient European or Middle Eastern religious or philosophical writing and look at the actual usage of the word "faith" (or the word translated as "faith"). You'll find that its definition is something along the lines of "reasonable acceptance of a proposition based on evidence" with the followup of "acting upon that proposition in the face of emotional uncertainty". Or, more simply, classical faith is the triumph of reason and experience over emotion and fickleness. It's only been about the last 140 years (with the rise of Christian Fundamentalism and the associated mysticism and anti-intellectualism) that "faith" has been used to refer to belief without reason or evidence. The parent poster is moving the goalposts, but he's moving them back toward where they actually belong.
      - sofal 16y ago
        It doesn't matter where you think the goalposts should be. Moving them in order to make a counterpoint is a fallacy.
        lotharbot 16y ago
        It's not a fallacy to move the goalposts back to where they belong after someone else has misplaced them. It is only a fallacy when the same person places them in one place and then another.
        sofal 16y ago
        Maybe we're not seeing eye to eye on what was being said. erikpukinskis defined faith as "unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs". Okay, fine. Then he states that atheists imagine they are free of those. crasshopper's comment basically means (correct me if I'm wrong), "don't assume that atheists imagine they are free of unexamined, culturally imprinted beliefs." I agree. At most, atheists claim freedom from a more severe subset of those kinds of beliefs specifically regarding religion. PakG1 then stretches the definition of faith to include even those beliefs which are examined and based on knowledge and past evidence. Let me know where you think the first misplacement was.

thrdOriginal 16y ago

While an interesting personal anecdote, your comment has nothing to do with what DFW is talking about. He touches on multiple platitudes throughout his speech (and names them as such): this is not one of them.

crasshopper 16y ago
It relates in the following way. DFW presumes to know the internals of other people's minds, and to instruct them on how to be better. Same with the no-atheists-in-foxholes conjecture.
- thrdOriginal 16y ago
  Is this serious? After reading my comment did you even bother re-reading the speech? By your analogy, every philosophical, psychological, sociological, et al text relates to the platitude your originally mentioned. The actual meaning of your original comment still has absolutely nothing to do with DFW's speech. This whole thread is like watching a student defend a paper about a book he never read and doesn't understand, but whose opinion is bolstered by yet more students with even less comprehension of the text than him.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - crasshopper 16y ago
    No need to get upset, mon. I'm sure they just feel similarly. I dislike this: Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. To me that says people cannot choose what to do with their own minds. Like the atheists-in-foxholes saying, it denies a freedom that I cherish and denigrates a goal that I aspire to. This is all very much a sidelight. We're just messing around on the internet, right? No hard feelings.
  - crasshopper 16y ago
    Your harsh words have been bothering me so I'm writing again. * I did re-read the speech. * Not every text relates to the foxholes platitude. * Even if you don't think there's a connection between what I said and what DFW said, so what? We are on a tangent off a tangent off a tangent in the middle of the internet. * I feel like you maybe are frustrated at somebody or something else and taking it out on me via the internet. Not nice.

discreteevent 16y ago

Maybe not a foxhole but a child of ours who was very sick. Since then I just don't partake when there is an argument about the existence of something bigger than ourselves. Each to his own.

DavidMcLaughlin 16y ago

What an interesting thing to take away from the quote, maybe I assume too much because I've read the whole speech but certainly I did not think he meant to say what you are implying. What I took from it personally is that people tend to find meaning in life from something - a deity, a job, money, fame, looks, their own business - and that it doesn't really which of those you choose you're essentially taking a leap of faith that it will deliver happiness.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
crasshopper 16y ago
David, I find DFW's perspective interesting but overly didactic. The above was not meant as a takeaway or summary of what he wrote.

cageface 16y ago

I always took it to mean that atheists were too smart to wind up in a foxhole in the first place.