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It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something that is ver

It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something that is very destructive to religious belief.

jey 13y ago
> We're in the golden age of critical thinking Source/citation/justification? Seems just as easy to make the opposing argument, that mass media technologies are being perfected to the point where it'll soon be possible to use highly optimized Skinner boxes for disseminating propaganda, something like Zynga plus Fox News. The victims would be voluntarily opting in to their own brainwashing.
- donkeyd 13y ago
  I think this kind of proves your point: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...
mullingitover 13y ago
> Source/citation/justification? Case in point.
afhdshufdufdo 13y ago
I'm critical of atheism, because it is itself a religious belief and those that believe and evangelize it refuse to recognize it as a religion in and of itself. I live in the U.S. where the country was built by those that wanted freedom of religion.
- danbruc 13y ago
  Atheism is a belief but not a religious belief.
  - afhdshufdufdo 13y ago
    Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.' Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in everything from the big bang to evolution, somehow the Big Bang and Evolution take on a life of their own, without full understanding of them. Darwin takes the place of a prophet, although Darwin himself was not an atheist [1] and said, "Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence." Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't. They put up billboards, organize, take donations, have musical rallies at military bases with atheist songs, and pass out literature like evangelical religions. And they are as intolerant and unaccepting as well. I find them quite obnoxious, but atheism is a religion, therefore according to our freedom of religion, it must be allowed, but it should be allowed along with the free practice of any other religion in any place, at any time, in any public place. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Charles_Darwin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Charles_Darw...
    - gonvaled 13y ago
      "Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't." Of course they can co-exist, and atheism has nothing to say against religion: religion, by definition, is non-falsifiable, so atheism can not negate it. Atheism is, nevertheless, very sceptical about the actual existence of a supreme being. It can't prove its non-existence, but still considers it as veeeery improbable. As "there are a million reasons which explain why we believe in god which are much more probable than the fact that god exists". So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        Words have shifted a bit. In the strictest possible senses, "It's not possible to know for sure" is an agnostic position and the atheistic position would be either "I believe there is no god, whatever the evidence" or "I believe there is no god, here is the evidence". These strict uses sometimes confuse more typical uses, where "probably not, because I haven't seen sufficient evidence to make 'there is any sort of a god' more likely than other options" is called "atheist" and "shrug I dunno" falls under "agnostic".
- mullingitover 13y ago
  > I live in the U.S. where the country was built by those that wanted freedom of religion. That's a bit of a stretch. In Puritan New England, worshipping anything other than the Christian God was a capital offence.
prawn 13y ago
Also, online communities and communication could go some way to replacing what some people enjoy about the community aspect of churches.
baldfat 13y ago
> something that is very destructive to religious belief I think history's greatest logical thinkers would beg to differ with you. The history books are always trying to be rewritten by someone BUT religious thought has driven this critical thinking and logic for millennial. Also explain why more people are Christians now then ever? Percentage and Numbers???
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Because there are more people now than ever. Are you trying to make a parody?
  - baldfat 13y ago
    Read the word percentage
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      Oh, that part is just factually inaccurate, at least as far as I could find in a brief search. The only reason it's even staying flat is because it's stealing from other religions. The overall amount of religious people is shrinking, especially in affluent/educated countries.
- baldfat 13y ago
  Sorry I tried to say that Logical Thinkers of history were very religious. I'll tell Issace Newton and Pascal to shove it!
austinz 13y ago
I disagree. Ease of retrieval of information is one thing, signal to noise ratio is also important. For every 'superstition' being destroyed on the Internet there are (e.g.) a plethora of people reposting the discredited "NASA space pen" meme, smugly ending discussions with "correlation does not imply causation, so you're wrong" and other thought-terminating cliches, and enthusiastically engaging in echo-chamber communities that only seek to reinforce existing biases. Good information has always taken work to obtain. The Internet cannot compensate for intellectual laziness, it can only magnify the effectiveness of the efforts of those willing to exercise discernment and look at things with a critical eye.
- captainmojo 13y ago
  Yep. I'd add delusion to your list of echo-chamber-friendly conditions. Faith/Religion are one case people like to yell about, but you have plenty of nibiru/reptilian/fema-camp/bill-gates-is-a-eugenicist people who are ready to believe whatever the internet tells them, all the while believing everyone else is guilty of intellectual laziness.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  I can agree that there are some cases of misinformation that have been propagated by the internet, but to claim it is a simple wash is pretty far-fetched.
joeclark77 13y ago
> We're in the golden age of critical thinking That's a hoot! There hasn't been as much tribalism and sloganeering in US politics as there is now since before the Civil War. Children graduating high school these days are barely literate and absolutely incapable of identifying a logical syllogism or evaluating an argument. Jon Stewart's joke news show is most of the country's prime source of information and analysis. Maybe there's a fantastic revolution of "critical thinking" happening in the third world somewhere, but certainly not in the US or western Europe.
- afhdshufdufdo 13y ago
  +10000000. I totally agree with you. But, I don't know what to do about it. We've tried public and private schools, but I think a lot of the problem is our culture. Hard work and studying are not rewarded; group mind-think and standardization have taken the place of a good combination of rote memory learning and essay writing/debating. What if we were to establish schools the same way they existed in the 1800s with the same rigor? Small, mixed classes, all in a single room, hopefully taught by the very well-educated.
  - joeclark77 13y ago
    I'd like to find a way to do homeschooling that wouldn't require my wife to be a full-time teacher. One possibility is something like a network of families where each one is responsible for a particular subject or a particular day of the week, and they take turns. Or something like Art Robinson's curriculum (http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com) where the children are basically self-teaching, and you can do other work as long as you're around to keep the schedule/discipline. It's tough, though. I wish I could trust the Catholic schools, at least, to stick to a classical education, but they're shaped more by the culture than by tradition these days.

It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something that is very destructive to religious belief.

jey 13y ago

> We're in the golden age of critical thinking Source/citation/justification? Seems just as easy to make the opposing argument, that mass media technologies are being perfected to the point where it'll soon be possible to use highly optimized Skinner boxes for disseminating propaganda, something like Zynga plus Fox News. The victims would be voluntarily opting in to their own brainwashing.

donkeyd 13y ago
I think this kind of proves your point: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...

mullingitover 13y ago

> Source/citation/justification? Case in point.

afhdshufdufdo 13y ago

I'm critical of atheism, because it is itself a religious belief and those that believe and evangelize it refuse to recognize it as a religion in and of itself. I live in the U.S. where the country was built by those that wanted freedom of religion.

danbruc 13y ago
Atheism is a belief but not a religious belief.
- afhdshufdufdo 13y ago
  Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.' Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in everything from the big bang to evolution, somehow the Big Bang and Evolution take on a life of their own, without full understanding of them. Darwin takes the place of a prophet, although Darwin himself was not an atheist [1] and said, "Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence." Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't. They put up billboards, organize, take donations, have musical rallies at military bases with atheist songs, and pass out literature like evangelical religions. And they are as intolerant and unaccepting as well. I find them quite obnoxious, but atheism is a religion, therefore according to our freedom of religion, it must be allowed, but it should be allowed along with the free practice of any other religion in any place, at any time, in any public place. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Charles_Darwin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Charles_Darw...
  - gonvaled 13y ago
    "Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't." Of course they can co-exist, and atheism has nothing to say against religion: religion, by definition, is non-falsifiable, so atheism can not negate it. Atheism is, nevertheless, very sceptical about the actual existence of a supreme being. It can't prove its non-existence, but still considers it as veeeery improbable. As "there are a million reasons which explain why we believe in god which are much more probable than the fact that god exists". So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Words have shifted a bit. In the strictest possible senses, "It's not possible to know for sure" is an agnostic position and the atheistic position would be either "I believe there is no god, whatever the evidence" or "I believe there is no god, here is the evidence". These strict uses sometimes confuse more typical uses, where "probably not, because I haven't seen sufficient evidence to make 'there is any sort of a god' more likely than other options" is called "atheist" and "shrug I dunno" falls under "agnostic".
mullingitover 13y ago
> I live in the U.S. where the country was built by those that wanted freedom of religion. That's a bit of a stretch. In Puritan New England, worshipping anything other than the Christian God was a capital offence.

prawn 13y ago

Also, online communities and communication could go some way to replacing what some people enjoy about the community aspect of churches.

baldfat 13y ago

> something that is very destructive to religious belief I think history's greatest logical thinkers would beg to differ with you. The history books are always trying to be rewritten by someone BUT religious thought has driven this critical thinking and logic for millennial. Also explain why more people are Christians now then ever? Percentage and Numbers???

jamesaguilar 13y ago
Because there are more people now than ever. Are you trying to make a parody?
- baldfat 13y ago
  Read the word percentage
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Oh, that part is just factually inaccurate, at least as far as I could find in a brief search. The only reason it's even staying flat is because it's stealing from other religions. The overall amount of religious people is shrinking, especially in affluent/educated countries.
baldfat 13y ago
Sorry I tried to say that Logical Thinkers of history were very religious. I'll tell Issace Newton and Pascal to shove it!

austinz 13y ago

I disagree. Ease of retrieval of information is one thing, signal to noise ratio is also important. For every 'superstition' being destroyed on the Internet there are (e.g.) a plethora of people reposting the discredited "NASA space pen" meme, smugly ending discussions with "correlation does not imply causation, so you're wrong" and other thought-terminating cliches, and enthusiastically engaging in echo-chamber communities that only seek to reinforce existing biases. Good information has always taken work to obtain. The Internet cannot compensate for intellectual laziness, it can only magnify the effectiveness of the efforts of those willing to exercise discernment and look at things with a critical eye.

captainmojo 13y ago
Yep. I'd add delusion to your list of echo-chamber-friendly conditions. Faith/Religion are one case people like to yell about, but you have plenty of nibiru/reptilian/fema-camp/bill-gates-is-a-eugenicist people who are ready to believe whatever the internet tells them, all the while believing everyone else is guilty of intellectual laziness.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
I can agree that there are some cases of misinformation that have been propagated by the internet, but to claim it is a simple wash is pretty far-fetched.

joeclark77 13y ago

> We're in the golden age of critical thinking That's a hoot! There hasn't been as much tribalism and sloganeering in US politics as there is now since before the Civil War. Children graduating high school these days are barely literate and absolutely incapable of identifying a logical syllogism or evaluating an argument. Jon Stewart's joke news show is most of the country's prime source of information and analysis. Maybe there's a fantastic revolution of "critical thinking" happening in the third world somewhere, but certainly not in the US or western Europe.

afhdshufdufdo 13y ago
+10000000. I totally agree with you. But, I don't know what to do about it. We've tried public and private schools, but I think a lot of the problem is our culture. Hard work and studying are not rewarded; group mind-think and standardization have taken the place of a good combination of rote memory learning and essay writing/debating. What if we were to establish schools the same way they existed in the 1800s with the same rigor? Small, mixed classes, all in a single room, hopefully taught by the very well-educated.
- joeclark77 13y ago
  I'd like to find a way to do homeschooling that wouldn't require my wife to be a full-time teacher. One possibility is something like a network of families where each one is responsible for a particular subject or a particular day of the week, and they take turns. Or something like Art Robinson's curriculum (http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com) where the children are basically self-teaching, and you can do other work as long as you're around to keep the schedule/discipline. It's tough, though. I wish I could trust the Catholic schools, at least, to stick to a classical education, but they're shaped more by the culture than by tradition these days.