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> I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. The absolute only good thing about this is that

> I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science. The absolute only good thing about this is that it fights fire with fire: that is, it uses tribalism to fight tribalism. But that's all it is. Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity, and it's a problem whether or not magical woo is involved. It's the same kind of thing when people think that calling out a fallacy is some kind of argumentative coup d'etat. Or let's bring this back to software and business. How exactly do you feel when your sales team drastically overpromises your engineering capabilities? That's how I feel.

illuminate 14y ago
"Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity" A lack of belief in God is not a belief in a God. Your example is ignorant.
- omegant 14y ago
  Are you so sure? A person that is conditioned to follow an idea will behave in a conditioned way, I doesn't matter the topic. When you are conditioned to beleave and cheer a "scientific" fact, it is improbable that you'll allow new facts to replace your beleave. You have made a new religion wit a new "Idol".
  - scotty79 14y ago
    What if you are conditioned to believe and cheer replacing the facts you believed in with new ones that have no evidence against them and many clues for them? Can reason an scientific method itself be an Idol? And if you do not cherish those things do you think it's better since you are truly not a believer in anything? Even the method that verifiebly gives humanity models of predictive utility that gave us almost all we enjoy today?
  - illuminate 14y ago
    "When you are conditioned to beleave and cheer a "scientific" fact, it is improbable that you'll allow new facts to replace your beleave. You have made a new religion wit a new "Idol"." Religion is the belief in an absence of evidence. Science is the whole of objective reality. You don't seem to understand what "science" and "religion" actually mean, but you really don't like persons who don't believe in anything, so you assign bizarrely negative qualifiers for someone who knows things. No one on earth worships "SCIENCE". It's a tool we use daily, whether you understand why things work or not.
    - jimzvz 14y ago
      > No one on earth worships "SCIENCE". The problem with ifls and equivalents is that that is actually what they are encouraging. They misrepresent "science" completely.
      - illuminate 14y ago
        Eh, they're dumb cheerleaders (no offense to smart cheerleaders intended.) They're meme consumers, and looking to be entertained and awed, regardless of the veracity of the source material. I agree, even if I find it unnecessary to portray it as "worship".
    - malkarouri 14y ago
      "Religion is the belief in an absence of evidence." Quoi? May be you have some particular religion in mind, but many beliefs coexist happily with science. There is a domain where atheists and many religious people agree on. Which is the domain that is not covered by the particular religion and that is covered by the scientific method (do an experiment, analyse data, get conclusions, rinse, repeat). Choice of medicine is one such area. True, some religions believe in voodoo or other "alternative medicine" but that is not part of the definition of religion. The critical question is what to do with things we have no physical evidence of, things which we have no data of, are uncertain of. Things that science has not reached a verdict on. Religions typically have loads of these. The existence of god/gods for example. Having such a belief does not contradict the available science at the time, so we can have a scientist who believes in gods carrying on his research cheerfully. Atheists don't believe in gods unless there is physical proof. That also does not contradict doing some scientific research. The issue comes when you mistake "SCIENCE", the tool we use daily, with "science", the set of propositions, heuristics, conjectures and half-baked theories that will always exist at the frontiers of research. That effectively means you choose to place your trust in the set of current researchers and if they get it wrong, you get it wrong. In short, science is not and has never been the whole of objective reality. This assigns mythical powers to scientists, which some would certainly call a "religion".
      - illuminate 14y ago
- johnchristopher 14y ago
  I think you misunderstood parent. He didn't imply atheism is a religion but that atheists who behaves like religous/zealots are as dangerous as their couter-parts on the religious side.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    I can understand the dig on zealotry, but the direct comparisons to "atheism as a religion" remain a pretty good sign that someone doesn't really understand what either term means. It's as unfair to religion as it is to those who lack belief in any God(s).
    - johnchristopher 14y ago
      I disagree. I think the comparison is valid. Some hardline atheists can be as vindicative, presumptuous and arrogant as religious people and that attitude is a problem ( Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion.
      - illuminate 14y ago
        "Some hardline atheists can be as vindicative, presumptuous and arrogant as religious people and that attitude is a problem" Atheists can be assholes? Why does that even need to be said? Atheists are people and run the same set of qualities that any human can possess. "Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion." Religion or lack thereof has nothing to do with being an asshole. Software "zealots" promote their fanatical opinions but they don't worship "software". It's a crappy analogy when "asshole" would suffice.
        saraid216 14y ago
        > Software "zealots" promote their fanatical opinions but they don't worship "software". Indeed. But software zealots exhibit the same behavioral properties as normal zealots. "Normal zealots" is understood to be "religious zealots", because those behavioral properties are derived primarily from analyses of religious behavior. Worship, at the end of the day, has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
derleth 14y ago
> Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity Right. Replacing one form of blind adherence with another is not an improvement. There are people who have no blind adherence to anything. It is possible, and we need more of them. That isn't something IFLS can help with.
thisrod 14y ago
I agree: fanatics of magic woo are indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced fanatics of technological woo.

illuminate 14y ago

"Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity" A lack of belief in God is not a belief in a God. Your example is ignorant.

omegant 14y ago
Are you so sure? A person that is conditioned to follow an idea will behave in a conditioned way, I doesn't matter the topic. When you are conditioned to beleave and cheer a "scientific" fact, it is improbable that you'll allow new facts to replace your beleave. You have made a new religion wit a new "Idol".
- scotty79 14y ago
  What if you are conditioned to believe and cheer replacing the facts you believed in with new ones that have no evidence against them and many clues for them? Can reason an scientific method itself be an Idol? And if you do not cherish those things do you think it's better since you are truly not a believer in anything? Even the method that verifiebly gives humanity models of predictive utility that gave us almost all we enjoy today?
- illuminate 14y ago
  "When you are conditioned to beleave and cheer a "scientific" fact, it is improbable that you'll allow new facts to replace your beleave. You have made a new religion wit a new "Idol"." Religion is the belief in an absence of evidence. Science is the whole of objective reality. You don't seem to understand what "science" and "religion" actually mean, but you really don't like persons who don't believe in anything, so you assign bizarrely negative qualifiers for someone who knows things. No one on earth worships "SCIENCE". It's a tool we use daily, whether you understand why things work or not.
  - jimzvz 14y ago
    > No one on earth worships "SCIENCE". The problem with ifls and equivalents is that that is actually what they are encouraging. They misrepresent "science" completely.
    - illuminate 14y ago
      Eh, they're dumb cheerleaders (no offense to smart cheerleaders intended.) They're meme consumers, and looking to be entertained and awed, regardless of the veracity of the source material. I agree, even if I find it unnecessary to portray it as "worship".
  - malkarouri 14y ago
    "Religion is the belief in an absence of evidence." Quoi? May be you have some particular religion in mind, but many beliefs coexist happily with science. There is a domain where atheists and many religious people agree on. Which is the domain that is not covered by the particular religion and that is covered by the scientific method (do an experiment, analyse data, get conclusions, rinse, repeat). Choice of medicine is one such area. True, some religions believe in voodoo or other "alternative medicine" but that is not part of the definition of religion. The critical question is what to do with things we have no physical evidence of, things which we have no data of, are uncertain of. Things that science has not reached a verdict on. Religions typically have loads of these. The existence of god/gods for example. Having such a belief does not contradict the available science at the time, so we can have a scientist who believes in gods carrying on his research cheerfully. Atheists don't believe in gods unless there is physical proof. That also does not contradict doing some scientific research. The issue comes when you mistake "SCIENCE", the tool we use daily, with "science", the set of propositions, heuristics, conjectures and half-baked theories that will always exist at the frontiers of research. That effectively means you choose to place your trust in the set of current researchers and if they get it wrong, you get it wrong. In short, science is not and has never been the whole of objective reality. This assigns mythical powers to scientists, which some would certainly call a "religion".
    - illuminate 14y ago
johnchristopher 14y ago
I think you misunderstood parent. He didn't imply atheism is a religion but that atheists who behaves like religous/zealots are as dangerous as their couter-parts on the religious side.
- illuminate 14y ago
  I can understand the dig on zealotry, but the direct comparisons to "atheism as a religion" remain a pretty good sign that someone doesn't really understand what either term means. It's as unfair to religion as it is to those who lack belief in any God(s).
  - johnchristopher 14y ago
    I disagree. I think the comparison is valid. Some hardline atheists can be as vindicative, presumptuous and arrogant as religious people and that attitude is a problem ( Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion.
    - illuminate 14y ago
      "Some hardline atheists can be as vindicative, presumptuous and arrogant as religious people and that attitude is a problem" Atheists can be assholes? Why does that even need to be said? Atheists are people and run the same set of qualities that any human can possess. "Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion." Religion or lack thereof has nothing to do with being an asshole. Software "zealots" promote their fanatical opinions but they don't worship "software". It's a crappy analogy when "asshole" would suffice.
      - saraid216 14y ago
        > Software "zealots" promote their fanatical opinions but they don't worship "software". Indeed. But software zealots exhibit the same behavioral properties as normal zealots. "Normal zealots" is understood to be "religious zealots", because those behavioral properties are derived primarily from analyses of religious behavior. Worship, at the end of the day, has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

derleth 14y ago

> Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity Right. Replacing one form of blind adherence with another is not an improvement. There are people who have no blind adherence to anything. It is possible, and we need more of them. That isn't something IFLS can help with.

thisrod 14y ago

I agree: fanatics of magic woo are indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced fanatics of technological woo.