3 ms·

The worldview of many atheists I know seems to depend on magical thinking, holding of contradictory beliefs, and blind appeal to authority when it comes to the

The worldview of many atheists I know seems to depend on magical thinking, holding of contradictory beliefs, and blind appeal to authority when it comes to the government. I don't think there is clear cause and effect when it comes to religion and irrational behavior.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Certainly exceptions exist to every rule or trend. Having visited over a hundred churches (for thousands of services), they are the only place I've consistently seen people teach and accept things that what everyone can plainly see is false. Children are taught that fallacies are better than critical thinking, wherever it serves their belief system.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  This is a surprising thing to read, as that’s a lot of services. Are you religious? Or were you once? I’ve visited many, many churches, likely hundreds. I love their architecture. I have never been to a service and am an atheist.
psychoslave 2y ago
People often easily conflat religion, theology and theocracy. But an atheist dictator that would put death sentence for anyone that engages in a religion would obviously not be more ethical than some religious zealtoth doing the same for atheism. I'm not aware of any politically powerful atheist in history that went this path. I mean, most likely Stalin was atheist, but I doubt it ever was a matter to send people to gulag. Atheism is just rare as an ontological belief, so it makes sense most faith intolerance happened between religious dévots. Note that strictly speaking, atheism is just rejecting the existence of any god. That doesn't necessarily make magic out of the equation. Though certainly atheism is generally associated to the rejection of any superstitious belief. But just believing that ZFC make a sound mathematical foundation doesn't make you an advanced flawless logician. People stay mere humans, whatever they believe might be the most relevant foundation to use their more or less weak reasoning ability.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Dictators are bad regardless of religion or lack thereof. IDK what ZFC is, so perhaps you can enlighten me?
  - defrost 2y ago
    Crudely overviewing: Mathematics is seen a formally grown, logical system, that has features that are "discovered" rather than invented .. "Given some {X}, {Y} follows without question". However it rests(?) on Axiomatic foundations .. Most famously: https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm It is understood that one can tweak an axiom, the fifth posulate for example, and get a different logical ediface - a non Euclidean hyperbolic geometry in that case. The ZFC "Axiom of Choice" has bearing on infinities and other things, including many proofs that depend on reduction by absurdity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_t...

paulryanrogers 2y ago

Certainly exceptions exist to every rule or trend. Having visited over a hundred churches (for thousands of services), they are the only place I've consistently seen people teach and accept things that what everyone can plainly see is false. Children are taught that fallacies are better than critical thinking, wherever it serves their belief system.

lostlogin 2y ago
This is a surprising thing to read, as that’s a lot of services. Are you religious? Or were you once? I’ve visited many, many churches, likely hundreds. I love their architecture. I have never been to a service and am an atheist.

psychoslave 2y ago

People often easily conflat religion, theology and theocracy. But an atheist dictator that would put death sentence for anyone that engages in a religion would obviously not be more ethical than some religious zealtoth doing the same for atheism. I'm not aware of any politically powerful atheist in history that went this path. I mean, most likely Stalin was atheist, but I doubt it ever was a matter to send people to gulag. Atheism is just rare as an ontological belief, so it makes sense most faith intolerance happened between religious dévots. Note that strictly speaking, atheism is just rejecting the existence of any god. That doesn't necessarily make magic out of the equation. Though certainly atheism is generally associated to the rejection of any superstitious belief. But just believing that ZFC make a sound mathematical foundation doesn't make you an advanced flawless logician. People stay mere humans, whatever they believe might be the most relevant foundation to use their more or less weak reasoning ability.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
paulryanrogers 2y ago
Dictators are bad regardless of religion or lack thereof. IDK what ZFC is, so perhaps you can enlighten me?
- defrost 2y ago
  Crudely overviewing: Mathematics is seen a formally grown, logical system, that has features that are "discovered" rather than invented .. "Given some {X}, {Y} follows without question". However it rests(?) on Axiomatic foundations .. Most famously: https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm It is understood that one can tweak an axiom, the fifth posulate for example, and get a different logical ediface - a non Euclidean hyperbolic geometry in that case. The ZFC "Axiom of Choice" has bearing on infinities and other things, including many proofs that depend on reduction by absurdity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_t...